I am running Redhat 7.3 (Vahalla), recently upgrading from 2.4.18-3smp to 2.4.18-5smp using the RPM's. I initially messed up the CD-RW drive by using the Redhat Up2Date wizard to update my kernel to 2.4.18-5smp. After restoring the system back to 2.4.18-3smp, I was told to "correctly" update my kernel using these commands:

rpm -Uvh kernel-smp-2.4.18-5.rpm
rpm -Uvh kernel-2.4.18-5.rpm

The CD-ROM then worked. A week later, today, as I was attempting to mount my CD-RW drive to back up some research, I get a message to the effect that the CD-RW and floppy driver is not installed. The floppy drive does mount floppies correctly though. After typing "mount /mnt/cdrom" a few more times, the error message about the driver not being installed is gone. Instead, I get this:
mount: /dev/cdrom is not a valid block device
and only as root. I try it as a regular user and Linux notifies me that only root can mount the cdrom. The cdrom device does appear in /etc/fstab and as a directory in /mnt/cdrom. Also, I have a link in /dev: /dev/cdrom -> /dev/hda. Here is the info on the directories and file.

/mnt
4 drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 4096 Jul 10 15:22 cdrom

/dev
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 8 Jul 10 15:22 /dev/cdrom -> /dev/hda

I checked the obvious: There is a CD-ROM in the drive and it does mount correctly before this screw-up. /dev/hda is the CD-RW drive, as the command dmesg confirms. I also tried this:
mount /dev/cdrom /mnt/cdrom -t iso9660
but I get this error message:
mount: /dev/cdrom is not a valid block device


What could be wrong? Why would the CD-RW drive stop working after a week? I look forward to your advice. Thank you.

XASCompuGuy

Try depmod -a it might correct it.

neo77777

That did not do the trick. I also tried depmod -ae (the Redhat 7.2 module dependency fix).

I should also mention that this is a dual Athlon CPU system. I used the RPMs in the athlon directory. Do I also need to use the RPMs in the i686 directory? Additionaly, shortly after posting my above message, I attempted to mount the floppy disk drive, but it gave the same error as the CD-ROM drive about it being an invalid block device.

I did some research yesterday on Redhat's website for updating a kernel. It said that you should also update any kernel*.rpm files that are newer than those in your system, such as the kernel headers, kernel drivers, etc. These instructions are for RH 5 and lower and thus outdated. I see no such files in updates.redhat.com for 7.3, so I assume that I do not need them and that Redhat as since consolidated everything into one neat RPM package. I guess the question is "Did I update my kernel correctly"?

I've learned not long ago - upgrading kernel by RPM is not a good option, try to get the latest stable release from http://www.kernel.org and compile it yourself, you said it is a dual CPU system, so make sure you enable smp in kernel - so you'd actually squeeze multi-processing power from your system, if you need an assistance compiling new kernel I suggest going to famous http://www.tldp.org to read kernel howto. If you've never compiled your own kernel before it would take awhile for you - it might not work after first attempt, so be patient and read documentation provided with the kernel.
Good luck.

And one more thing I see that your cd-rom is /dev/hda meaning it is a primary master IDE device, is it so?

Yes, /dev/hda is the cd-rom drive. The hard drives (two) are SCSI.
Finally, thanks for the links. I will read up on it.

Yeah, that's what I thought you have a scsi drives and EIDE cdrom, oh well when you compile your kernel make sure to enable scsi and ide support,
have fun