I currently have installed redhat linux 7.2. I installed from CD. Installation went fine and I use GRUB as my bootloader. I have two standard ATA(EIDE(IDE)) cdrom drives. One is a sony cdu701 and the other is a mitsumi CRMC-FX810T4. My only problem is that when I am running linux I am unable to use my cdroms. Whenever I try to access them I get an error saying that they are not a valid block device. Upon further investigation through dmesg i found that it found the cd-roms on hdc & hdd. It wasn't specfic, just limited model number. Also while using dmesg I noticed that it was ignoring the cdroms need for drivers. I looked on the net and decided to pass the kernel some hdc=cdrom & hdd=cdrom. This did not work. I am lost. ay help would be greatly appreciated. Thank you in advance.

--Mike Deliberto

are you sure they are mounted properly?

'valid block device' is a generic message, it could apply to various errors - it may help if you paste the exact steps you've taken, key config files, etc...

(don't know the level of your linux knowledge, hence starting at the basics)

what do you mean when you say "Whenever I try to access them" ?

-KevinJ

as root depmod -ae

First I want to thank you guys for responding, for I need all the help I can get.

In reply to Genesee's post:
I am fairly new with linux. I can do most basic things but I do not feel I have the skills to troubleshoot\fix hardware problems. Hopefully that gives you an idea of where I stand. The I mounted it like this:

mount -r -t iso9660 /dev/cdrom /mnt/cdrom

that is when I recieve the not a valid block device error.


In reply to KevinJ:
What I meant when I said when I try to acesses them was when I try to mount them. Sorry for the confusion, it was two thirty in the morning.


In reply to rshaw:

Thank you!!! Thank you!!! It worked thank you.\
Thanks again.

--Mike Deliberto

what does your /etc/fstab look like?

-kevinj

i have recently installed Slack 9.0 ... needles to say its the best distro out there, one of the few problems i have with it , is that it did not install my cd-rw drive during the install. ..
this is my etc/fstab ...
*********************
/dev/hda2 / ext3 defaults 1 1
/dev/cdrom /mnt/cdrom iso9660 noauto,owner,ro 0 0
/dev/fd0 /mnt/floppy auto noauto,owner 0 0
devpts /dev/pts devpts gid=5,mode=620 0 0
proc /proc proc defaults 0 0
**********************
it picks up my dvd -rom which is /dev/cdrom ...
i ahave never had to 'install' the cd-rw before as if anything ever happened like this be4 it was just named wrong in the install .. but was able to look in fstab to find what the real name is ... i dont know how to add this one seing as it is properly plugged in and powered up ...
Thanx in advance if'n anyone can help ......

/dev/cdrom should be a symlink to something like /dev/hdc or whatever your drive is setup for.

/dev/hda = primary master
/dev/hdb = primary slave
/dev/hdc = secondary master
/dev/hdd = secondary slave

do "ls -l /dev/cdrom" to see where it points. you can make a symbolic link to the other drive or use it as its named. Add an fstab entry for the cd-rw drive.

If you want to use it as a burner, you must use append="hdd=ide-scsi"
or something similar in your boot loader entry.

This requires that your kernel already have scsi emulation in it, which the Red Hat ones do, but I don't know if the Slackware one does. If it doesn't, you will have to recompile to include that feature.


-KevinJ

/dev/cdrom /mnt/cdrom iso9660 noauto,owner,ro 0 0
/dev/cdrw /mnt/cdrw iso9660 noauto,owner 0 0

the cdrom is the origional dvd drive ... i added the cdrw line ... also added the hdc=ide-scsi in /etc/lilo.conf ... when i reboot i see it say something about . .opterwriter which is the cdrw but when i get in the terminal and do a mount i get
*********************
:~# mount /mnt/cdrw
mount: special device /dev/cdrw does not exist
*********************

am i missing doing a symlink or some such ... im pretty new so not everything makes alot of sence yet ... do i need to symlink something ... do i need to keep repeating myself ...:| ... anything else you might suggest would be appreciated ...thanx ...

got it working thanx ...