hey,

I hope someone can help me here because I am ready to go nuts and give up on linux for ever. Why does everything have to be so awkward??....

The problem I am having is with my dvd drive. For some reason it will play audio cds but dvds wont work. There's no error message, it just won't read from a dvd. When I put the dvd in the drive (a data disk, not a movie - I have never tried it with a movie) and do ls /mnt/cdrom I get nothing back.

In my /etc/fstab I have the following line...

/dev/cdrom /mnt/cdrom udf,iso9660 noauto,owner,kudzu,ro 0 0

and after reading other posts and google I created the following symbolic link....

/dev/dvd -> /dev/scd0

to match /dev/cdrom -> /dev/scd0

and in my /etc/sysconfig/hwconf file I have....

class: CDROM
bus: SCSI
detached: 0
device: scd0
driver: ignore
desc: "Lg DVD-ROM DRN8080B"
host: 0
id: 0
channel: 0
lun: 0
generic: 0

I don't know where else I should be looking or what else I should be trying, but hopefully one of ye might know?? This is driving me mad. All I want to do is to access the data on the dvd but can't. It's a cover disk from a linux magazine.

On thing that might have something to do with this is that when I was installing Linux on my laptop I had a CD-RW drive in, and I have since pulled this out and put in the DVD drive to use this DVD. Do I have to install this other drive too? But it plays audio cds when I put them in so it seems to be ok.

I hope someone can help me with this...

Thanks in advance,
Gearóid

why are you running it as a scsi device? i'm assuming it is actually IDE here of course... you say you insert a disc and then do "ls /mnt/cdrom".. you have not mentioned actually MOUNTING the device... you will never get anythign there until you do womethign ilke "mount /dev/dvd /mnt/cdrom"

you absolute legend Chris!!!! Thanks for that, seriously. I am such a dumbass I hadn't even mounted the dvd drive and worse still is that I didn't know I had to!!... Will I have to do this every time?

And another thing... should I not be running it as a scsi drive? To change this is it just as simple as changing the bus from scsi to ide in /etc/sysconfig/hwconf? Or will I just leave it as is? What difference would it make now that it works (speed maybe, I dunno)?

thanks again Chris

Running it using SCSI emulation makes ripping audio CD's about ten times faster and a lot more reliable than if you would run it in ATAPI/IDE mode. I suggest you keep on using it - if it works for you why mess with it?

And yes, you will have to mount the drive every time you insert a disc. You will also have to unmount it (using umount /mnt/cdrom - note that it's actually NOT called "unmount"!) to be able to eject the disc.

Some distributions ship with support for automounting CD-ROMs and DVDs when they are inserted but I'm no big fan of that.

Håkan

When you are having trouble with mounting, first check in /etc/mtab to see if the device is actually mounted.

You don't have to have an entry in /etc/fstab to be able to mount a device. All you absolutely have to have is the device and the mount point.

E.g

mount /dev/sda1 /mnt/part1

mount /dev/dvd /mnt/dvd

Obviously the device and the mount point does need to exist.

But if your distro detected the dvd properly (it should have), and once you create the mount point (which is nothing more than a directory where you wish to access the contents of the dvd), then the mount command should work.

Okay, so what program do you plan on using to actually watch the movie?


John