Mandrake disagreeing with DVD-ROM drive
 

I just got an old DVD-ROM drive. I confirmed that it works by booting into winxp first, it does.

When I boot into mandrake, it told me it will autoconfig it, then it does. I rebooted mandrake and while it's booting it gives something like "filesystem error with hdb, do you want to repair?" and then goes into the login prompt for fs repair, you know. (I didn't have a disc in the drive, btw.)

At the repair prompt, I deleted the entry for the dvd-rom from fstabs and rebooted and it booted ok.

So now how do I get my dvd-rom drive working in mandrake? In harddrake it lists the drive as a dvd-rom drive, just fine. I saved the entry it had autocreated in fstab for the dvd-rom:

/dev/hdb /mnt/cdrom ext2 user,suid,dev,exec 1 2

The drive is a Hitachi GD-7000.

TIA

sounds like mandrakes installer isnt detecting it right. try this, tell it not to install it, then go into lilo.conf and at the top of it, right after the preliminary comments, type

append = "hdb=ide-scsi"

hopefully that will properly detect your dvd-rom. if that fails, try

append = "hdb=scsi"

but the first one should work.

there isn't much to "detect" so to speak, except the linux kernel's ability to recogzine the drive

where is the dvd drive located? ie, primary master, primary slave, secondary master, etc?

take a look at dmesg output; see if the kernel is even recogzing the dvd drive's existence

It's primary slave (the hd is primary master).

Here is a line from dmesg:

hdb: HITACHI DVD-ROM GD-7000, ATAPI CD/DVD-ROM drive

i just looked at your fstab entry in your first post; you are telling the kernel that your dvd drive uses the ext2 file system, which i am sure it does not....

you should definitely set that ext2 to auto

also, if you have ide-scsi emulation enabled in your lilo.conf file, you may need to use the device /dev/scd0 or /dev/sr0 instead of /dev/hdb

if your dvd drive is the only cd drive on your system, you should also make some symlinks as follows
ln -s /dev/hdb (or scd0/sr0) /dev/cdrom
ln -s /dev/hdb (or scd0/sr0) /dev/dvd

then give the following permissions command:
chmod 777 /dev/hdb /dev/cdrom /dev/dvd

The fstab entry was written by Mandrake, not me.

Changing ext2 to auto caused two "Failed" messages to appear during boot, but it did follow through with booting. Is that really the right way to install a dvd-rom?

I am now able to mount cd-roms, but dvd-roms give this error:

mount /mnt/cdrom/
/dev/hdb: Invalid argument
mount: block device /dev/hdb is write-protected, mounting read-only
/dev/hdb: Invalid argument
mount: I could not determine the filesystem type, and none was specified

The dvd discs are formatted the same way as the cd-roms I was trying- the PC way (joliet?).

that is extremely strange; the "auto" fileysystem detection should be available as a legitimate option (worked with me even for slackware...; i use auto for my dvd entry in fstab)

anyway, if when you mount with your dvd drive you can view your files, you should be okay

perhaps it is just the way mandrake handles itself, but your fstab entry looks strange, especially at the end with the 1 2 (those tell the kernel to run checks on the system, which is probably why mandrake is inclined to say that your dvd drive has an ext2 filesystem)
if those error messages are bothering you, you may want to completely change that line to this:
/dev/dvd /mnt/cdrom (or /mnt/dvd) auto auto,user 0 0

*edit: before you completely change your fstab entry, try changing the 1 2 to just 0 0, and see if the errors go away; if not, then use my entry above

No, I'm not able to view files, it only works if it's a CD. Mounting a dvd gives the error I gave before.

I tried:

/dev/hdb /mnt/cdrom auto user,dev,suid,exec 0 0

which didn't help, and I tried:

/dev/hdb /mnt/cdrom auto user 0 0

Which is as close as I could come to yours (I don't have a /dev/dvd) and it didn't fix either.

this is all very strange....

**i don't know if you have posted this information here, but, do you currently have scsi emulation enabled?**

as for mounting dvd's, i have never tried mounting a dvd (since all of mine are movies) and so it is possible that you are not mounting a data dvd, but rather a movie (kind of like audio cd's; you don't mount them, just play them)

put in a dvd, don't try to mount it, and tell your movie player to play the dvd (you will probably have to set the option to tell it to look in /dev/hdb); if you have scsi-emulation, then you will have to do something different (specifically: tell your movie player to look in /dev/scd0 or /dev/sr0)

Thank you for staying with me,

The DVDs I'm trying to mount are data dvd's, in the same format as the cd's I was able to mount.

I do have SCSI on this machine, but the DVD drive is IDE. It's primary slave. I don't know if I have scsi "emulation". I have real live scsi. I just checked lilo.conf (although I use grub, not lilo), and "scsi" is not found in the entire file.

I'm not sure that I have a movie player to try, what would it be called in mandrake (in linux at all)? In any case I really just want to load data dvds.

i am not sure what fileystem dvd's use, but i would assume that iso9660 is what would be used; if mandrake is still complaining about the "auto" option, then this is the next bet (this time, it is a guess)

since you use grub, take a look into your grub.conf file and see if you see anything that says ide-scsi; if there is, get rid of it; then reboot and try those mount commands again:
mount /dev/hdb /mnt/cdrom or mount -t iso9660 /dev/hdb /mnt/cdrom

*before you make any changes to grub, go ahead and try these:
mount /dev/scd0 /mnt/cdrom
mount /dev/sr0 /mnt/cdrom

if those don't work, continue on as described above (before the *)

I don't have a /dev/scd0 or /dev/sr0. But here's what I did:

I did mount -t iso9660 /dev/hdb /mnt/cdrom

and it mounted my iso dvd disc just fine.

Then I went back to your instructions and looked for grub.conf. There is no grub.conf. I am definately running grub though, because it says so in the boot menu when I boot (and because I chose it when I installed mandrake 9.2).

[root@localhost rotwanf]# find / -name "grub*"
/etc/webmin/grub
/boot/grub
/usr/share/man/man8/grub-install.8.bz2
/usr/share/man/man8/grub-md5-crypt.8.bz2
/usr/share/man/man8/grub-terminfo.8.bz2
/usr/share/man/man8/grub.8.bz2
/usr/share/doc/grub-doc-0.93
/usr/share/info/grub.info-1.bz2
/usr/share/info/grub.info-2.bz2
/usr/share/info/grub.info-3.bz2
/usr/share/info/grub.info.bz2
/usr/share/loader/grub
/usr/share/vim/syntax/grub.vim
/usr/share/webmin/caldera/grub
/usr/share/webmin/grub
/usr/share/webmin/grub/images/grub.gif
/usr/share/webmin/grub/grub-lib.pl
/usr/sbin/grub-install
/usr/sbin/grub
/usr/sbin/grub-md5-crypt
/usr/sbin/grub-terminfo

So really the problem is how do I get "auto" to work like it should. Also, if this helps: http://tinyurl.com/3y9do