Mac OSX with vmware: why didn't my windows cdrom/dvd mount properly?

posted May 29, 2011, 1:29 AM by Steve Craig [ updated May 29, 2011, 1:53 AM ]

For all those ambidextrous OS users out there, here's a helpful tip. I run Mac OSX as my base OS along with a Windows 2003 virtual machine inside of vmware Fusion. This works like a champ, and has become my go-to setup.

The entire setup is so stable (knock on wood) that I have only experienced less then 5 complete and total system crashes requiring a hard-reboot of OSX in the 3 years that I've been running the laptop. As a result, I leave the Windows 2003 VM running all the time, and when the captain has turned off the fasten seat-belts sign, I simply close my Mac to put the entire thing into standby when I move about the cabin.

Here's the minor issue with that. Every once in a while, a friend will give me a cdrom or dvd with some data on it, and I'll pop the disc into the drive and wait for the Mac to mount it so that I can view the pictures or other files in the Finder.

No amout of coaxing will mount the cdrom or dvd as the disc does not even show up as a device. Here is the terminal output from a diskfree command with nothing other than my single mac hard-drive and my ipod mounted (as you can see, my HD is nearly full and so is my iPod):

ouch:~ $ df -kh

Filesystem Size Used Avail Capacity Mounted on

/dev/disk0s2 149Gi 147Gi 2.0Gi 99% /

devfs 118Ki 118Ki 0Bi 100% /dev

fdesc 1.0Ki 1.0Ki 0Bi 100% /dev

map -hosts 0Bi 0Bi 0Bi 100% /net

map auto_home 0Bi 0Bi 0Bi 100% /home

/dev/disk1s2 15Gi 15Gi 444Mi 98% /Volumes/iPod

Bear in mind, the cdrom or dvd that I am trying to view IS valid, and IS inside the Mac's optical drive. Now, when I go for a listing of available disk devices, this is what comes back:

ouch:~ $ ls -tlra /dev/disk*

brw-r----- 1 root operator 14, 2 May 12 00:16 /dev/disk0s2

brw-r----- 1 root operator 14, 1 May 12 00:16 /dev/disk0s1

brw-r----- 1 root operator 14, 0 May 12 00:16 /dev/disk0

brw-r----- 1 steve operator 14, 5 May 29 04:24 /dev/disk1s2

br--r----- 1 steve operator 14, 4 May 29 04:24 /dev/disk1s1

brw-r----- 1 steve operator 14, 3 May 29 04:24 /dev/disk1

As you can see, I only have the primary HD (disk0 etc) and the iPod (disk1) available. WTF, Mac?

More like - WTF, vmware Fusion! Fusion was too smart here and is the source of my problems. Whenever I mount some USB device, vmware Fusion asks which machine to mount it to. Nifty! But, that didn't happen with this DVD - because it was created with a windows filesystem! Fusion saw the drive, saw it was Windows rather than Mac, and automatically (and silently) intercepted it and mounted it right up to my Windows 2003 virtual machine.

Once I shutdown the Windows 2003 virtual machine and check my disk devices again via "df -kh" and "ls -latr" inside Terminal, voila! There is "My Disk," ready and waiting (note the previously mounted HD and iPod, along with the new 3GB DVD):

ouch:~ $ df -kh

Filesystem Size Used Avail Capacity Mounted on

/dev/disk0s2 149Gi 146Gi 2.4Gi 99% /

devfs 119Ki 119Ki 0Bi 100% /dev

fdesc 1.0Ki 1.0Ki 0Bi 100% /dev

map -hosts 0Bi 0Bi 0Bi 100% /net

map auto_home 0Bi 0Bi 0Bi 100% /home

/dev/disk1s2 15Gi 15Gi 454Mi 98% /Volumes/iPod

/dev/disk2 3.3Gi 3.3Gi 0Bi 100% /Volumes/My Disk