Surgient Success

I am running VQMS ver. 5.3.0.275 SP1. While attempting to add some components to an OS in a checked out VM, I attached an ISO image located in the library. I was able to access the files in the ISO without issue. However, upon completion I found no way to detach the ISO from the VM. I searched through the online documentation and found excellent documentation on attaching the ISO but no mention of how to detach it. Does anyone have any suggestions?

Hi,

If you're attempting to eject a CD to attach a second, or 3rd CD ISO, you can proceed to attaching the next ISO without ejecting the attached ISO.

Otherwise if you no longer want the ISO mounted you can click the Properties of the guest OS CD/DVD drive and select Eject as a virtual machine has no remotely accessible eject button.

Or in a Linux guest OS, the command is usually eject cdrom, eject /dev/cdrom or eject /mnt/cdrom

 Attaching an ISO is necessarily an external VM function but detaching is not.

 

One more follow-up: If you don't want to lose your media and only make the drive appear empty temporarily, in VMware Tools in the system tray under the Devices tab you can uncheck connected IDE devices like ide0:0, ide1:1. With this control you can access the ISO media again without re-attaching by reconnecting the media.

I had tried that but tried it several more times since I posted this without success.

Have you tried the VMware Tools systen tray option above?

I have tried that. While it does remove the ISO when the device is disconnected, the ISO immediatly returns when the device is reconnected. This is not quite the solution I am seeking.

In most cases, end users are not required to manage the ISOs that are attached to the deployed virtual machine in the Surgient environment.  After the virtual machine is torn down, the ISO will automatically be detached from the virtual machine.  It appears like you have a use case that requires ISOs to be attached to virtual machines and then detach after installing the necessary software, perhaps not wanting the end users to access the software.  BTW, in our 6.0 product, we have the ability to run post deployment actions against a virtual machine after it has been deployed.  Post deployment actions are basically any executable or scripts you write that is uploaded to a deployed virtual machine and executed.  You can utilize this in a manner of installing software, setting up personalizations in the virtual machine, etc...  

A known way of detaching an ISO is from the vcsadmin command line.  I know that you have use this in the past and is familiar with the usage.  Again, I would just caution any actions or commands you do in the vcsadmin interface.  The vcsadmin command that will help you is a command called: commandrun HOSTxyz attach-media.  You can see the syntax of this command by running: commandshow attach-media

I have provide a documentation explaining how to attach and detach an ISO using the vcsadmin. It's a bit tricky, but can be done.

Please let me know if this helps.

Thanks,

Viloun

Another option, which may or may not be exactly what we are looking for, is taking a snapshot.  When the snapshot is re-deployed, the image does not have the iso's attached and it appears as if it was never there.

 

I am also going to put in a feature request to have a button on the UI added to detach the ISO.