I'm running Debian testing, and can't get either my DVD or CD rom drives to work. I manually added them in fstab as:

# /etc/fstab: static file system information.
#
# <file system> <mount point> <type> <options> <dump> <pass>
/dev/hda3 / ext3 errors=remount-ro 0 1
/dev/hda7 none swap sw 0 0
proc /proc proc defaults 0 0
/dev/fd0 /floppy auto user,noauto 0 0
/dev/hdc /dvd iso9660 ro,user,noauto 0 0
/dev/hdd /cdr iso9660 ro,noauto,user 0 0
/dev/hda5 /boot ext3 defaults 0 2
/dev/hda8 /home/james/shared vfat conv=a,uid=1000,gid=1000 0 0
devpts /dev/pts devpts defaults 0 0


when I use dmesg I get this:

majmun:/etc# dmesg | grep hd
ide0: BM-DMA at 0xffa0-0xffa7, BIOS settings: hdaMA, hdbio
ide1: BM-DMA at 0xffa8-0xffaf, BIOS settings: hdcMA, hddMA
hda: MAXTOR 6L080J4, ATA DISK drive
hdc: LITEON DVD-ROM LTD163, ATAPI CD/DVD-ROM drive
hdd: LITE-ON LTR-24102M, ATAPI CD/DVD-ROM drive
hda: max request size: 128KiB
hda: 156355584 sectors (80054 MB) w/1819KiB Cache, CHS=65535/16/63, UDMA(100)
Adding 1052216k swap on /dev/hda7. Priority:-1 extents:1
EXT3 FS on hda3, internal journal
EXT3 FS on hda5, internal journal


So it seems to be ok to me, but /dev has the following

MAKEDEV kmsg ram15 tty11 tty32 tty53 ttyS16 ttyS37
agpgart log ram2 tty12 tty33 tty54 ttyS17 ttyS38
audio loop ram3 tty13 tty34 tty55 ttyS18 ttyS39
console lp0 ram4 tty14 tty35 tty56 ttyS19 ttyS4
core mapper ram5 tty15 tty36 tty57 ttyS2 ttyS40
dsp mem ram6 tty16 tty37 tty58 ttyS20 ttyS41
dsp1 midi ram7 tty17 tty38 tty59 ttyS21 ttyS42
dspW mixer ram8 tty18 tty39 tty6 ttyS22 ttyS43
fd null ram9 tty19 tty4 tty60 ttyS23 ttyS44
fd0 nvidia0 random tty2 tty40 tty61 ttyS24 ttyS45
full nvidiactl rtc tty20 tty41 tty62 ttyS25 ttyS46
hda port sequencer tty21 tty42 tty63 ttyS26 ttyS47
hda1 ppp sequencer2 tty22 tty43 tty7 ttyS27 ttyS5
hda2 psaux shm tty23 tty44 tty8 ttyS28 ttyS6
hda3 ptmx snd tty24 tty45 tty9 ttyS29 ttyS7
hda5 pts sndstat tty25 tty46 ttyS0 ttyS3 ttyS8
hda6 ram0 stderr tty26 tty47 ttyS1 ttyS30 ttyS9
hda7 ram1 stdin tty27 tty48 ttyS10 ttyS31 urandom
hda8 ram10 stdout tty28 tty49 ttyS11 ttyS32 xconsole
hw_random ram11 tty tty29 tty5 ttyS12 ttyS33 zero
initctl ram12 tty0 tty3 tty50 ttyS13 ttyS34
input ram13 tty1 tty30 tty51 ttyS14 ttyS35
kmem ram14 tty10 tty31 tty52 ttyS15 ttyS36

-------------------------------------------------

So what's the deal? I used discover, kudzu but neither fixed anything? Anything else I can do to get this working?

Did you actually verify that you have a dvd and cdr subfolder in your /dev? Also did you symlink the fstab entries to the /dev/dvd and /dev/cdr?

I have nothing in /dev for either the CDR or the DVD. How do I get them there?

Go to your /dev and just right click and create new folder and name one dvd and the other cdr, then symlink them from your fstab to /dev/dvd and /dev/cdr

I'm not quite sure what you mean...

You want me to:

ln -s /dev/cdr ??? ---what should the question marks be? /cdr?

As an aside, I don't fully understand how linux deals with the hardware, if you could explain or point me to a nice explaination that'd be great.

dmesg says that my cd drives are on hdc and hdd, but neither of those are in /dev, there is nothing related to CD or DVD in /dev either. Why should I even be adding things manually to dev?

What would you need to do if you freshly installed a new CD drive? Would it pnp? Can I scan for new devices? Using discover or kudzu(?), which I thought did that, didn't help...

Anyways, if I were to start from scratch what do I need to do?

Post your current fstab

My fstab is already posted, but here it is again:

# /etc/fstab: static file system information.
#
# <file system> <mount point> <type> <options> <dump> <pass>
/dev/hda3 / ext3 errors=remount-ro 0 1
/dev/hda7 none swap sw 0 0
proc /proc proc defaults 0 0
/dev/fd0 /floppy auto user,noauto 0 0
/dev/hdc /dvd iso9660 ro,user,noauto 0 0
/dev/hdd /cdr iso9660 ro,noauto,user 0 0
/dev/hda5 /boot ext3 defaults 0 2
/dev/hda8 /home/james/shared vfat conv=a,uid=1000,gid=1000 0 0
devpts /dev/pts devpts defaults 0 0


Now I've edited this and added the dvd and cdr manually since they weren't there before.

I should probably mention I'm running udev... It caused me plenty of grief with my nVidia drives...

Hi,

fstab looks OK.

You need to make sure now that you've got two directories named /dvd and /cdr to tie in with what you've put in fstab.

However, you'd normally put cd / dvd directories under /mnt, or in some cases /media (SuSE does it that way), ie -

/mnt/dvd & /mnt/cdr

then your fstab would look like -

/dev/hdc /mnt/dvd iso9660 ro,user,noauto 0 0
/dev/hdd /mnt/cdr iso9660 ro,noauto,user 0 0

Not strictly necessary, but it kind of goes with convention...

As for the sym links in /dev, again, not absolutely necessary, but it does help to have them so that some software can find the devices using default settings; ie, KsCD defaults to using a device named /dev/cdrom, etc.

So yes, I would put those links in there, calling them /dev/cdrom for your cdr drive and /dev/dvd for the dvd, ie as root, do -

And finally, if you're using KDE, it can often help to put an icon on your desktop for each drive; clicking it will automatically mount the media and open up konqueror with your files - just a bit quicker.

Thank you very much for that last post, I wasn't aware certain programs would check /dev. However, I've still got a problem.

This is what /dev holds:

MAKEDEV kmsg ram15 tty11 tty32 tty53 ttyS16 ttyS37
agpgart log ram2 tty12 tty33 tty54 ttyS17 ttyS38
audio loop ram3 tty13 tty34 tty55 ttyS18 ttyS39
console lp0 ram4 tty14 tty35 tty56 ttyS19 ttyS4
core mapper ram5 tty15 tty36 tty57 ttyS2 ttyS40
dsp mem ram6 tty16 tty37 tty58 ttyS20 ttyS41
dsp1 midi ram7 tty17 tty38 tty59 ttyS21 ttyS42
dspW mixer ram8 tty18 tty39 tty6 ttyS22 ttyS43
fd null ram9 tty19 tty4 tty60 ttyS23 ttyS44
fd0 nvidia0 random tty2 tty40 tty61 ttyS24 ttyS45
full nvidiactl rtc tty20 tty41 tty62 ttyS25 ttyS46
hda port sequencer tty21 tty42 tty63 ttyS26 ttyS47
hda1 ppp sequencer2 tty22 tty43 tty7 ttyS27 ttyS5
hda2 psaux shm tty23 tty44 tty8 ttyS28 ttyS6
hda3 ptmx snd tty24 tty45 tty9 ttyS29 ttyS7
hda5 pts sndstat tty25 tty46 ttyS0 ttyS3 ttyS8
hda6 ram0 stderr tty26 tty47 ttyS1 ttyS30 ttyS9
hda7 ram1 stdin tty27 tty48 ttyS10 ttyS31 urandom
hda8 ram10 stdout tty28 tty49 ttyS11 ttyS32 xconsole
hw_random ram11 tty tty29 tty5 ttyS12 ttyS33 zero
initctl ram12 tty0 tty3 tty50 ttyS13 ttyS34
input ram13 tty1 tty30 tty51 ttyS14 ttyS35
kmem ram14 tty10 tty31 tty52 ttyS15 ttyS36

I'll save you the time of looking through it by telling you that hdc and hdd are not in it. Neither is anything that would have to do with a DVD or CDR drive. I reason I used hdc and hdd in fstab is because dmesg tells me that's where my drives are:

majmun:/etc# dmesg | grep hd
ide0: BM-DMA at 0xffa0-0xffa7, BIOS settings: hdaMA, hdbio
ide1: BM-DMA at 0xffa8-0xffaf, BIOS settings: hdcMA, hddMA
hda: MAXTOR 6L080J4, ATA DISK drive
hdc: LITEON DVD-ROM LTD163, ATAPI CD/DVD-ROM drive
hdd: LITE-ON LTR-24102M, ATAPI CD/DVD-ROM drive
hda: max request size: 128KiB
hda: 156355584 sectors (80054 MB) w/1819KiB Cache, CHS=65535/16/63, UDMA(100)
Adding 1052216k swap on /dev/hda7. Priority:-1 extents:1
EXT3 FS on hda3, internal journal
EXT3 FS on hda5, internal journal

So how to I get hdd and hdc in /dev????? What about udev???

Hello,

Ah, now I see what your problem is!!!

I think it is indeed to do with udev, but it's something with which I'm unfamiliar. However, a v. quick google turned up the following -

http://mirror.hamakor.org.il/archive...004/11884.html

.. which might shed some light on it for you. Let us know how you get on!

Ok, I'm still not sure exactly what the problem was, but it's fixed. The above link was very helpful, but I did something slightly different.

So if you're running udev and having problems with your cd drives, here's what I did:

Do a dmesg | grep cd to find our where your drives are.

The reason they aren't working is cause udev isn't putting hdc (in my case) into /dev. However, it will still be /.dev

So I just put it right in to my fstab:

/.dev/hdc /dvd iso9660 ro,user,noauto 0 0

Everything works fine now. Thanks for all the help.

Excellent - glad to see a result.