Cant mount cdrom on Dell PowerEdge 1855 blade server

[btrotter]

I am trying to mount a cdrom from the service console on one of my ESX 3.0.2 servers. The physical hardware is a Dell PowerEdge 1855 blade server, and the CDROM is one of those modular CD's that plugs into the front connector on the blade.

When trying to mount it, I get this error.

\[root@srvesx04 mnt]# mount /dev/cdrom /mnt/cdrom

mount: /dev/cdrom is not a valid block device

I can take that same CD and move it to another 3.0.2 server that is on a PowerEdge 6850 server with an IDE cd, and it mounts fine.

What am I missing to get it to work on the blade?

[panter]

The CDROM you plug into the front of the blade may not be recognized execpt on bootup. If you can test this VMotion off server, plug in drive and reboot. Then VMotion servers back and try again. I have had this issue even when working with physical 1855 blades, it was not hot adding the CDROM.

[btrotter]

I just did that, and still get the same error.

I tried to mount it then looked at /var/log/messages and saw these entries:

Sep 12 16:19:41 srvesx04 modprobe: modprobe: Can't locate module block-major-11

[btrotter]

Opened a case with VMware. The engineer figured out what the problem was.

Turns out that on this particular blade, it was missing the following commands from the /etc/modules.conf file.

alias usb-controller usb-uhci

alias usb-controller1 ehci-hcd

I added these two entries, restarted and problem was resolved.

I think there is a way to keep from restarting by running a modprobe command, but there were no active VM's on the ESX host, so I just rebooted.

[Sylvain]

Hello,

It's the same problem with the HP Blade Hardware (BL25p G1).

But the commands to add to the file /etc/modules.conf is different :

alias usb-controller usb-ohci

It's work for me after a reboot.

See ya

[Technologist]

I use the same poweredge and had the same exact problem. You rfix worked like a charm. THANK YOU!!!