when i try to mount the cdrom from command line or with kwikdisk, i get a /dev/hdc(or /dev/cdrom,depending on what i enter) is write-protected,mounting read only,then immediately,i get another prompt saying wrong option, wrong fs, too many filesystems,bad superblock,etc.-this happens as well with the floppy but not as often.any ideas always appreciated. thnx-using slack-8.1, which picks up the cdrom as /dev/hdc-permissions ok-this happens as root and with different cds.

Maybe specify the filesystem... Also, check to see if it's already mounted:
mount
OR read your mtab and see if it's in there.

What's the command you use to mount them?

Cool

mount -t iso9660 /dev/cdrom /mnt/cdrom. i just put it in mtab with the line /dev/cdrom /mnt/cdrom iso9660 ro,users 0 0 and no luck-it's not mounted when i do this-will play around some-thnx for gettin on it so quick

You don't actually wanna add your own entries in mtab (usually), they get added when you mount things. Check /var/log/messages to see if it gives you a better reason why it won't mount it (maybe it's not reading the drive all the time, aka, hardware failure).

Cool

you're right,but i thought it might be worth a try-i have recently reinstalled after i suffered what seemed to be a partition table corruption(cfdisk and fdisk couldn't do anything and partition magic showed the whole disk as free space-i switched hd's and the second one had the same thing happen-i haven't even been able to reformat it-partmagic see's it as free space and instantly crashes-so i'm in a quandary, wondering if i've got a bios prob or a bad memory stick-maybe a worm-i'll keep looking and thnx again.

/dev/cdrom /mnt/cdrom iso9660 noauto,users,ro 0 0 is in my fstab, but when i issue "mount /dev/cdrom", i get the message "can't find /dev/cdrom in /etc/fstab or /etc/mtab. i have also noticed that i get "no such file or directory" when i enter some commands even from the directory in which the command resides. any ideas?

Post up your entire fstab, maybe there is an error further up making it unable to read the entry for the cdrom. Make sure you removed that entry in mtab that you put in there yourself. Also, try using the mount point, not the device:
mount /mnt/cdrom

Cool

Something you might check out :

i had similiar problems tonight (i am also just coming into the linux fold)

on my machine that I have 2 hard drives connected with one ide cable ( 1 bus )

and also have 2 cdroms on another ide cable (second bus)

jumper the main drive or cdrom on each bus "master"
jumper the secondary drive or cdrom on the same bus "cable select"


---------> drive 1 (master)
|
------> drive 2 ( cable select )

This work perfect for me (redhat 8.0)

Hope this helps

/dev/hda5 swap swap defaults 0 0
/dev/hda1 / ext2 defaults 1 1
/dev/hda3 /home ext2 defaults 1 2
/dev/hda4 /tmp ext2 defaults 1 2
/dev/cdrom /mnt/cdrom iso9660 noauto,users,ro 0 0
/dev/fd0 /mnt/floppy auto noauto,owner 0 0
none /dev/pts devpts gid=5,mode=620 0 0
none /proc proc defaults 0 0
that's the fstab-ddrumguy's idea interests me, except that i've not changed the setup which was working before the mentioned foulup, which after opening the box and moving a fan wire from across a ram stick seems to be alleviated(at least i got the 2.2.19 drive back,tho w/cd prob-railroad tycoon and flightgear will mount,but still no cd in noatun-kscd shows music files playing,but no sound-other sound(flash,realplayer, sys notifs, xmms internet radio) ok. will keep digging-also, when i had the major trouble the quantum fireball hd was read by the bios as a qvandum fibe all-hope this isn't too confusing, i appreciate all thoughts, thnx.

just looked at my /var/log/messages and found a slew of
feb17 00:49:16 tincat kernel : attempt to access beyond end of device
feb17 00:49:16 tincat kernel 02:00 : rw=0, want=5, limit=4
not sure this is relevant, but it doesn't look good in any case.
thnx,again
UPDATE- 02:00 is probably the floppy which had a disk in it when i rebooted- i tried a mount for the cdrom and checked the syslog and i see:
feb 19 03:34 tincat kernel command error status=0x51
command error error=0x54
end request I/O error device 16:00(hdc),
sector 64
isofs_read_super: bread failed, device=
16:00 , iso_blknum=16, block=32
have tried several cds, commercial and homemade, all which worked before.