File Sharing: No feedback when spice-webdavd service is not started

I wanted to set up file sharing between two machines running Gnome 42 on my local network.

I activated it in the settings on both computers, and tried to connect using the address shown in the configuration (dav://hostname). It didn’t work, and after various error messages and internet searches I randomly searched my systemd services for something with “dav” in it. I then found out that the spice-webdavd service was not started, and starting it fixed the issue.

I think there should be some sort of feedback if this service is not enabled, since it looks to the user as if everything is working as intended. What could I do to implement a warning, or some fix that starts the service somehow?

The file sharing configured by gnome-control-center does not use spice-webdavd, it uses the Apache httpd. This httpd is run as user and does not have a fixed port, so you need to use DNS-SD on the client to discover the port for the .local hostname. Maybe you are trying to connect from a distro that does not have Avahi set up by default, such as Arch. Those distros won’t work with DNS-SD unless you manually set up Avahi.

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Thanks for the thorough response! I forgot to add that I am using an Arch system, and ahavi-daemon started because it’s a dependency of spice-webdavd.

So my question is, what would be the best way to solve this? Could some gnome Arch package enable Avahi? Or should gnome-control-center tell the user that Avahi is not started?

Thanks for the thorough response! I forgot to add that I am using an Arch system, and ahavi-daemon started because it’s a dependency of spice-webdavd.

That’s not enough for DNS-SD, Arch needs adjustment to some config files on the client side for it to work: Avahi - ArchWiki

So my question is, what would be the best way to solve this? Could some gnome Arch package enable Avahi?

I’m not familiar enough with Arch to know how they would solve this.

Or should gnome-control-center tell the user that Avahi is not started?

The server will not be able to tell whether a client has Avahi configured to resolve host names or not.

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