CD-ROM drive is dead: It works with other distros
 

Hi,

Just installed a Knoppix-like Debian, doing a full

apt-get dist-upgrade

to Debian Sid.

Amazingly smooth, only irritating problem is, the CD didn't work with the initial distro., and it doesn't work with a full Debian either.

I've tried changing /etc/fstab,

replacing

/dev/cdrom

with

/dev/hdc

and

/dev/hdd,

but none works (with a reboot and with a mount -a command without a reboot for both).

Anybody knows a fix?.

Cheers,

Arthur1968

:confused: :newbie:

P.S. My CDROM drive is OK: it works with other Linux distros. and Winblow$

What CD-ROM drive are you using?

# Managing drives
LNAG - Accessing my drives
Rute - Device Mounting

It is a Samsung DVD-CD/RW on a Samsung X10, and it's been OK with everything I've installed (Fedora 1, RH 9, Mandrake 9.2, Libranet 2.7, ...)

Why do you ask?

what /dev/hdX is it tied to?

dmesg | grep hd^

dmesg | grep CD-ROM

should tell you. Is that what you edited /etc/fstab with? Is it a SCSI drive? /dev/scdX, /dev/sg0?

Do you have an append line in lilo.conf like:

append="hdb=ide-scsi"

I will run dmesg to find out

I am not using LiLo, but Grub through my Fedora install.

Glad to see you again, llamakc, the ubiquitous helping hand ;) ;)

The output from dmesg | grep hd*

hdc: Samsung CD-RW/DVD-ROM SU-408B, ATAPI CD/DVD-ROM drive

In that case, using /dev/hdc ... in /etc/fstab should be OK, shouldn't it?

(The audio programme complaining is gnome-cd)

My grub line to boot Debian doesn't include references to the CD-ROM drive, should it?

Sorry, it does include it:

hdc=ide-scsi

Should it be any different?

Thanks

I think the problem is you are trying to mount an audio cd. Is that it? Because audio cd's do not have filesystems on them, therefore you can not mount them.

Debian doesn't set new users up in the audio group by default. You must add the user.

usermod -G audio username

Logout/In.

If you are putting a data cd in, then there is a different problem.

Can root play music cd's? Have you tried mounting another data cd to see if the cd-rom works at all? Stick in one of the Debian cd's and do

mount /cdrom

Provided your /etc/fstab looks like:
/dev/cdrom /cdrom iso9660 ro,user,noauto 0 0

or

/dev/hdc /cdrom iso9660 ro,user,noauto 0 0

Yo should be a-okay.

I usually create a symlink like:

ln -s /dev/hdc /dev/cdrom

the hdc=ide-scsi provides emulation for your burner to work. It's a-okay to have.

Root cannot play audio CDs either (Error in Drive)

Data CDs are not mounted automatically, and when accessing the folder for /cdrom and /mnt/cdrom, they both show nothing (non-root)

What does this sound like to you?

On Debian we don't use /mnt/cdrom, we use /cdrom. Do you have a separate filesystem/tree/disk for the Debian(Knoppix) install from other o/s's currently installed? Are you sharing partitions? Let's see your /etc/fstab WHILE in Debian (and if you dualboot RH or other Linux, when booted in that too), and the contents of GRUB's grub.conf (or menu.lst, whatever it is these days).

Those /cdrom and /mnt/cdrom folders WILL be empty if you have an audio cd in. Have you tried playing cd's from the command line?

cdplay

To be honest, this is a new one to me. But like all problems, its solvable.

I am not sharing partitions, but remember this very CD drive did work under other Debian-based distros:

Knoppix, Gnoppix, Libranet

The current Debian install is not necessarily the final one on my laptop: should this issue become too much of a nuisance, I can always do a dist-upgrade starting from one of the others.

Don't push yourself for an answer if this is too new for you...

Thanks all the same

:) :)

Did you like Gnoppix? I haven't tried it yet. I use Knoppix as my toolkit to save other systems. Now that ntfs.sys can be used for write-access to NTFS partitions, I'm excited about it even moreso.

To be honest, Gnoppix is the distro. I got least to use of them all.

One impression, though:
unless your German is bloody good, you might need a little dictionary by your side; I got the feeling they didn't cover all menus and submenus, so some things are still there in my rusty German (been studying German for so long I can't believe my command of this is crap).

Anyway, why not an HDD install of Knoppix and then maybe switching to Gnome?

;)

That could work. How long does the Knoppix hdinstall take? A Debian install is done in 20 minutes w/broadband. I don't use GNOME or KDE as DE's, but I do use alot of their programs (quanta+ from KDE, galeon from GNOME). My Windowmanager of choice is Openbox3 (http://www.icculus.org/openbox) which is in Debian Unstable. I only want a root menu, a bsetbg background and no icons.

But that's what rocks about Linux: the choices are wide and different with each new project.

That's what I call austere...


Knoppix took some 20-25 minutes on my laptop unit (Centrino 1.6, 512 MB 266 DDRAM, 4200 rpm HDD).

BTW, since you might do this, what happens exactly if a Debian-based distro with KDE is installed, and then an

# apt-get dist-upgrade

is executed?.

I understand only KDE would get upgraded, since Gnome wasn't there in the first place. Would it be then just a matter of running

# apt-get install gnome?

As simple as that?

Yes. However in order to properly dist-upgrade one must edit the /etc/apt/sources.list file.

WHERE a stable distro has:

deb http://ftp.us.debian.org/debian/ stable main non-free contrib

to dist-upgrade you change the instance of "stable" to "testing" (to move to Sarge) or "unstable" to move to Sid.

SO editing the /etc/apt/sources.list and doing apt-get update && apt-get dist-upgrade will move all installed packages up to their Sarge/Sid counterpart, and freshen the packages archive. THEN, doing apt-get install gnome would indeed install Gnome 2.4.

apt-get upgrade upgrades packages

apt-get dist-upgrade upgrades the distro flavor from stable to testing/unstable.

HTH