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JonathanDatacom
Contributor
Contributor

How to mount the CDROM or a USB Drive in ESXi 4.1 ?

Now that ESXi 4.1 is supporting things like USB passthrough, one would expect there would be a (undocumented) way to attach a CDrom or USB key.

I have a situation where I want to install ESXi as per best practice, but the Blade that i'm trying to install on has only ServerEngine 10GbE NICs connected. From ESX/ESXi 4.0 there has been a driver CD with the required drives, but ESXi 4.0 had no way to install these at installation. I was hoping that the drivers would have been incorporated into 4.1 but they don't appear to have been.

As these drivers are the only way to get networking operational on the device, I am needing to find a way to install these drivers post install or to create a custom install with the drivers copied to the host at the time of installation for either automatic or manual enablement.

Has anyone come across a workaround for this?

If VMware expect to drop ESX in favour for ESXi, there really needs to be a way to add drivers in the same manner as the current full ESX installation process. If only one could press a function key to allows this ingest...

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4 Replies
mittim12
Immortal
Immortal

Couldn't you use the VI client and mount your local cd-rom to install the drivers into the guest?






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JonathanDatacom
Contributor
Contributor

Nice try, but definately no cigar...

1) VI Client requires the networking drivers to be operational to be able to work - The whole issue here is to access the driver CD from the HOST

2) The issue is with the HOST and not the guest

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mudha
Hot Shot
Hot Shot

the question here is how can we access USB CDROM in host in 4.1? i guess we need to disable some services in COS.

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kippesterfield
Contributor
Contributor

referenced from

http://communities.vmware.com/thread/167097

related to esxi3.5

To find the device reference of your CDROM:

esxcfg-mpath -l

Example output:

ide.vmhba32-ide.0:0-mpx.vmhba32:C0:T0:L0
   Runtime Name: vmhba32:C0:T0:L0
   Device: mpx.vmhba32:C0:T0:L0
   Device Display Name: Local TEAC CD-ROM (mpx.vmhba32:C0:T0:L0)
    State: active
   Transport: ide

Load the iso9660 module with this command:

vmkload_mod iso9660

Mount the CDROM using the device determined earlier with esxcfg-mpath -l:

/sbin/vsish -e set /vmkModules/iso9660/mount mpx.vmhba32:C0:T0:L0

The CDROM will be mounted under /vmfs/volumes/ [CDROM Label] /

********

Proof in the pudding

Am new to this but was attempting to update oem.tgz as per "vm-help.com" to update or add realtek 8168 drivers

bootbank info

~ # ls
altbootbank    dev            lib64          opt            sbin           tmp            vmfs
bin            etc            local.tgz      proc           scratch        usr            vmimages
bootbank       lib            locker         productLocker  store          var            vmupgrade
~ #
~ # cd bootbank
/vmfs/volumes/df78d378-153310d7-298d-535268d8ee4f #

notes....

TO COPY OEM.TGZ FROM CDROM TO BOOTBANK (FOUND BIG SIZE DIFFERENCE) SO SAVED FROM CDROM TO OEM.BAK, am thinking I need to append the 2 oem.tgz files but can't from console.

/vmfs/volumes/df78d378-153310d7-298d-535268d8ee4f # cp /vmfs/volumes/mpx.vmhba32:C0:T0:L0/OEM.TGZ /vmfs/volumes/df78d378-153310d7-298d-535268d8ee4f/oem.tgz
/vmfs/volumes/df78d378-153310d7-298d-535268d8ee4f #

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