I recently had a few CentOS machines that were migrated from XenServer to VMWare.
There was a curious problem where the /dev/cdrom would not exist to be mounted when the VMWare tools image was mounted to the VM.
When attempting to mount the CDROM’s usual location, I would get the error “mount: you must specify the filesystem type”
# mount /dev/cdrom /mnt/cdrom mount: you must specify the filesystem type
A quick look at all block devices gave me a hint as to where that CDROM was being mounted.
# lsblk NAME MAJ:MIN RM SIZE RO TYPE MOUNTPOINT sr0 11:0 1 64.3M 0 rom sda 8:0 0 8G 0 disk ├─sda1 8:1 0 500M 0 part /boot └─sda2 8:2 0 7.5G 0 part ├─vg_xxxx-lv_root (dm-0) 253:0 0 5.6G 0 lvm / └─vg_xxxx-lv_swap (dm-1) 253:1 0 2G 0 lvm [SWAP]
Seeing the block devices direct helped me find where the VMWare tools image was located! Notice the ROM type.
It looks like ‘Sr0’ is my mounted image.
From here you can proceed as normal for VMWare tools installation using /dev/sr0 rather than /dev/cdrom