Force media to be mounted to /dev/sr1 instead of /dev/sr0

Question

I would like to be able to have the first device that I mount to a linux host be /dev/sr1 instead of /dev/sr0.

I am trying to script installing IBM’s SVC. There installer is hardcoded to expect the boot the cd and search /dev/sr1 for files. Another limitation is that their RDCLI which allows virtual media mounting can only mount a single ISO.

So when I mount the ISO .\rdmount.exe -s IMM IP address -d path/to/svc-install.iso -l Username -p Password

I successfully mount the ISO to sr0 and can’t run the installer.

If rdmount allowed me to mount multiple ISO’s I could just mount the install.iso twice.

I haven’t been able to find a method to change sr0 to sr1 once it is mounted or to have it mount directly to sr0. Symlinks and udev haven't helped because those only help once the OS is loaded.

If I make folder /dev/sr0 and mount something to it. Then try to run the rdmount command it appears to not mount.

newinstall:/dev/disk/by-id # ls scsi-3600605b0045637c019eaca5719c9d3a9 scsi-3600605b0045637c019eaca5719c9d3a9-part1 scsi-3600605b0045637c019eaca5719c9d3a9-part10 scsi-3600605b0045637c019eaca5719c9d3a9-part11 scsi-3600605b0045637c019eaca5719c9d3a9-part12 scsi-3600605b0045637c019eaca5719c9d3a9-part13 scsi-3600605b0045637c019eaca5719c9d3a9-part2 scsi-3600605b0045637c019eaca5719c9d3a9-part4 scsi-3600605b0045637c019eaca5719c9d3a9-part5 scsi-3600605b0045637c019eaca5719c9d3a9-part6 scsi-3600605b0045637c019eaca5719c9d3a9-part7 scsi-3600605b0045637c019eaca5719c9d3a9-part8 scsi-3600605b0045637c019eaca5719c9d3a9-part9

When I unmount this ISO and run the rdmount command it looks to have mounted but sr0 remains a directory unless I delete it first.

newinstall:/dev/disk/by-id # ls -ltar |grep sr lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 9 Aug 28 18:05 usb-IBM_IBM_Composite_Device-0_20070221-15 -> ../../sr0 newinstall:/dev/disk/by-id # file /dev/sr0 /dev/sr0: directory newinstall:/dev/disk/by-id # ls -ltar /dev/sr0 total 0 drw-rw---- 2 root disk 40 Aug 28 17:58 . drwxrwxrwt 13 root root 4100 Aug 28 18:05 ..

Does anyone have an explanation for this last mount pointing to an empty folder? Are the symlinks created even if the mount catastrophically fails?

Answer 1

I would still be interested if anyone can elaborate on what happened, but if you have the same problem I would suggest you create a usb.img and mount that. Otherwise you have to catch the SVC installer before kernel and change sr0 to sr1. There is a 10 second window on changing that setting.

They wrote this installer when all their machines had CD drives so they assumed sr0 would always be occupied and any mounted iso would be on sr1. A reminder to all of us to abstract your software from your hardware, because we can't predict how things will change.