View source for Device not visible in Xen domainU guest when using xm block-attach command to add a disk or CD-ROM/DVD drive

Xen provides the flexibility to add block devices to a running domainU guest system using the ''xm block-attach'' command. This is especially useful for giving the domainU system access to disk partitions and CDROM/DVD drives which are physically attached to the host system.

A common problem encountered by Xen administrators is that a device attached to the domainU guest using ''xm attach'' on the host system fails to be appear in domainU guest.

The format for attaching block devices using ''xm block-attach'' is as follows:

<pre>
xm block-attach <domain id> <device on host> <device on domainU> <mode>
</pre>

There are a number of rules that must be following before a block device can be attached. Firstly, the device must be mounted and visible on the domain0 system. Secondly, the device must not already be attached in ''write'' mode to any other domainU systems. Finally, the domainU system must possess the appropriate drivers to read the filesystem located on the device (this is not usually an issue for Linux filesystems and CD/DVD drives).

Assuming the above criteria have been met and you are not seeing the attached block device in the domainU system it is possible that you are using the wrong device name for what is known as the ''front end'' device. the ''front end'' device is the device name by which the block device will be accessed on the domainU guest. In fact the only way that the device will be visible is if the device name begins ''xd''. If you have used a device names such as dev/sdb1, /dev/hda2 or /dev/sr0 then the device will not be visible in the domainU. 

For example the following will NOT work:

<pre>
xm block-attach 2 phy:/dev/sdc2 /dev/sdc2 w
</pre>

Instead an xvd device name must be used. For example:

<pre>
xm block-attach 2 phy:/dev/sdc2 /dev/xvda w
</pre>

Once the attachment has been initiated the device should now be visible in the /dev directory of the domainU guest and can be mounted at a suitiable mount point:

<pre>
mount -t ext3 /dev/xvda2 /mnt
</pre>