CDRom works under /Root, not under non-/root
 

Hey, newbie to Linux here!
Anyway.... I am working with fedora core 3, linux kernel 2.6.9-1.667 on a Pentium 2 500mhz computer, with a S3 Savage4 AGP card, Soundblaster AWE 32, ~300MB ram, 13GB HDD (Linux) dualbooting with 4GB HDD (Windows 98), 2 cdroms (both non-writers).
I have not been able to update any aspect of Linux, as I am not able to hook up a modem yet (this is another problem I need help on...later, though. not as important)
When I am under the /root user, I can play audio cd's no problem. under a different user, though... using just the regular cdplayer that comes with fc3, I get "drive error". I've tried other programs as well. No good. Under my Windows installation, cdrom works fine.
Jason

seems like you need to allow users to acess the cdrom
an easy way if u use kde is use kuser as root look at the users groups and add them to group cdrom
not sure how FC is set up but generaly there is a file /etc/group which stores this info
hope this helps :-)

Um... yeah. I'm a newbie, so you might have to walk me through this one...
do you mean log on as "root"?
there is no entry under "etc/groups" that says "cdrom"
I can read data cd's no problem under either user acct, but only "/root" can play audio cds.
I could have a "helper problem" as well, that might guide you to the correct solution. I have a USB flash drive (lexar jumpdrive secure) and under "/root" I can access this no problem, it shows on the desktop. But under "jason" (that's my main login) i get the error:
"Unable to mount the selected volume
mount: only root can mount /dev/sda1 on /mnt/public_a"
this installation of FC3 is only a week old, so one would think that there should be no errors in the subsystem. But, I already had to deal with a login issue, where the system tried to look up some internet thing reguarding "localhost.localdomain"
Ach.... this is getting annoying. Then again, linux was (is) written by practically millions of people!:D

oh... actually... i figured it out. but not fully in the way you told me.
For the cdroms... I had to add "jason" to the "disk" group. Do you know if there will be any problems from that?
And for the USB drive... this was weird. I thought that if I couldn't use "jason" normally to access the flash drive, what if I ran "mount dev/sda1 mnt/public_a" under terminal. Well, I tried that, and got some error saying something like "only root can do that". So I thought what if I switched users, without switching users? Staying logged under "jason", I ran "su root" under terminal, switched to root that way, and reran the mount command. IT WORKED, but I think there should have been a more straightforward way to do this. IE, not have to go through that procedure for each user.

Edit: never mind now!

Junger

Root can only mount files by default and unless you specify that other user can do it , you are stuck to that law . Erlier , Member junme supplied you with the answer .
What environment are you running ? kde , gnome , other ??

I use gnome, but KDE is installed also.