This is suse 9.0 professional

At rescue system console - can't mount cdrom

suse provides /media/cdrom for mounting cd but I also used /mnt and created a third directory. No luck.

the suse device is /dev/cdrom.

This being the rescue console ... there's no cdrom entry in the fstab. I tried to get cheesy and chroot to the original filesystem ... which has the fstab user entry allowing "mount /dev/cdrom" from a text shell, but that didn't work under the rescue system.

Anyway, back at the initial rescue system console .......

Rescue:/#

mount /dev/cdrom /media/cdrom .. returns "must specify filesystem"

mount -t iso9660 /dev/cdrom /media/cdrom .. returns "invalid block device"

mount -t iso9660 -o ro /dev/cdrom /media/cdrom .. returns "invalid block device"

I'm out of ideas at this point.

There were older posts asking this same question (suse 7-8) but they didn't resolve or got into talking about audio cds. ..... I'm only concerned with data at this point. (I don't think I need audio in the rescue system yet!)

thanks
fred

"mount -t iso9660 /dev/cdrom /media/cdrom .. returns "invalid block device""

/dev/cdrom must link to the real address of the cdrom. On the rescue system /dev/cdrom probably does not link to anything. Try using the real address of your cdrom. Something like:

mount -t iso9660 /dev/hdd /media/cdrom

___________________________________
Be prepared. Create a LifeBoat CD.
http://users.rcn.com/srstites/LifeBo...home.page.html

Steve Stites

That was part of it, thanks ... but it still doesn't work!

for suse 9 /dev/cdrom is linked to /dev/sr0

I tried two methods ...

method 1 .. using boot floppy and rescue floppy (/boot/rescuefloppy from install cd1 ... floppy sized file) the command:

mount -t iso9660 /dev/sr0 /mnt (or any mount point)

returns "No such device or address" ... which seems to be a kind of standard (not specific) error for the dumber floppy rescue system.

method 2 ... using boot floppy, then install cd1 as rescue disk ...(boot/rescue .. which is about 16mb in size) same command returns "Not a valid block device"

method 3 ... using install cd1 as boot and rescue disk ... same as method 2 "Not a valid block device".

It seems like such a simple thing to do .... I'm told of rescue cd's I can obtain, but I also want to learn the manual drill and understand what's going on.


Does the presence of /dev/sr0 in the rescue system tell me I have what I need or could I need an additional module or something? ... the boot process using the boot floppy requires that I feed it the first module floppy ... prior to using the rescue disk.

thanks again

"mount -t iso9660 /dev/sr0 /mnt (or any mount point)"

This will work if your CD is the first scsi device on your system. Otherwise it will not work.

"Does the presence of /dev/sr0 in the rescue system tell me I have what I need?"

The rescue CD should have an address for every possible hardware device that any PC could have. The fact that "for suse 9 /dev/cdrom is linked to /dev/sr0" may or may not have any meaning.

Where is your CD physically? Is it the master on the second IDE cable? If so then it is at /dev/hdc. Here are some addresses:
/dev/hda - master on first IDE cable
/dev/hdb - slave on first IDE cable
/dev/hdc - master on second IDE cable
/dev/hdd - slave on second IDE cable
/dev/sr0 - first device on first SCSI cable
/dev/sr1 - second device on first SCSI cable

"returns "No such device or address" ... which seems to be a kind of standard (not specific) error for the dumber floppy rescue system."

This message means that you are using an address to which there is nothing physically attached.

___________________________________
Be prepared. Create a LifeBoat CD.
http://users.rcn.com/srstites/LifeBo...home.page.html

Steve Stites

That was the clue I needed.

Weird thing here is that in the original system (not rescue) the /dev/cdrom link was in fact to /dev/sr0, so, odd as the naming seemed .....

Checking the YaST hardware info ... The cd drive (cd-rw NEC NR-7900A) attached to secondary IDE cable (as master) is using a driver called ide-scsi and assigned device name /dev/sr0 .

But the rescue system (both from floppy and from install cd1) wanted to use /dev/hdc.

Is this a function of this particular cd-rw drive? ... I've never seen that before ..... a scsi device on an IDE cable?? ... or some sort of scsi-like behavior? I guess that's for another thread.

Anyway, I can now access the &$*%&!! cd drive!

thanks
fred

"Is this a function of this particular cd-rw drive? ... I've never seen that before ..... a scsi device on an IDE cable?? ... or some sort of scsi-like behavior? "

When CD-R was invented somebody wrote a patch to support IDE CD-R on the SCSI driver instead of the IDE driver. To use a CD writer you pass a parameter to the kernel saying that a device is using SCSI emulation: hdc=ide-scsi

Linus Torvalds wants to get rid of SCSI emulation and use straight IDE CD support. Jorg Schilling, who wrote cdrecord, is resisting the change.

___________________________________
Be prepared. Create a LifeBoat CD.
http://users.rcn.com/srstites/LifeBo...home.page.html

Steve Stites

Hi,
Also a newbie, I have a very similar problem, but the above info does not solve it:
I can't access the cdrom at all, never had, not as any user nor as root. (it is actually a DVD, but I get the same error message if I replace /dev/cdrom with /dev/dvdram below)

I am running Suse 9.2 and I have tried the following:
#mount /dev/hda /media/test2
mount: /dev/hda is not a valid block device

and
# mount -t iso9660 /dev/hda /media/test2
mount: /dev/hda is not a valid block device

Allthough I am pretty sure that the cdrom is at /dev/hda I have tried the following too:
/dev/hda All the hd* is IDE channels, I believe
/dev/hdb (This is the harddisk for WinXP, se the fstab file below)
/dev/hdc
/dev/hdd
/dev/hde
/dev/hdf
/dev/sda All the sda* is Serial ATA channels, this is the Linux disc
/dev/sdb
/dev/sr0
/dev/sr1

My /etc/fstab:
/dev/sda2 / reiserfs acl,user_xattr 1 1
/dev/vg0/volume1 /usr reiserfs acl,user_xattr 1 2
/dev/hdb1 /windows/C ntfs ro,users,gid=users,umask=0002,nls=utf8 0 0
/dev/hdb2 /windows/D ntfs ro,users,gid=users,umask=0002,nls=utf8 0 0
/dev/sda1 swap swap pri=42 0 0
devpts /dev/pts devpts mode=0620,gid=5 0 0
proc /proc proc defaults 0 0
usbfs /proc/bus/usb usbfs noauto 0 0
sysfs /sys sysfs noauto 0 0
/dev/dvdram /media/dvdram subfs fs=cdfss,ro,procuid,nosuid,nodev,exec,iocharset=utf8 0 0
/dev/fd0 /media/floppy subfs fs=floppyfss,procuid,nodev,nosuid,sync 0 0

As you can see above this is a dual boot system: Under XP the DVD works just fine, and I have installed the software on the cdrom disc in the reader on the XP system on the same machine so the device works, the disc works, and the files on the disc are ok.

What is left to try?

Kind Regards
Jonas