simple as that. I have 2 fat32 drives in my PC and debian doesnt show em. during install it saw em as Hda1 and hdb1, but when i try to browse or create a shortcut to it, doesnt give me the option of those drives.

Post your /etc/fstab file.

duh wheres my brain tonite.

# /etc/fstab: static file system information.
#
# <file system> <mount point> <type> <options> <dump> <pass>
/dev/hdc2 / ext3 errors=remount-ro 0 1
/dev/hdc1 none swap sw 0 0
proc /proc proc defaults 0 0
/dev/fd0 /floppy auto user,noauto 0 0
/dev/cdrom /cdrom iso9660 ro,user,noauto 0 0

ok yea needs to be added here, but how? oh yea, i cant access the CDROM. Old problem i had with knoppix when i installed it...

i get

Could not mount the device:

mount; /dev/cdrom is not a block device.

i added a folder cdrom to /dev and a cdrom folder to /mnt. My shortcut points to the CDROM drive...

Ive had this before, maybe its time i LEARN TO SOLVE IT

For the fat32 problem.

The kernel needs to support fat32, either via a module or built into the kernel. Try running 'modprobe vfat' if it is successful, then you can mount the drive with 'mount /dev/hda1 /your/mountpoint -t vfat'. You can figure out fstab later.

As for the cdrom.

/dev/cdrom is just a link to /dev/hd?. I am assuming this is an IDE cdrom.

/dev/hda = primary,master
/dev/hdb = primary, slave
/dev/hdc = secondary,master
/dev/hdd = secondary,slave

Figure out which device is your cdrom and mount it using that device name. 'mount /dev/hdc /cdrom '. You can run 'ls -l /dev/cdrom | tail -c 4'. This will tell you what device /dev/cdrom is linked to, so you can make sure it is correct.

Thomas

its setup as HDb, and that sitll didnt work...

also modprobe vfat was unsuccessful. Cant locate module.

# mkdir /mnt/cdrom

edit /etc/fstab and change

/dev/cdrom /cdrom iso9660 ro,user,noauto 0 0

to

/dev/hdb /mnt/cdrom iso9660 ro,user,noauto 0 0

If you had this before on other distros, I'd suspect a hardware problem with the ide bus. Reboot and right after words run:

$ dmesg

That will give you a verbose output of all your boot messages. Pay attention to the ones identifying anything on the ide bus, in particular ide1 which is where your undetected devices are(hda and hdb).

You can also try running as root:

# fdisk -l

That should print a listing of all hard drive partitions on the ide bus recognized by the system whether they're mounted or not. If it's not listed with fdisk -l, the system is not detecting it and no amount of fooling around ith fstab will fix it.

Things to check and do:
1. Check that all your ide devices are properly recognized in your bios setup;
2. Check your jumpering on all your ide devices;
3. Check your cabling on all ide devices by swapping the hard drive cables around. If you get a different undected devices when swapping the hdc cable with the hda cable, it's probably a bad cable;
4. Try moving an undetected hard drive to hdd(i.e. slave it to your hard drive on hdc) and see if it's recognized with fdisk -l;
5. Try disconnecting your cdrom on hdb and then reboot and run fdisk -l to see if the hda partitions are recognized. A faulty cdrom can disable everything on the ide channel with it(i.e. hda hard drive);
6. Make sure that plug 'n play is disabled in your bios setup.

I suspect a faulty or misjumpered cdrom drive(5) the most since you've had this problem before. I'd try 5 first after checking the ide devices in your bios setup.

Are you logged in as root when you mount the cdrom? Try it as root.

MadSkillzMan, were you able to access your CDROM drive? If you are using SUSE 8.0, you can go to http://portal.suse.com/sdb/en/2001/0...e_brenner.html for some help, if you don't already have scsi emulation working... However, after I followed this, I still couldn't read the CD. As root, I checked dmesg at the console and discovered my CDROM drive was listed as sr0, not scd0. I updated the symbolic link for CDROM, and it works now! Hope this is helpful.