Hi,
I'm on a Slack 10.1 system. My problem is that the system doesn't show the Cd burner in the /mnt folder. It probes and finds the device correctly during startup and also ratifies the device ID (/dev/hdc), but I just cannot access it. Even if I give the command mount /dev/hdc, it gives an error that no such device exists. I checked up in the fstab and listed it there, but after booting it again goes back to the previous state. Please advise.

There's no need to have a exact mount point for it, but it's good to have it to have a organized filesystem.
Try:
mkdir /mnt/hdc
mount /dev/hdc /mnt/hdc

If that works, then your cd burner works, then you've to edit fstab to match this.
A line like this would do the work:
/dev/hdc /mnt/hdc auto noauto,gid=100,users,ro 0 0

I did create a separate directory for the cd burner, but I couldn't mount it ,coz it gave the error " no such device exists".

Ok, let's see. First of all, type: That should tell you if it exists and if it some symlink to something.
Next:
That will hopefully give you all the information, you could also do: dmesg | less
to scroll it pacefully
See if you can spot something else there. Also, are you using scsi emulation (passing hdc=ide-scsi argument on boot)?

dmesg | grep hda || dmesg | grep hdb || dmesg | grep hdc || dmesg | grep hdd || dmesg | grep CD
same as:
dmesg | grep -e hd[a-d] -e CD

On my system, dmesg doesn't have a message for hdc (a dvd rom drive). Using as root: "grep hdc /var/log/*" reveals that it was detected during booting. It was logged in boot.omsg.

boot.omsg:<4>hdc: JLMS DVD-ROM LTD163D, ATAPI CD/DVD-ROM drive
boot.omsg:<4>hdc: ATAPI 48X DVD-ROM drive, 512kB Cache
boot.omsg:/dev/hdc on /media/dvd type subfs (ro,nosuid,nodev,fs=cdfss,procuid,iocharset=utf8)

If you aren't sure of the device name you could use "hd[a-d]" for the regular expression.
grep -e "ROM" -e "hd[a-d]" -e "CD" /var/log/*

Scsi emulation is used if you have a 2.4 kernel.

Also, do you know whether you have an IDE CD-ROM drive or a SCSI drive?

I think you said that the drive is listed in fstab. Is that correct?
If so, remember that you are mounting the disc. If the disc isn't present you won't be able to mount it. A bad disk will cause problems also.

What is the fstab entry?

have you installed xcdroast
it will scan itself teh devices
or
run general command cdrecord -scanbus
how the cdrom part of ur fstab looks

in kde konqueror file brouser will show the device in device menu

regards

I am running 10.0 and the first thing I did was type mail and read the directions from PV as I always do.
He explained that the system must be made to think the cd burner is a scsi device.
He gave instructions, very simple to create the device and a link.
Once I did this I was able to use the cdrtools like cdrecord and cdparanoia to rip and burn cd's.
The device became sr0.
I checked man cdrecord and man cdparanoia.
also: I don't think you can mount an audio cd.

corbis_demon tell something

A much simpler way (with less output) to find a CD or DVD drive is "dmesg | grep -i atapi" since they are all ATAPI drives.