[xenpreview-dev] SLES 10 RC2- How to mount cdrom in Xen guest vm

[Jason Douglas]

Mounting a cdrom to a paravirtualized guest involves manually attaching
the cdrom drive as a generic block device.  The general steps are as
follows:

1.  Determine the path to the CD-ROM in domain0 (e.g. /dev/hdc)
2.  Determine the desired mapping within the VM (i.e. if you have only
a single virtual hard drive in the VM, you can choose hdb)
3.  Insert the CD in the drive
4.  Use the appropriate xm command to mount the cd: xm block-attach
vm_id phy:/dev/hdc hdb r 
Note: The vm_ID can be either the name or the number of the running VM,
and the "r" means to mount the device read-only

I hope that helps.  One other thing to consider ... In RC2 a bug
existed that caused the entire machine to hang if the CD was ejected
while it was attached to a VM.  Before ejecting the cd-rom, you will
want to shutdown the VM, or use the "xm block-detach" command to detach
the connection between the cdrom and the vm.  Good luck!

Jason

>>> On Sun, Jun 11, 2006 at  8:59 AM, in message
<001301c68d67$abf9f1b0$6401a8c0 at smarshall1>, <slm at tekmerge.com> wrote:

> I am running a Xen guest vm and at times I need to install new
packages from 
> the CD.  Sometimes it works, but most of the time it does not due to
not 
> being able to mount the cdrom.  I usually have to reboot the entire
machine 
> (Host and guests) in order for the vm to see the cdrom.  I am usually

> accessing the vm via vnc in case that matters.  This is a
Paravirtualization 
> vm.  I thought I read something about using CTRL + ALT + i keys, but
that 
> doesn't work.  Any ideas?
> 
> Regards,
> Steven