mobo: asus P4-LA (that is what it says, but I have never been able to find support for it anywhere)
cpu: celeron 2.6
ram: 1 gig pc 2200 (I think)
DVD/RAM drive: Maddog megastor (MD-18XTFI)
kernel: 2.6.15-27-386
HDD: 80 gig Maxtor

How do I get the drive to work? I've tried to mount it, but it gives me this:
mount: block device /dev/hdc is write-protected, mounting read-only

mount: wrong fs type, bad option, bad superblock on /dev/hdc,

missing codepage or other error

in some cases useful info is found in syslog - try

dmesg | tail or so


I'm a and therefore I have no clue what this means (other than it means it's not gonna work)

Help please?
Thanks
/me

A few suggestions come to mind:

1. You will see those error messages if the disc is blank, or damaged. Sure you don't have a blank / damaged disc in the drive?

2. I assume you have kernel level support for the DVD filing system? Are you using a custom compiled kernel?

3. Do you have Windows on that machine? Does it work with the DVD drive?

4. Does your kernel have VFAT support?

5. Have you tried mounting with

mount /dev/hdc /mnt/cdrom -t vfat?

I sometimes used to get your exact error message if I forgot to add the "-t vfat" option on my older 2.6.9-1.667 (FC3 stock kernel).

6. Are you sure your master / slave settings on your IDE setup for the drive are correct?

Sorry if you've tried all the above already, but sometimes its the really simple, fixable stuff that'll get you going, not some whizbang technical problem...

Well,
1. The disk is blank, and that is why I want to use it, to put stuff on it.
2. I don't know what a custom compiled kernel is, nor do I know wether I have kernel level support for the DVD filing system.
3. It is recognized in windoze, and I acctuallly have not tried writing to it in windows (silly me, shoulda thought of that)
4. VFAT?
5. "mount: mount point /mnt/cdrom0 does not exist" This is the error I get when I try that.
6. yes
The Disk shows up on the desktop, and I can open up a folder to see the contents (none) and then when I try to drag and drop, it says that I don't have permissions.

Ok, right. Take note though that attempting to mount a blank disk will cause a bad superblock to be reported - the disc is -BLANK-. You need to use some third party CD burning app like K3B to burn stuff to disc - a disc is "mounted" only to READ from it in the case of an optical disc - it must be unmounted to be written to, using a third party app.

Ok don't worry then. Most if not all kernels you get nowadays with a recent distro should have kernel-level support for DVD filing systems.

Ok then, try it, and see if it works?

This is the filing system I needed to specify in my older kernel setup on FC3 to get it to read DVD's.... its the old Win98 FAT32 filing system.

Ok, what you need to do then is to create a mountpoint. Become root (type su in a terminal and enter your root password) then type

mkdir /mnt/cdrom

now try

mount /dev/hdc /mnt/cdrom -t vfat

as root.

Note that this is sometimes distro dependant (i. e. it might be mount /dev/dvd /mnt/cdrom -t vfat or even mount /dev/cdrom /mnt/cdrom -t vfat)

Note that the "drag and drop" functionality to write files to an optical disc might be dependent on how your system is set up. On mine, using FC3 and KDE, this won't work - I need to use K3B which is a CD / DVD burning app to get files to write to a CD or DVD. Drag and drop functionality is something you'll need to configure yourself, and I think it'll be quite tricky to set up correctly.

In summation:

1. You cannot mount a blank disk. It has nothing on it, so there is nothing to mount.

2. You need a third party app to burn stuff to a disc. As far as I know XP like functionality of dragging and dropping to burn to a disc is something you'll need to configure yourself.

3. Be sure that the drive actually works (try it in windows) before trying to get it going in Linux.

Let us know how you get on...

Ok ive run into this same issue it either mounts my game dvd disk as a blank dvd or not at all it was the dvd disk i tried a different brand and wala works perfect.

Not sure what the issue is i use the disk in windows on the same pc so for some reason ubuntu is not reading that brand of dvd disk correctly maybe its a bug or just no support maybe it will be something fixed later.


"If your wondering why its a copied game i copy all my game disks and use the copy to play and keep the originals safe from scratches and other damages."