I have an ISO image on my VMware ESX 3.5 host that I would like to mount in a guest OS. I cannot figure out how to do this. I can easily mount an ISO image with the VMware Infrastructure Client's "Connect CD/DVD" button (that also allows you to mount the local workstation's CD drives), but that button only allows you to reference files from the point of view of the client workstation, which means I'd be accessing that image over the network, which I don't want to do, and I want it to be independent of VIC because it constantly crashes.
Update: I see now that if I edit the guest OS's settings where the CD drive itself is defined, I can mount a datastore-located ISO from there.
Isn't there some way I can log into the host OS and mount/present the image to a guest OS without having to interact with a GUI?
Update 2: I must be an idiot today. I've tried the vmware-cmd utility and I can't get it to work.
# vmware-cmd /vmfs/volumes/<blah>/<host>/<host>.vmx disconnectdevice ide0:0
Error executing the command "disconnectdevice"
Run /usr/bin/vmware-cmd -h to see usage information.
VMControl error -5: Not connected
I get the same thing if I try to connect the device.
Best Answer
I am not sure exactly why you say mounting the iso with the VIC client would be over the network, maybe I am misunderstanding how you mean you would be mounting it. But in any case, if you go into "Edit Settings" on the machine on the CD/DVD drive tab there is an option to use "Datastore ISO file". This will let you connect to the ISO on the EX server, and is independent of the VIC client window, meaning once you save the setting you can close the client and the ISO will still be accessible. I have several servers running boot CDs setup like this.