How to mount USB on ESXi 4.1

mountusbvmware-esxi

This is what I tried but it doesn't work :

Connect with SSH
# /etc/init.d/usbarbitrator stop
# fdisk -l |grep Disk

Disk /dev/disks/mpx.vmhba40:C0:T0:L0: 4022 MB, 4022337024 bytes
# ls /dev/disks/mpx.vmhba40:C0:T0:L0*

/dev/disks/mpx.vmhba40:C0:T0:L0
/dev/disks/mpx.vmhba40:C0:T0:L0:4
# mkdir /mnt/usb
# mount /dev/disks/mpx.vmhba40:C0:T0:L0 /mnt/usb

mount: mounting /dev/disks/mpx.vmhba40:C0:T0:L0 on /mnt/usb failed: No such file or directory
Also tried with /dev/disks/mpx.vmhba40:C0:T0:L0:4, with /mnt/usb/, always the same error message.
Then I checked # ls -l /vmfs/volumes, but it wasn't there either

The version of ESXi is 4.1…
USB Key is FAT32 as far as I know.

Any help or advice would be appreciated !

Best Answer

Looking at this VMware KB article it looks like it should be a FAT 16 formatted USB drive

The USB key or disk device media is formatted with a FAT16 partition and is of maximum size 2GB

Update: Looking at this blog post the drive would need to be FAT16, Which would make sense to me as VMware made ESXi as small footprint they can which would mean not including unneeded things in the kernel such as file system drivers.

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First of all I don't think you can on ESXi, unless you are in unsupported mode. I have done it on ESX a few times, but the recommended way to backup the files from esxi are over the network, using the vSphere client. If at all possible go that route, it's much easier.

With that said. Format the disk with ext3 (You only have read support for NTFS, and FAT32 is not good with large files). Plug in the drive.

tail /var/log/dmesg

Should tell you the name of the drive. Create a mount point and mount it, specifying the correct fs

mkdir /mnt/usb
mount /dev/<device_name> /mnt/usb -t ext3

You will probably have to use vmkstools to export the files.

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The kpartx command will do all the work for you of detecting where the partitions exist and setting up loop devices with the appropriate offsets.

# kpartx -l /dev/ganderData/example-sysdisk
ganderData-example--sysdisk-1 : 0 497952 /dev/ganderData/example-sysdisk 63
ganderData-example--sysdisk-2 : 0 62412525 /dev/ganderData/example-sysdisk 498015

# kpartx -a /dev/ganderData/example-sysdisk
# mount /dev/mapper/ganderData-example--sysdisk-2 /mnt/tmp

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