[CentOS] centos on vmware worstation not mounting cdrom

[Les Mikesell]

On 1/13/2010 4:45 PM, Ivan Arteaga wrote:
> Hello,
>
> I will appreciate any help on this... I have for testing purposes CentOS
> 4.7 running on VMWare workstation 6.5, I need to boot the centos virtual
> machine from the cdrom in order to test an upgrade to an upper centos
> version but I cant make the centos to mount the cdrom at the boot time,
> I got this message: /mount/: /block device/ //dev///hdc is
> write/-/protected/, /mounting read/-/only/ *... *after the boot i did
> check and the cdrom is not mounted.
> I tried checking where the cdrom is linked to:
>
> [root at server ~]# ll /dev/cdrom
> lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 3 Jan 13 00:42 /dev/cdrom -> hdc
> [root at server ~]#
>
> and tried mounting it manually and got the same message but i am able to
> access the cd content:
>
> [root at server ~]# mount /dev/cdrom /media/
> mount: block device /dev/cdrom is write-protected, mounting read-only
> [root at server ~]# ls -la /media
> total 487
> drwxr-xr-x 7 root root 6144 Mar 21 2009 .
> drwxr-xr-x 25 root root 4096 Jan 13 00:42 ..
> drwxr-xr-x 2 xp1 500 407552 Mar 21 2009 CentOS
> -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 112 Mar 21 2009 .discinfo
> -rw-r--r-- 7 root root 212 Jun 14 2008 EULA
> -rw-r--r-- 7 root root 18009 Jun 14 2008 GPL
> drwxr-xr-x 4 root root 2048 Mar 21 2009 images
> drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 2048 Mar 21 2009 isolinux
> drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 12288 Mar 16 2009 NOTES
>
> my fstab look like this:
>
> [root at server ~]# more /etc/fstab
> # This file is edited by fstab-sync - see 'man fstab-sync' for details
> /dev/VolGroup00/LogVol00 / ext3 defaults 1 1
> LABEL=/boot /boot ext3 defaults 1 2
> none /dev/pts devpts gid=5,mode=620 0 0
> none /dev/shm tmpfs defaults 0 0
> none /proc proc defaults 0 0
> none /sys sysfs defaults 0 0
> /dev/VolGroup00/LogVol01 swap swap defaults 0 0
> /dev/hdc /media/cdrom auto
> pamconsole,fscontext=system_u:object_r:removable_t,exec,noauto,managed 0 0
> /dev/fd0 /media/floppy auto
> pamconsole,fscontext=system_u:object_r:removable_t,exec,noauto,managed 0 0
> [root at server ~]#
> /
> / what shoud i define in order to make it work?? Any help will be
> appreciated :)
>

You are probably going to want to boot the iso for an upgrade, not mount 
it at boot time, and this means the vmware setup needs to automatically 
connect on boot, and the virtual bios needs to be set to boot the cd 
ahead of the hard drive when present.  Normally I find it easier to 
download an iso cd or dvd image to the server hosting vmware and connect 
the virtual machine to the image file instead of the physical drive, though.

-- 
   Les Mikesell
    lesmikesell at gmail.com