The linux /dev/sr0 issue should be fixed upstream: http://git.savannah.gnu.org/cgit/qemu.git/commit/?id=3baf720e6b920d583ce2834d05e5a4e9603a1d56
Maybe it's worth a backport to stable -- QEMU is not correctly detecting host CDs https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/588691 You received this bug notification because you are a member of qemu- devel-ml, which is subscribed to QEMU. Status in QEMU: In Progress Bug description: QEMU's block layer contains code for detecting and using ioctls when real CD-ROM host devices are attached. This detection is not working in some host OSes while bad implemented on anothers. E.g., in Linux host qemu -cdrom /dev/sr0 is not detecting it as a CD-ROM E.g., in Mac OS X host qemu asks the kernel to enumerate optical devices and the compares it to the constant string "/dev/cdrom". This is useless, that enumeration is just enough, and "/dev/cdrom" will NEVER exist in Mac OS X unless manually created by the user.