Guest OS unable to follow symlinks in shared folder

[pboushy]

Describe the issue When a host's Desktop and Documents folders are redirected to an app that implements Apple's File Provider Syncing Desktop and Documents folders functionality, the Desktop and Documents folders cannot be accessed when sharing the home folder to the guest using the QEMU VirtFS integration.

Examples of apps that implement this:

• iCloud
• OneDrive
• Dropbox

If you try to access the Documents folder from the guest, you get the following:

• When run on the direct mount:

  $ sudo ls -la /mnt/utm/Desktop
  ls: cannot read symbolic link '/mnt/utm/Desktop': Too many levels of symbolic links
  lrwxr-xr-x 1 501 dialout 69 Nov  3 15:01 /mnt/utm/Desktop
  

• When run on the bind mount:

  $ ls -la ~/Desktop/utm/Desktop
  ls: cannot read symbolic link '/home/REDACTED/Desktop/utm/Desktop': Too many levels of symbolic links
  lrwxr-xr-x 1 pboushy pboushy 69 Nov  3 15:01 /home/REDACTED/Desktop/utm/Desktop
  

I believe that https://gitlab.com/qemu-project/qemu/-/issues/173 is related to this and once it's merged it will improve the situation, but not fully resolve it.

Configuration

• UTM Version: 4.7.4
• macOS Version: 26.0.1
• Mac Chip (Intel, M1, ...): M3 Pro

Crash log
n/a

Debug log
n/a

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