First of, I want to apologize for cross posting. I am a newbie, and this is really frustrating!
I have one DVD-R/CD-RW combo drive and on CD-Rom.
I am having trouble mounting any of them!

This is what my fstab file looks like:

/dev/hda6 swap swap defaults 0 0
/dev/hda1 / ext2 defaults 1 1
/dev/hda5 /home ext2 defaults 1 2
/dev/cd-rw /mnt/cd-rw iso9660 noauto,user,rw 0 0
/dev/fd0 /mnt/floppy auto noauto,user 0 0
devpts /dev/pts devpts gid=5,mode=620 0 0
proc /proc proc defaults 0 0


$ dmesg | grep sd
Attached scsi removable disk sda at scsi1, channel 0, id 0, lun 0
sda: Unit Not Ready, sense:
sda : READ CAPACITY failed.
sda : status = 1, message = 00, host = 0, driver = 08
Current sd00:00: sns = 70 2
sda : block size assumed to be 512 bytes, disk size 1GB.
sda: I/O error: dev 08:00, sector 0


$ dmesg | grep hd
ide0: BM-DMA at 0x4000-0x4007, BIOS settings: hdaMA, hdbio
ide1: BM-DMA at 0x4008-0x400f, BIOS settings: hdcMA, hddMA
hda: WDC WD1200BB-22DWA0, ATA DISK drive
hdc: SONY DVD RW DW-U14A, ATAPI CD/DVD-ROM drive
hdd: ATAPI CD-ROM 52XMax, ATAPI CD/DVD-ROM drive
hda: attached ide-disk driver.
hda: host protected area => 1
hda: 234441648 sectors (120034 MB) w/2048KiB Cache, CHS=14593/255/63, UDMA(100)
hdc: attached ide-cdrom driver.
hdc: ATAPI 32X DVD-ROM DVD-R CD-R/RW drive, 8192kB Cache, UDMA(33)
hdd: attached ide-cdrom driver.
hdd: ATAPI 52X CD-ROM drive, 128kB Cache, UDMA(33)
hda: hda1 hda2 < hda5 hda6 >


Any help would be wonderful.

dmesg tells us the writer drive is /dev/hdc and the reader is /dev/hdd. So, as root do:

mkdir /mnt/hdd # Don't need this if you already have a mount point for it.
mount /dev/hdd /mnt/hdd

this shall mount the reader.

The writer will mount with:

mkdir /mnt/hdc #likewise
mount /dev/hdc /mnt/hdc

of course, you can change the mount points the way you want.
If all this work, you can edit the fstab. But try in the console first.
What distro is it, btw?

That seems strange, I don't use a combo drive but have separate CD and CDRW drives and yes one is /dev/hdc and the other is /dev/hdd but does linux separate a single drive like that... Just curious that it would be assigned /dev/hdc only for the single drive and why would it see a different medium as /dev/hdd...

Like I said I don't use combo drives so maybe that is how it works but just seems odd.

KC

Linux doesn't separate drives. Monks has two, one of them is a combo:

hdc: ATAPI 32X DVD-ROM DVD-R CD-R/RW drive, 8192kB Cache,

This is the combo, being correctly recognized as dvd capable and also as a writer.

hdd: ATAPI 52X CD-ROM drive, 128kB Cache, UDMA(33)

This is the cdrom only.

It is the writing program's duty to acknowledge the writer's capabilities. Regarding kernel's settings, everything seems ok to me.

Thank you so much for your help. by following your directions, the drive was able to read both CD and DVD media.

Do I have to mount the drives manually every time I want to use them, or is there some way to make it have automatically?

My apologies,

I misread the original post... I thought you were refering to a single drive...so scratch my previous response...

KC

kencaz, nevermind. These drives are really misleading.

Monks: Of course, there is! You can edit your fstab, now that you have things figured out. You can do:

First comment out the old line, which won't work, like this:

/dev/hda6 swap swap defaults 0 0
/dev/hda1 / ext2 defaults 1 1
/dev/hda5 /home ext2 defaults 1 2
#/dev/cd-rw /mnt/cd-rw iso9660 noauto,user,rw 0 0
/dev/fd0 /mnt/floppy auto noauto,user 0 0
devpts /dev/pts devpts gid=5,mode=620 0 0
proc /proc proc defaults 0 0

Now, insert the new ones:

/dev/hdc /mnt/hdc auto noauto,user,rw 0 0

If 'auto' doesn't work here, try iso9660.

/dev/hdd /mnt/hdd iso9660 noauto,user,ro 0 0

notice the 'ro' param, its read-only. The drive is a reader.


You can put it anywhere in the file, it will work. Its a pity I don't have my 'regular' computer around, so I can see my fstab and post the exact line. These mounting options (between the mount dir and the zeros) still mislead me, a little. But it shall be harmless. If you reboot and it doesn't mount right, just edit the file, and try again. Tunning gnu/linux is very much a process of trial and error. Good for learning.

You guys have been absolutely wonderful.
My drives are working wonderfully.

can you burn cd's?

I do not know yet.
I don't even know what program to use to try to burn cds!
That's a problem I haven't gotten to yet, though if you have some suggestions, I would very much appreciate them.

Well, there's k3b, very popular. There are several others. All gui programs use traditional command line tools like cdrecord and cdrdao. You have to install these two, and then you can install any gui you need.
What distro and desktop manager is it?

I am using Slackware 10.1 and KDE 3.3
I will try the programs you mentioned tonight, when I get home and report back.