KsCD | XMMS | KDE unable to play music CDs on non-root accounts.

Aeoruuk · 07-31-2006, 02:28 PM

Thanks for your time.

My fstab file is:

Code:

/dev/hda1		/boot		ext2		noauto,noatime	1 2
/dev/hda3		/		ext3		noatime		0 1
/dev/hda2		none		swap		sw		0 0
/dev/hdc		/mnt/cdrom	auto		ro,noauto,users,sync 0 0
proc			/proc		proc		defaults	0 0
shm			/dev/shm	tmpfs		nodev,nosuid,noexec	0 0

As far as I can tell, I've followed the instructions on Gentoo's KDE Setup Guide and Gentoo's Alsa Setup Guide and I've got HAL and Automounter running (I can mount data CD's just fine) but despite that, when I put in a CD, and (for example) attempt to play it on KsCD on a non-root account, I get the following error:

Code:

CD-ROM read or access error (or no audio disc in drive).
Please make sure you have access permissions to:
/dev/hdc

Incidentally, that is the same error I receive when trying to run KsCD with no disc in the drive.

If I go to right-click on the icon to my CD drive in Konquerer, and select "Open With..." choosing KsCD or XMMS I receive this error:

Code:

Device doesn't have read permissions for this account. Check the read permissions on the device.

If I try XMMS directly by launching it and using Right-Click->Play->CD I just get nothing. No response or error is displayed, nothing happens at all.

If you have a solution, please don't hesitate to post it. Thank you.

dracolich · 07-31-2006, 06:44 PM

Make sure your user(s) are part of the audio group. Also, check the ownership/permissions on the devices /dev/sound/audio and /dev/sound/dsp.

Aeoruuk · 07-31-2006, 08:16 PM

As far as I know, my user is in the audio group:

Quote:

Originally Posted by Gentoo Alsa Config Guide

Audio Group

Before we move on to testing, there's one last important thing that needs to be setup. Rule of thumb in a *nix OS : Do not run as root unless needed. This applies here as well

How? Well, most of the times you should be logged in as a user and would like to listen to music or access your soundcard. For that to happen, you need to be in the "audio" group. At this point, we'll add users to the audio group, so that they won't have any issues when they want to access sound devices. We'll use gpasswd here and you need to be logged in as root for this to work.

Code:

Code Listing 3.4: Adding users to the audio group

(Substitute <username> with your user)
# gpasswd -a <username> audio 
Adding user <username> to group audio

=================================================

I'm not sure how to go about modifying|checking the permissions on /dev/hdc or /mnt/cdrom as you suggested, though I checked my drives through the System icon in the KDE desktop and the audio CD icon has no "Permissions" tab, while the primary data partition does have a "Permissions tab", which might indicate that's the problem? Would you mind elaborating on how to really check | modify permissions on devices?

dracolich · 08-01-2006, 01:55 PM

Open a terminal window and type

ls -al /dev/hdc

to see the ownership and permissions for the device.

Aeoruuk · 08-01-2006, 11:51 PM

I have no idea how to interpret the results, but after you said "Permissions" I tried a chmod:

Code:

#chmod 0777 /dev/hdc

...And now it works.

Thank you!

dracolich · 08-02-2006, 11:53 AM

Glad I helped you find a solution. Since 0777 works I have one more idea. I was assuming before the problem was in the sound device, not the drive. My /dev/hdc, which is a dvd drive, has root:cdrom ownership. Maybe your user is not a member of the cdrom group.

To interpret permissions, let's say you're looking at /dev/hdc and the results are:

root:cdrom brw-rw----

This means:
*root is the user that owns the object
*cdrom is the group that is allowed access
*b indicates it is a block device (storage)
*the first three characters, rw-, is the permissions for the owner
*the middle three, rw-, is the permissions for the group
*the final three, ---, is permission for everyone else
r=read, w=write, x=execute

So, in this example rw-rw---- equals 0660 which means the owner and the group have read/write access to the object and everyone else has no access. By chmodding the object to 0777 (rwxrwxrwx) you granted everyone full access to the device. This works for troubleshooting purpose, but is not a good solution. Check the group and make sure your user is in that group.