Mounting CDROM to install VMware Tools on a Red Hat Enterprise Linux VM fails

Products

• VMware vSphere ESXi

Issue/Introduction

This article provides steps to resolve the issue when mounting CDROM to install VMware Tools on a Linux virtual machine fails with this mount: You must specify filesystem type error.

Symptoms:

• Mounting CDROM to install VMware Tools on a Linux virtual machine fails:
• You see the error:
  
  mount: You must specify filesystem type

Environment

VMware vSphere ESXi 6.7
VMware vSphere ESXi 6.5
VMware vSphere ESXi 6.0

Cause

This issue occurs due to a drive listed with a different name in the operating system. The /mnt/ directory does not contain cdrom.

Resolution

This issue happens only to Linux Virtual Machine. To resolve this issue, use any one of the options.

• Use an existing mount point in /mnt/:
  
  For example: mount /dev/dvd1 /mnt/cdrom
   
• Create the cdrom mount point in /mnt/:
  
  For example: mkdir /mnt/cdrom
  
  And mount the drive using:  mount /dev/dvd1/ /mnt/cdrom/

Additional Information

For more information, see:

• Installing VMware Tools in a Linux virtual machine using a Compiler (1018414)
• Installing VMware Tools in a Linux virtual machine using Red Hat Package Manager (RPM) (1018392)

Installing VMware Tools in a Linux virtual machine using Red Hat Package Manager (RPM)
Installing VMware Tools in a Linux virtual machine using a Compiler