Prerequisites

  • XCP/Xenserver

Adding a CD to a running VM is not a difficult task if you know which commands to use. By adding I mean we're going to insert a virtual CD disk into a virtual machine using our little virtual hands. ;-)

 

1. Get the name of your Virtual Machine

In this case the name is CentOS6 and the UUID is cefb9f88-0424-6701-5ba1-070490c69203.

[ root@cloud2 ~/bin ] xe vm-list
     uuid ( RO)           : cefb9f88-0424-6701-5ba1-070490c69203
          name-label ( RW): CentOS6
         power-state ( RO): running

 

2. Get the name of the CD disk

In this case our disk is named CentOS-6.3-x86_64-LiveCD.iso.

[ root@cloud2 ~/bin ] xe cd-list
    uuid ( RO)          : 0549c68a-e38d-4cd8-9974-ba0b9167ff5a
        name-label ( RW): CentOS-6.3-x86_64-LiveCD.iso

 

3. Identify a free Virtual Block Device number

Use the VM UUID that we retrieved in step 1.

[ root@cloud2 ~/bin ] xe vm-param-get uuid=cefb9f88-0424-6701-5ba1-070490c69203 \
param-name=allowed-VBD-devices 5; 6; 7; 8; 9; 10; 11; 12; 13; 14; 15

 

4. Add the CD to the VM. Use the VM UUID from step 1, the CD name from step 2 and the VBD device number from step 3.

[ root@cloud2 ~/bin ] xe vm-cd-add uuid=cefb9f88-0424-6701-5ba1-070490c69203 \
device=5 cd-name=CentOS-6.3-x86_64-LiveCD.iso

 

5. Verify using xe vm-cd-list

 By using xe vm-cd-list we can list the CD's currently plugged into our VM.

 

[ root@cloud2 ~/bin ] xe vm-cd-list uuid=cefb9f88-0424-6701-5ba1-070490c69203 
CD 0 VBD:
uuid ( RO)             : 40f6b5c9-14fd-4379-d82c-d0ff34472a04
    vm-name-label ( RO): 955300270
            empty ( RO): false
       userdevice ( RW): 5


CD 0 VDI:
uuid ( RO)             : 0549c68a-e38d-4cd8-9974-ba0b9167ff5a
       name-label ( RW): CentOS-6.3-x86_64-LiveCD.iso
    sr-name-label ( RO): NFS ISO
     virtual-size ( RO): 725614592

 

6. Unplugging the CD disk

When done with the CD you can unplug it even easier. We specify the VM UUID and tell it to eject the CD which it does. 

 

 [ root@cloud2 ~/bin ] xe vm-cd-eject uuid=cefb9f88-0424-6701-5ba1-070490c69203