Drive problem

Draiocht · 09-25-2005, 12:12 PM

Hi all,

I'm a newbie to slackware but am already pretty well addicted. The only real problem that I haven't been able to overcome so far by reading elsewhere is thatwhilst slack picked up my Drive D: cdrom/dvd it doesn't acknowledge the existence of my drive E: cd writer. Can anyone tell me how I might rectify this? I'm running version 10.2

Thanks guys

Draiocht

dracolich · 09-25-2005, 12:52 PM

Assuming it's not a hardware problem (ribbon cable, power connector), what have you looked for to identify it? Did you pass boot parameters from the boot loader? IDE burner drives require one to burn. If you use ide=scsi (deprecated now) try 'ls /dev/sr*'. Or if you use ide=cd try 'ls /dev/hd*'.

Draiocht · 09-25-2005, 02:42 PM

I have tried the lists you suggested and it shows up nowhere. The hardware is good but I passed no parameters. As I say, I'm a newbie and apart from not realising that a burner needed them I haven't a clue how to do this. Could you advise please?

Thanks

Draiocht

MS3FGX · 09-25-2005, 03:03 PM

IDE-SCSI emulation is no longer used for burners, so it is going to be one of the hdX devices.

What you will want to do is run:

dmesg | grep hd*

This will pull up everything the kernel had to say about your IDE devices. Some of the first things that should pop up on the output of this command will be the devices and what they were detected as.

For instance, on my machine I see:

Code:

hda: WDC WD800BB-00CAA0, ATA DISK drive
hdb: IOMEGA ZIP 100 ATAPI Floppy, ATAPI FLOPPY drive
hdc: TSSTcorpCD/DVDW TS-H552B, ATAPI CD/DVD-ROM drive
hdd: IDE DVD-ROM 16X, ATAPI CD/DVD-ROM drive

Now, from this you can see what IDE devices were detected. You need to find the name of your burner on that list, and make note of the 3 letters before it's name. Example, my DVD burner is the TSSTcorpCD/DVDW. It's device is hdc, or /dev/hdc.

Now, once you find the device for your CD burner, as root, you will want to run the following command:

ln -s /dev/hdX /dev/cdrw

Where X is the letter you found before.

This will create a link to the CD burner called /dev/cdrw. You can refer to the burner by this name from now on.

Draiocht · 09-25-2005, 07:54 PM

Thanks for that, all done, is there any way I can get an icon for the drive to show up in kde now?

regards

draiocht

MMYoung · 09-25-2005, 08:22 PM

Quote:

Originally posted by MS3FGX
IDE-SCSI emulation is no longer used for burners, so it is going to be one of the hdX devices.

Even if you are using a 2.4 kernel series? I knew that scsi-emulation was no longer necessary for the 2.6 series of kernels but I thought it was still required for the 2.4 kernels.

Just wondering,
MMYoung

Draiocht · 09-26-2005, 05:46 AM

Hmmmmmm, I wonder what's involved in installing a new kernel and should this be attempted by a newbie? If not, how do I go about setting up scsi emulation?

Regards

Draiocht

MMYoung · 09-26-2005, 06:09 AM

Quote:

Originally posted by Draiocht
Hmmmmmm, I wonder what's involved in installing a new kernel and should this be attempted by a newbie? If not, how do I go about setting up scsi emulation?

To set up SCSI emulation all you have to do is add an append = line to lilo.conf that reads:

append = "hdc=ide-scsi"

This is assuming that hdc is your CD/DVD burner. If not just substitute the appropriate drive instead of hdc.

For example, here is the entry in lilo.conf for the 2.4.31 kernel on my Slackware-10.2 PC:

Code:

image = /boot/vmlinuz-ide-2.4.31
  append = "hdc=ide-scsi hdd=ide-scsi"
  root = /dev/hdb1
  label = DLG-2.4.31
  read-only

I have two burners that I've "collected" over the years and this sets them up as /dev/sr0 (hdc) and /dev/sr1 (hdd).

HTH,
MMYoung

dracolich · 09-26-2005, 06:52 AM

Or if you use a 2.6 kernel it's the same except you use cd instead of scsi:
append = "hdc=ide-cd"

MMYoung, you're right about the 2.4 kernels. AFAIK, even the latest 2.4 still uses scsi emulation while the 2.6 has completely replaced it with the new cd thing.

cathectic · 09-26-2005, 07:19 AM

Quote:

Or if you use a 2.6 kernel it's the same except you use cd instead of scsi:
append = "hdc=ide-cd"

You don't need *any* append lines when using 2.6 with a CD burner.

MS3FGX · 09-26-2005, 07:59 AM

That's right, I forgot the default is still 2.4.x in Slackware. I haven't used the default Slackware kernel since...well, ever, actually.

Anyway, you could either update to 2.6 (it is in /testing), or compile your own kernel.

You could use 2.4 and IDE-SCSI emulation if you wanted to, but there are reasons it has been replaced in the newest kernels...

nutronix · 09-26-2005, 11:37 AM

here is my kernel 2.4.29 lilo's beginning=

# Start LILO global section
append="hdc=ide-scsi"
boot = /dev/fd0
message = /boot/boot_message.txt
prompt
timeout = 1200

Just so that you will know where to insert the scsi append line.

Draiocht · 09-26-2005, 07:23 PM

OK, I know this is probably a really dumb question but as I said I am verrryyy new to this. When I type /etc/lilo.conf into a konsole I get "permission denied" even though I'm logged in as root.

How do I get in there to mess with it?

Draiocht

dracolich · 09-26-2005, 07:35 PM

lilo.conf is a text file. If you're in KDE try opening it with KEdit, or from a konsole open it with mc (higlight the file and press F4 to edit, F2 to save and F10 to quit).

Draiocht · 09-27-2005, 10:00 AM

Thanks everyone, with your help I'm learning some great stuff about the console and in particular Midnight Commander. All I need to do now is add the cd-rw to fstab. I've tried adding it in the following way:

/dev/cd-rw /mnt/cd-rw auto noauto,owner,ro 0 0

which is according to a config I found on another site, "shilo.is-a-geek.com", adapted of course to match the rest of my fstab content, namely my dvd drive, but all I get in kde is another hard drive (which doesn't exist of course) and still no access to the cd-rw.
As I say, I'm learning a lot which is great, but I'm still not there on this one.

Heeeeelp

Regards,

Draiocht