Solved: How to mount ISO in a linux VM

In this post we will discuss how to mount ISO in Linux VM running inside Virtualbox or VMware.
Virtualbox
You can mount ISO in Linux VM running on Virtualbox by following these steps

• Select the running machine window.
• Click on Devices > Optical Devices
• Choose disk image, browse and select ISO .

• Now go to the redhat linux server and execute the mount command

 mount /dev/cdrom /mnt

VMware

• If the linux VM is in VMware. You can select the iso image in vmware console similar to what we did for virtual box.
• Right click on the machine > “Removable Devices” > “CD/DVD” > Settings. Browse and select the ISO. Check mark on “Connected”.
• Finally execute the following command in Linux VM.

  mount /dev/sr0 /mnt

• If you do “df -h” new ISO should be mounted and visible to you as /mnt .

Tip: If you are getting error /mnt busy ensure that /mnt is not already mounted. If /mnt is already mounted either unmount /mnt first and try again or create a new directory and mount the ISO on the new directory.

Solved: How to come out of VMware console

If you want to come out of vmware console window simply press Alt + Ctrl or Ctrl + Alt any of the two sequence will work.
If you want the movement between your host machine and VMware console to be seamless, install VMware tools in the guest VM.  This will ensure that you don’t have to press Ctrl+ Alt  every time.
Check this site to download VMware tools.

Solved: Three options to convert ova to ovf files

Sometime you may have to open OVA files, which are actually just zip of OVF files.
You can extract or convert OVA to OVF file in three ways as mentioned below
Option 1
Tar Command
If you have access to Linux or Unix box you can use tar command to extract the file.

tar -xvf cloudvedas-OpenStackHOL.ova

Option 2
In Windows you can use a tool like like 7-Zip or winrar to extract the file.
Option 3
Vmware ovftool
Download Vmware OVF tool 
Once you have downloaded and installed the tool go to the command prompt and change the directory to where you have installed the ovf tool. You should see an exe called “ovftool.exe”.
Execute the command:-

ovftool.exe "E:\Software\Openstack\cloudvedas-OpenStackHOL.ova" "E:\Software\Openstack\cloudvedas-OpenStackHOL.ovf"

Check out our post on Most useful Tar command examples .