I have run the cdrecord -scanbus this returns to me a line with some information on the Samsung DVD CD Reader drive but not on the Writer.

Why could this be??

What is my next step to discovering the hardware in the system and then mounting it to allow use for reading and burning.

by the way this is not a scsi drive it is attached to my other cd rom drive in line I think.

Thanks in advance,

Rob H

Post your /etc/fstab file. Is the second drive otherwise usable?

All cd burning programs in linux are just front ends for cdrecord. For cdrecord to work, the reader and the writer drives must be run under scsi emulation. The fstab file will tell you if that's been done. You can provide for scsi emulation for your optical drives by editing your boot loader config file. I know how to do that in lilo but not grub, but the edit to the config file is similar.

If your using lilo, also post your /etc/lilo.conf file. Basically, you have to edit the append line for lilo.conf to add "hdx=ide-scsi" where x corresponds to each of your optical drives. Then you have to edit your fstab file because scsi emulation will change the drives device file from /dev/hdx to /dev/scdx.