VM's unable to connect to ESX CD drive

[cperreault]

So I'm running VC 2.5 build 84767 and ESX 3.5.1 update 1 and I'm having issues connecting VM's to any of my three ESX servers CD drives... This is an issue with existing and new VM's...

Any ideas?

Chris

[weinstein5]

Do you receive any errors when you set the VM's CD to use the ESX HOst CD?

[Dave_Mishchenko]

Your post has been moved to the ESX Server 3.5 Configuration forum

Dave Mishchenko

VMware Communities User Moderator

[cperreault]

Sorry Dave....

No, I dont get any errors... It's more like the host has no idea that the cdrom exists.

When I attempt to boot from CD media to create a new VM, the VM never connects to the cdrom drive (regardless of what is checked under edit setting...)

Older VM's never seem to connect to the cdrom either... It just says "...enter a cd.." for windows and linux say no device availible.

Now under the configuration tab on all of the ESX hosts, the cdrom shows up as:

CSB5 IDE Controller

vmhba0

Chris

[Troy_Clavell]

have you tried attaching the CD rom to the client instead of the host? Also, you may have to change the bios of the VM to boot from CD first.

[cperreault]

That will work for existing VM's but not new ones...? (right?)

And yes I have tried attaching the cdrom to the client and still no joy... Thanks thought...

Chris

[Troy_Clavell]

for new one's it will work as well. If you have a blank VM, it will try to boot and find no OS, then try a network boot. All you have to do is attach your CD rom/ISO to your Client and sometimes it will pick it up immediatly and boot from CD, sometimes you just have to send a CTLALTDEL.

[cperreault]

Cool man, I'll give it a try......

I would not have worked, but anything is work a try.

Chris

[cperreault]

Well that was a very cool trick (and one I'll keep in my bag of tricks for latter... Thanks) but the VM's still seem to act as if the cdrom does not exist.

Chris

[Troy_Clavell]

Is the CD acutally bootable? Have you tried it in any other machines? If you have a fast finger, you can hit the <esc> key and change the boot order, and put the CD Rom as first. There is a way to delay the boot, but I don't know the actual steps to do that.

[weinstein5]

what about creating an ISO image of cd?

[weinstein5]

Instead of trying ot beat the boot speed of the VM - go in to the setting of the VM under the options tab there is option for boot where you can force the vm to boot to the cmos setup screen -

[kastlr]

Hi,

maybe a dump question, but did you check/configure the boot sequence in the BIOS of your VM to use the CD?

And of course you must mark the Connect at power on[/b] in the device status section of your CD drive in the VM settings dialog box.

If it's not set, the VM won't find the CD during startup.

[cperreault]

Yeah the cd seems fine (I've test the cd in other physical machines...)

Yes I can boot from an ISO saved in my datastore, which is cool as I can provision new servers.... But bad if I need anything off of cd for existing VM's.

No the end of the world mind you (I can alway store stuff off on the network and get it that way...) but I just updated the ESX servers this week and was hoping to get this figured out.

Chris

[cperreault]

Yeah no worries Ghost. I did check all that.

Like I said, it strange... It's like the none of the VM's (new or old) can see the cdrom, regardless of what is on the cd. It never gets that far.

Chris

[Weatherman]

Actually, you can use ISO images for existing VM's as well. They work very well for adding Windows Components, etc. And you don't have to go looking for a physical CD. I hardly ever use physical CDs in my VI environment anymore. I can do everything remotely without setting foot in the datacenter to swap disks.

[kastlr]

Last try,

check with mount[/b] from the SC if the CD drive isn't used by Linux itself.

[kjb007]

Not sure if it was mentioned already, but when you put a cd into the drive on an esx server, you can run 'tail /var/log/messages', and it should tell you which device was just added or inserted.

The /dev/cdrom are usually symlink's to the actual device as seen by esx. If you can not mount that device manually, then there is something wrong with the way the cd was detected. If the cd is ok, you should be able to run 'mount -t iso9660 /dev/cdrom /mnt/cdrom'

Typically, if it's an IDE cdrom, the device will be something like /dev/hdc /dev/hdd.

-KjB