I've been trying to copy a chunk of data (for a games server) from one linux box (P4 Suse 9.2) to another (V. old compaq prosignia P2 server Mandriva limited edition 2005) This is to save having to download the same stuff again. Trying to copy the 1.3gb of daa to a DVD is proving far more difficult than I thought. (I'm also very keen to copy knoppix for a friend)

The problem is that when I try to use K3b or try to simply copy and paste it does not let me do so. The permission for the drive dev/hdd are "view content only" I have tried to chmod but without success - I'm very new to Linux and still not too confident with the command line. From what I can gather fstab has something to do with the permissions, copied below:


/dev/hdb2 / reiserfs acl,user_xattr 1 1
/dev/hda2 /windows/C ntfs ro,users,gid=users,umask=0002,nls=utf8 0 0
/dev/hda3 /windows/D vfat users,gid=users,umask=0002,iocharset=utf8 0 0
/dev/hdb1 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/dvd /media/dvd subfs fs=cdfss,ro,procuid,nosuid,nodev,exec,iocharset=utf8 0 0
/dev/dvdrecorder /media/dvdrecorder subfs fs=cdfss,ro,procuid,nosuid,nodev,exec,iocharset=utf8 0 0
/dev/cdrom /media/cdrom subfs fs=cdfss,ro,procuid,nosuid,nodev,exec,iocharset=utf8 0 0


Stangely though, there apears to be 3 optical drives showing ( there should only be a cd rom at dev/hdc and the DVD recorder at dev/hdd.

k3B does not show this box as having a burning device either.

Any help in allowing me to burn CD/DVDs much appreciated

Thanks in advance

Alfie67

Try to run k3b setup, which you can find under the 'settings' menu.

Not sure that i am clear on the issue (where are the source files, hda? what is the full permission set?) but here are a few ideas:

First, know that some files cannot be backed up/burned while the machine/filesystem is active, as they change too much and the burning needs to be done on files that are "at rest."

1. In SuSE's "start" menu, go to System --> File Manager --> "File Manager - Super User Mode" and find your files. Either select one or ctrl-select a bunch, right click and change their Permissions (under Properties of the right-click menu). That might free them up for burning. You might wanna change then back, for security/stability sake, when done.

2. Copy the files to another folder somewhere (might need Super User Mode (above) for this too) and check the file perms on the COPIES, and then burn them

3 Look into configuring K3B to selecting your burning device; also make sure (Control Center --> YaST2 --> Hardware) that your IDE DMA is ON and that they are indeed recognized as writeable drive(S)

4 Try booting a live CD (if you have one handy, as it might be tough to burn it if you cannot burn!) from the non-burning device, log into the machine as Root, and burning the files that way (they will be "at rest" since the machine's current critical files are in RAM due to the live cd)

Not sure what more to tell you, but good luck!! Anyone else have ideas?

Thanks lefty.crupps

went in via file manager super user and changed the owner to the user rather than the root. And it is, as I write this, currently making the DVD copy. Excellent stuff.

Many thanks for all assistance

Alfie67