This issue may occur due to one of these reasons:
- When booting the ESX host in troubleshooting mode, the CD-ROM device entry ( /dev/cdrom) is not created automatically on the ESX host Service Console. This is an expected behavior as minimal services are loaded for troubleshooting purposes.
- If the host is running normally, the device entry for the CD-ROM ( /dev/cdrom) may be pointing to the wrong device.
Accessing the host CD-ROM when the host in troubleshooting mode
Notes:
- /dev/hdc is a device located on the IDE controller.
- /dev/sr0 is a device located on the SCSI controller
- /dev/cdrom is a symlink to either /dev/hdc or /dev/sr0. ESX hosts run a script that automatically sets up /dev/cdrom to be the correct device, thus using /dev/cdrom is appropriate.
To access the local host CD-ROM device when the host is in troubleshooting mode (also known as single user mode or runlevel 1):
- Ensure that a CD-ROM has been inserted in the CD-ROM drive.
- Run these commands to create the block device entry for the CDROM in /dev before attempting to mount the CD-ROM:
# cd /dev
# mknod -m660 sr0 b 11 0
- Run these commands to create a temporary mount point for the CD-ROM and mount the CD-ROM on the host:
# mkdir /mnt/cd
# mount /dev/sr0 /mnt/cd
# cd /mnt/cd
You should now be in the CD-ROM directory and should be able to access the media in it.
Accessing the host CD-ROM when the ESX host has booted normally
When the host has booted normally, it creates a device entry for the CD-ROM at /dev/cdrom. This should automatically mount the CD-ROM on the host when a disc is inserted into the drive.
In some cases, the /dev/cdrom entry may point to the incorrect device entry or have multiple device entries.
To manually mount the CD-ROM on the ESX host Service Console:
- Log in to the local Tech Support Mode console of the ESX host. For more information, see Unable to connect to an ESX host using Secure Shell (SSH) (1003807).
- Verify if the /dev/cdrom entry is pointing to a single entry or multiple entries.
To check where the /dev/cdrom entry points to, run this command as root on the ESX console:
# ls -l /dev/cdrom
The output appears similar to:
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 4 Mar 15 12:03 /dev/cdrom -> /dev/scd0
- Run this command to see the device entry that was assigned to the CD-ROM drive when the host booted:
# dmesg |grep -i cdrom
The output appears to be similar to:
sr0: IDE CDROM Drive, ATAPI CD/DVD-ROM drive
sr0: attached ide-cdrom driver.
This output indicates that the correct device entry for the CD-ROM device is /dev/sr0.
- Run these commands to create a temporary mount point and mount the CD-ROM on the host:
# mkdir /mnt/cd
# mount /dev/sr0 /mnt/cd
# cd /mnt/cd
You should now be in the CD-ROM directory and should be able to access the media in it.
- After using the CD-ROM, you can unmount using these commands:
# cd /
# umount /mnt/cd
Additional Information
For translated versions of this article, see: