Installing Software ...
 

Question:
Every time i've tried to install software packages straight off of my mandrake 9.1 CD - my comp ends up freezing. (all software i've tried has done this - and whenever i try to access the drive w/any type of cd it freezes as well) When I boot up, it detects the drive and mounts it - it's a samsung dvd rom. I"m thinking that maybe the fact that it's a dvd rom could be part of the problem.

Anyone else have this problem before? Or know of a fix?

Any help is appreciated!

It may be due to the attempt to use scsi emulation on the drive. You have a few choices:
1. Turn off supermount on this drive in your /etc/fstab file;
2. Stop scsi emulation on this drive in your lilo.conf file

I'd personally turn off supermount. What this will mean though is that you will need to manually mount the disc each time you want to access it.

Cool

o.O

This is the line that appears in /etc/fstab

none /mnt/cdrom supermount dev=/dev/hdc,fs=auto,ro,--,iocharset=iso8859-1,codepage=850,umask=0 0 0

now in order to stop it from mounting automatically - what has to be done? just delete "supermount" or delete that line altogether from fstab?

Google/linux

...editing fstab.
3rd entry listed...HowTo edit fstab...

"To permemently remove a filesystem, delete the line that you don't want anymore. Remember to unmount the filesystem first, by umount /mountpoint."

That wasn't very helpful. He doesn't want to delete it, just make it so it doesn't supermount.
should do the trick.
You will have to manually mount and unmount it now when you want to use it, there are a few nice dockapps for this and GKrellm2 does it as well if you use that.

You also might want to add the users option:
/dev/hdc /mnt/cdrom iso9660 iocharset=iso8859-1,codepage=850,users,noauto,ro 0 0

This will allow users to mount/umount the cdrom device. To mount now you should be able to use:
mount /mnt/cdrom
And it will mount your cdrom at /mnt/cdrom
Then to unmount:
umount /mnt/cdrom

Make sure you aren't in the directory (/mnt/cdrom) or it's subdirectories when trying to umount, it won't allow it.

Cool

Thanks! That did the trick!

I appreciate all the help :)