Did you 'mkdir mnt/cdrw'? After that kde should show it System(on desktop). Fstab should have /dev/xxx /mnt/cdrw auto noauto,user,ro 0 0. And under /etc/group add yourself(user) to sys,disk,cdrom,audio and maybe wheel groups. Then chmod 660 /dev/xxx. Some use a umask 002 in fstab instead. Good luck.

Thanks for your reply, I haven't done these things and would like to but don't know how to do the following:


Sorry I seem to need so much spoon feeding but if it is any consolation I'm certainly very grateful for all you guys are teaching me. I am also studying online tutorials to be more pro active in my learning process but just haven't got to this stuff yet.

Regards,

Draiocht

No problem, I had to be "spoon fed" (and still do actually ) some things when I first started.

Making a directory:
If you are in KDE, GNOME, XFCE or other Desktop Environment/Window Manager just open a terminal (in KDE I think it's called Konsole) and do the following:
Press the enter key. This loads the root user AND that users complete environment (including PATH). You will be asked for a Password, type in the root password.

Next do:
(notice the prompt change from :~$ to :~# this way you know you are root)
Press enter and you've just created your mount point for your cdrw (well actually the filesystem of the CD that's IN your cdrw, but that's a whole other discussion ).

As far as the group stuff in /etc/group, you can manually edit the file but KDE also has a "Users and Groups" GUI utility. It's located in K --> System Tools --> User Manager (Kuser). You will be asked for the root password to run the program. Scroll down and click on your user name and in then click on the groups tab. Just select the groups you want to join. A word of caution here BE CAREFUL, just because a group exists doesn't mean you need to belong to it, ESPECIALLY the root or administrator group DO NOT add yourself to either of them. BTW, I'm going from memory here as I use GNOME and I assumed you were using the defaut DM that comes with Slack. Or, you could just edit /etc/group (you will have to be root to do this) with any text editor and manually add the groups that lestoil suggested (and a good suggestion it was). I'm thinking that as long as you are in the group that the device belongs to you won't have to worry about the chmod stuff.

One other thing, I would change the owner in your fstab entry to user. This way you will be able to mount the filesystem, with owner I'm not sure that just any user can mount it.

HTH,
MMYoung

O.K.,

I've done everything suggested so far and all appears as it should except that when I clicked on my new cdrw icon I got an error saying "mount: special device /dev/cdrw does not exist.

A flick throught the modifications made so far in Midnight Commander showed that cdrw does not show up in "group".

Puzzled now.



regards

Draiocht

Do this for me, in a terminal type in:

ls -l /dev/cdrom

Post the results.

BTW, are you using a 2.6 kernel or a 2.4 kernel?

MMYoung

root@Avalon:~# ls -l/dev/cdrom
/usr/bin/ls: invalid option -- /
Try `/usr/bin/ls --help' for more information.
root@Avalon:~# /usr/bin/ls
Console_output_lilo.conf_search HAL Sounds cdrw loadlin16c.zip
Desktop cdrom loadlin16c.txt wallpaper
root@Avalon:~#


It appears to me that it just isn't showing up, I'm pretty sure I've done all that has been suggested so far and as instructed, although I'm just about to re check my entries. I don't actually know enough for my own thinking to have interfered and changed anything (except of course that my cdrw is hdd so I modified those entries accordingly).

Sorry, I should have given you my kernel version earlier, it's 2.4.31, and you guessed right on my gui, it's kde 3.4.

thanks for this,

regards,

Draiocht

It should be: ls -l /dev/cdrom
with a space between the -l switch and /dev/cdrom.
Usually cdrom devices belong to the disk group, there's no cdrw group by default.

First off I should've looked back through the thread as you did stated that you are using the 2.4.31 kernel earlier, sorry for that. Now that I know that I can help you with your /dev entry.

More than likely, since you have a 2.4 kernel and from the thread it looks like you did put the append line in your lilo.conf, your CD drives are being setup as /dev/sr*. If this is so, it's an easy thing of just making sure that the symlink in /dev is pointing to the right devices. To make sure do this:

dmesg | grep hdc

Or maybe better:

dmesg | grep sr0

More than likely it's going to say that your CD-ROM/RW is now /dev/sr0. Next do:

ls -l /dev/cdrom (remember the space between -l and /dev/cdrom)

Post the results of both/all so I can look at them.

If your CD is being set up as /dev/sr0 (you will see this in the dmesg output), and the symlink is NOT pointing to /dev/sr0, you can create the symlink in /dev, from a terminal and logged in as root, by:

rm /dev/cdrom
ln -s /dev/sr0 /dev/crom

Then just edit the fstab entry for the /dev/cdrom /mnt/cdrom to the suggetions in this thread and it will work.

Or in your case if you want the symlink to be /dev/cdrw then just do:

ln -s /dev/sr0 /dev/cdrw

After you do that, and assuming that you made the necessary changes to fstab, you should be able to mount a CD in your CD drive with the command mount /mnt/cdrw. Either way will work just fine.

Later,
MMYoung

Thanks guys, here is the output of that ls command:

Since the system just doesn't seem to be picking up the device I was given to wonder if there is something wrong with my lilo.conf file, so here are the first lines of my lilo.conf

#Start LILO global section
append = "hdd=ide-scsi"
boot = /dev/hda
message = /boot/boot_message.txt
prompt
timeout = 1200
#override dangerous defaults that rewrite the partition table:
change-rules
reset

Can't think of anything else at the moment




Draiocht

Here is the first output (where my cdrw is hdd):

dmesg | grep sr0 returned me to the prompt after giving no output, but here is the result of

ls -l /dev/cdrom:
Sorry about the "cross over" in postings preceding this one, I wasn't ignoring your post, I think we must have been typing at the same time \

How did those smileys get in the code quotes , weird

Thanks again,

Draiocht

Sorry to keep asking for stuff but I want to make sure. Try:

dmesg | grep sr*

You will probably get a LOT of stuff but just try and look for something about SCSI and sr0. With the append line you have I'm certain™ ( ) that your CDROM is being added to /dev as sr0 but I just want to make sure.

Also noticed that you have hdd=ide-scsi, do you have two CD drives or something? Reason I ask is if you have two CD drives you *might* have to ide-scsi it as well, but I'm not sure about that. I know I used to have to do that when I was running a 2.4.xx kernel and using K3b to burn stuff.

If your CD is being set up as /dev/sr0 then do:

ls -l /dev/sr0 and hopefully it's permissions are set to root.cdrom.

We're getting there, I just want to make sure we get there RIGHT.

Later,
MMYoung

No need to apologise, I'm just very grateful that you're prepared to take the time to help me with this.

dmesg | grep sr* didn't yield the results we were hoping for, I searched it line by line but nothing I'm afraid. However, I did notice this code in the output, I don't know if it is relevant but the last three lines in particular stood out to me as simply because they contained the words "failed" and "scsi".



You probably got there before me but those smileys that creep in are just replacing : followed by D.

Now it is time for me to cringe and make grovelling apologies to the community for a glaring ommision to the spec in my signature. I do indeed have another optical drive, a DVD cdrom reader, hdc. Sorry about that, I will of course correct that immediately.

Thanks for your patience,

Draiocht

What is the output of ls -l /dev/sr0 ?

Later,
MMYoung

This may or may not change anything, but try editing your lilo.conf again. Move the append=ide-scsi to below your kernel lines, like this

image = /boot/bzImage...
label = Label
read-only
append = "hdd=ide-scsi"

This may help. Any time you change something in lilo.conf or modify the kernel you have to execute the lilo command (as root) to update the actual loader, otherwise your changes aren't taking effect.

DAMN, I forgot to tell him to run lilo after the edit! After I've done things so many times (that it's almost second nature) I tend to take it for granted and forget to mention it. Thanks!

BTW, the append line in my 2.4.31 section is just under the image = line and it works fine.

Later,
MMYoung