[Solved] no optical drive seen at install

[gosseyn]

Debian testing on an amd 64 box guest : windows XP 32 bits.
After uncessfully trying to update from virtualBox 2.2 to 3.0.2 (unable to find the .dvi file, corrupted ini files) I decided to try a clean install from scratch.
But virtualbox 3.0.2 doesn't see my optical drive (wich is /dev/hda linked to /dev/cdrom and work perfectly under linux) so I can't install win XP from the CD...
Any suggestion ?

[gosseyn]

Bad news !!! I tried to re-install virtualbox-2.2 and got the same error (wich I didn't have oviously when I did my original install) ! So I can't install anymore.
I upgraded recently from "old testing" to the new one and I did it also on my laptop.
On this one I had some problems at boot time because of changes in hal and udev regarding the names of the devices wich used to be /dev/hd* and became sudenly /dev/sd* but not on the box I use virtualbox on.
Any suggestion ?
Thanks in advance

[Sasquatch]

Your optical drive should be /dev/scd0. If it isn't, then there is something else wrong with your system that we can't solve here, as it's outside the scope of this forum. However, if you need to install things from the optical drive, and it works fine on the Host, then create an ISO from it (e.g. with dd if=/dev/cdrom of=/home/user/installdisc.iso) and use that ISO.

[gosseyn]

It has never been /dev/scd0 and it worked just fine before...Anyway...thanks for the idea of the iso...But....I think that the host will not see my drive too (won't it??) and win XP will be pretty useless without any application...!

[Sasquatch]

Solving your Host cdrom problem is not in the scope of this forum, sorry. You have to look somewhere else for this solution. I'm pretty sure someone else had it before and noted the solution somewhere. Try the Debian forums first.

[gosseyn]

I'm sorry to insist but I do need virtualbox to work. I looked out the web and newsgroups (including debians) for about two days now without finding anything. I posted questions without receiving answer. Apparently No one had this problem.
So this will be my last attempt here but...Is there a way to try to pass the optical drive to virtualbox as a parameter at the command line during the install process ? Or a possible workaround ?
Thanks in advance.

[Sasquatch]

On my Ubuntu system, the cdrom device /dev/scd0 is a symlink to /dev/sr0. Check if that last device exists and if it does, symlink it like on my system. Really, the physical drive problem has nothing to do with VB. Not at this point anyway.

[gosseyn]

Sorry for all the noise...I just solved my problem simply by compiling a brand new kernel (2.6.30 the old one was a 2.6.22) : my DVD/CD writer is seen and I'm installing VB 3.0.2 right now.
Thanks again.

[Sasquatch]

Glad it's solved. Now that you mention that kernel, I do remember seeing something like that on Ubuntu Gutsy I believe with the same kind of problem, where the cdrom drive was suddenly /dev/hda, instead of /dev/scd. Hard drives and the like were /dev/sda etc. The Ubuntu kernel devs made a patch in the kernel to fix that, but it never got in the mainline one I believe. Or a later release (2.6.22.1 or so) got it.

Anyway, it's solved, so I'm locking this one, to keep it clean.