Hi everyone!

I read the "before you post" guidelines, that said to be really detailed, so sorry if this post ends up being long.

I am running Debian Woody, kernel 2.4.18-bf2.4. I have a BackPack CD-RW drive model 232010 (it does NOT say "series 6" on it anywhere).
The computer is a IBM PC300GL, Celeron 366 MHz, 128 MB of RAM.

Edit: I forgot to mention that this is a console only machine, no X-Server is installed.

The backpack drive can connect via USB, parallel or PC-card. I have tried it with both USB and Parallel and it just WILL NOT WORK.

With the USB, I had the hotplug module running and it detected a device being plugged in, but gave the error "device is not claimed by any active driver." After spending an afternoon with Google, the only answer I didnt try was "upgrade the kernel". (which I won't do since I want to back up first, hence the reason for the CD-RW drive).

So I then tried the parallel cable, figuring that since it's an older computer and an older kernel, it would be better supported. Wrong!

I have the bpck.o module loaded (my distro didn't come with bpck6.o), and paride loaded, but when I try to load either pcd or pg modules as root, I get the following error:

"pg: pg version 1.02, major 97
pg0: Adapter not found (if I specify the address like drive0=0x378)
epat_init_protopg0: Autoprobe failed (If I don't give modprobe any args)
pg: No ATAPI device detected
init_module: Operation not permitted
Hint: insmod errors can be caused by incorrect module papameters, including invalid IO or IRQ parameters"

and
"lsusb: command not found"

When I try to run "cdrecord --scanbus" I get the error "No such file or directory. Cannot open SCSI driver"

Finally I decided to give up on the CD-RW and just back up to the network. However, samba doesn't want to connect either (wrong fs, bad superblock, or too many mounted devices). Whatever that means.

Anyway I REALLY need to get a backup system in place, preferrably onto CD-ROM, since this is a production server.

Any insights appreciated.

--A