Hi everyone,
i have probably the most pathetic question anyone has ever asked but i am a total newbie:

Where do i find the CDROM?
i've heard a lot about mounting and other bits and bobs,
but i would have thought that Red Hat would have configered it on startup. no?
i've looked in /dev, nothing.
any help, even just a bit of incouragement ;-), would be grately appreciated.

thanks to all in advance.
Tim Fletcher
netfactoriel

OK, first a bit of theory:

You do not mount a CD, you mount the file-system that has been burned onto that CD. The same way that your harddisk can hold information in FAT32 (Windows) or EXT2 (Linux) types, so a CD can hold it in different types. It just so happens, however, that almost everybody uses ISO9660 (it is a standard, afterall). For ease of use though, you can think of it as mounting your cdrom.

In order to mount something, the directory from which you would be accessing it must already be present. Think of it like this, you wouldn't be able to access the files on your C: if C: didn't exist!

Now, depending on what type (SCSI/ATAPI) of cdrom drive you're using, and where physically it is on the system (i.e. which cable), the following information may vary.

Assuming your cdrom drive is the 2nd IDE device on your system (i.e. /dev/hdb) then you would:
check to see if the mount-point exists - ls /mnt
if not, make the mount-point - mkdir /mnt/cdrom
now, mount the device - mount -t iso9660 /dev/hdb /mnt/cdrom
You should now be able to access the files on your CD.

A bit more theory now:
If you're using IDE devices, then:
Each IDE cable can have 2 devices, a master and a slave. Linux uses alphabetical naming of devices, so:
Primary Master - hda
Primary Slave - hdb
Secondary Master - hdc
Secondary Slave - hdd
etc

There is a file on your system (/etc/fstab) that handles mounting and so on, so you should search this forum for that fstab. Basically, once you have an entry in your fstab for the cd device, you can simply: mount /mnt/cdrom rather than the above.

Hope this helps, if not, you know where to post .

thank you very much for your in depth help on the suject of mounting.

linux does at first seem very dificult, but after a bit of fideling, you often find exactly what you want. and especialy with all you guys out there with all the answers.

once again, thank you very much and no doubt we will speak again %-)
tim Fletcher
Netfactoriel.com