frustrated at this point.

thinkpad a31, RH7.3, custome kernel 2.4.18-3

here's the setup.

i have 3 bootable OS's on this harddrive, win2k, winxp, and RH. i use grub to boot each.

i installed VMWARE on XP and proceeded to create a virtual OS using physical partition. this would allow me to run my current linux inside of XP thorugh vmware. unfortunately vmware wants to use some of it's own driver crud for devices, including cdrom. i did not want to rely on using vmware in order to use linux, so i have now opted not to use vmware to load a OS from physical drive. using vmware i was able to use cdrom.

after using vmware and decideing i don't want to use vmware, i loaded linux the regular way through grub. upon booting i had a superblock error and let the system fix what it could.

now when i boot and try mount /dev/cdrom i get "is not a valid block device" ?? i re-created /dev/hdc and re-linked /dev/dcrom to /dev/hdc

i attepted to delete any references to the cdrom device and used kudzu, and it found new device, i see it buring boot post, still get same error.

upon a reboot i issue lsmod, i get nothing, then i "mount /dev/cdrom", then "lsmod" again, and it shows "isofs autoclean".

any ideas here ??

thanks,
andrew

I have a problem with mounting cds as well although it is probably a different issue.

Since I upgraded to Slack 9.1 (kernel 2.4.22), I haven't had any problems with hardware and such. Last night, however, I replaced my dvd-rom drive with a different dvd-rom drive. I am now unable to mount cds/dvds whereas it worked fine with the old drive. Linux is recognizing the change in hardware it seems, as the device is being listed as the new model. While waiting for the drive to attempt to mount, the access light on the drive comes on, and it does sound as though it is trying to read the cd (tried mounting dvd and data disks). Failed attempts at mounting:

bash-2.05b$ sudo mount -t iso9660 /dev/cdrom /mnt/cdrom
mount: block device /dev/cdrom is write-protected, mounting read-only
mount: Not a directory
bash-2.05b$ sudo mount /dev/cdrom /mnt/cdrom
/dev/cdrom: Input/output error
mount: block device /dev/cdrom is write-protected, mounting read-only
/dev/cdrom: Input/output error
mount: you must specify the filesystem type
bash-2.05b$ sudo mount /dev/dvd
mount: can't find /dev/hdc in /etc/fstab or /etc/mtab
bash-2.05b$ sudo mount /dev/cdrom
mount: Not a directory
bash-2.05b$ sudo mount -t iso9660 /dev/hdc /mnt/cdrom
mount: block device /dev/hdc is write-protected, mounting read-only
mount: Not a directory

bash-2.05b$ cat /proc/ide/hdc/driver
ide-cdrom version 4.5
bash-2.05b$ cat /proc/ide/hdc/model
SAMSUNG DVD-ROM SD-816B
9-ac1

Some relavent output from dmesg:
...
hdc: SAMSUNG DVD-ROM SD-816B, ATAPI CD/DVD-ROM drive
...
hdc: attached ide-cdrom driver.
hdc: ATAPI 48X DVD-ROM drive, 512kB Cache, UDMA(33)
Uniform CD-ROM driver Revision: 3.12
... ... ...
hdc: media error (bad sector): status=0x51 { DriveReady SeekComplete Error }
hdc: media error (bad sector): error=0x30
end_request: I/O error, dev 16:00 (hdc), sector 0
hdc: media error (bad sector): status=0x51 { DriveReady SeekComplete Error }
hdc: media error (bad sector): error=0x30
end_request: I/O error, dev 16:00 (hdc), sector 4
hdc: media error (bad sector): status=0x51 { DriveReady SeekComplete Error }
hdc: media error (bad sector): error=0x30
ISOFS: unable toFAT: bogus logical sector size 0
...
VFS: Can't find a valid FAT filesystem on dev 16:00.
FAT: bogus logical sector size 0
VFS: Can't find a valid FAT filesystem on dev 16:00.
hdc: media error (bad sector): status=0x51 { DriveReady SeekComplete Error }
hdc: media error (bad sector): error=0x30
end_request: I/O error, dev 16:00 (hdc), sector 1036
ISOFS: unable to read i-node block
read i-node block

Not sure what to try in order to get this working. I am able to boot from a cd in that drive, and also can mount cds (to /mnt/cdrom) with the other cd-rom drive without problems.

here's some info from my dmesg.

hdc: UJDA720 DVD/CDRW, ATAPI CD/DVD-ROM drive


after kernel image loads, root filesystem mounts, then other filesystems, then this is last line in dmesg:

hdc: driver not present

i'm guessing, no driver no mount ??

/proc/devices shows ide1 on block device 22


"file /dev/hdc" says "block special (22/0)"

hdc was always a 22/0 block device file, but i recreated it using mknod thinking hdc was corrupt.

everythink looks ok except for the dmesg entry that says "hdc: driver not present" , probably the issue.

ok, did some looking and google searching.

not thinking anything would change my grub.conf file (apparently vmware did), grub.conf was loading image with "hdc=ide-scsi" !!?? must be that vmware emulates ide into their scsi virtual driver ??

i changed grub.conf to load image with "hdc=ide-cd" and now cdrom works fine.

vmware sounded good (and is if you only load a OS from a image file), but really sucks when loading an existing OS.

andrew