Hi,
I just installed Slackware and I can't mount my cdrom drive. It says: Can't find /cdrom in /etc/fstab or /etc/mtab.

Here is what is written in fstab:
/dev/hda5 swap swap defaults 0 0
/dev/hda6 / reiserfs defaults 1 1
/dev/hda1 /home reiserfs defaults 1 2
/dev/cdrom /mnt/cdrom iso9660 noauto,owner,ro 0 0
/dev/fd0 /mnt/floppy auto noauto,owner 0 0
devpts /dev/pts devpts gid=5,mode=620 0 0
proc /proc proc defaults 0 0

What should I do to be able to read cdroms???

Thanks!

Frank.

Well, reading what you just wrote:

"Hi,
I just installed Slackware and I can't mount my cdrom drive. It says: Can't find /cdrom in /etc/fstab or /etc/mtab.

Here is what is written in fstab:
/dev/hda5 swap swap defaults 0 0
/dev/hda6 / reiserfs defaults 1 1
/dev/hda1 /home reiserfs defaults 1 2
/dev/cdrom /mnt/cdrom iso9660 noauto,owner,ro 0 0
/dev/fd0 /mnt/floppy auto noauto,owner 0 0
devpts /dev/pts devpts gid=5,mode=620 0 0
proc /proc proc defaults 0 0

What should I do to be able to read cdroms???"

The more obvious thing that I see is that /cdrom =! /mnt/cdrom. So, I hope you are mounting /mnt/cdrom as that is what is in your /etc/fstab. mount /mnt/cdrom.

If there is not directory in /mnt for cdrom, create one, and try again. If I have not read this correctly, please clarify. Good luck.

Thor

The /mnt/cdrom is indeed there, and I can access to it. The problem is I always get a blank directory. I do umount on the shell and they say the cdrom drive isn't mounted yet. Then I do mount and they tell me this:
Can't find /cdrom in /etc/fstab or /etc/mtab.

What can I do to be able to access the contents of my cdroms???

try mount /mnt/cdrom or mount /dev/cdrom

As I said, I can't mount my cdrom drive. When I do mount /mnt/cdrom, it says: Can't find /cdrom in /etc/fstab or /etc/mtab.

Have you tried this (as root):

mount -t iso9660 /dev/cdrom /mnt/cdrom

If that fails, try going through the commands that you used to get this error and cut and paste them in here. Prompts and all and don't leave anything out.

When I do: mount -t iso9660 /dev/cdrom /mnt/cdrom
it shows:
mount: block device /dev/cdrom is write-protected, mounting read-only
mount: No medium found

Stupid question but do you have a regular data CD in the drive?

Of course!

Hi Frank,
Just so we all are on a level playing field, /dev/cdrom is not a 'real' device, it's a sym link to the 'real' device. Normally, it would link to /dev/hdc (master on the secondary ide channel, but it can be /dev/hdb or /dev/hdd.
Now, if you open up a console window, type 'dmesg' and look at the output, you can actually see the devices being discovered/configured at boot, see if you can figure out what the real device is for your 'cdrom'.
Next, please do a 'ls -al /dev/cdrom' and tell us what your your system is linking /dev/cdrom to? This will tell us what to do next.
In the mean time, you may have a corrupted mtab file. How about doing $ rm -f /etc/mtab*
, then reboot.

Here my fstab:
/dev/hda5 swap swap defaults 0 0
/dev/hda6 / ext3 defaults 1 1
/dev/cdrom /mnt/cdrom iso9660 noauto,owner,ro 0 0
/dev/fd0 /mnt/floppy auto noauto,owner 0 0
devpts /dev/pts devpts gid=5,mode=620 0 0
proc /proc proc defaults 0 0

With this, when I do 'mount /mnt/cdrom', it does:
wrong fs type, bad option, bad superblock on /dev/cdrom or too many mounted file systems.

++I did 'dmesg' and I found:
hdc: ATAPI 24X DVD-ROM drive, 512kB Cache, UDMA(33)
++I did 'ls -al /dev/cdrom' and it showed: /dev/cdrom -> /dev/hdc
++I edited my fstab and changed /dev/cdrom to /dev/hdc and now it says:
wrong fs type, bad option, bad superblock on /dev/hdc or too many mounted file systems.
++I also did 'rm -f /etc/mtab' and rebooted, but nothing changed.

I also installed Slackware on an other computer (an old Pentium 166Mhz) and I had the same problem: I couldn't mount the cdrom drive. I'm beginning to ask myself some serious questions...

To all of you Slackware 9.0 users, was your cdrom drive mounted right after the installation of the OS and if not, how did you manage to mount it???

There wasn't any entries for my cdrom drives. I added the lines in fstab myself:
/dev/hdc /mnt/cdrom iso9660 user,noauto,ro 0 0
/dev/hdd /mnt/cdrw iso9660 user,noauto,ro 0 0
I had a similar problem, but I forgot how I fixed it

Frank,
I found another link out there, by chance, are we talking about a 'rw/cdrom' and not just a cdrom?
Because if so, your device is /dev/scd0 and that's what you should be mounting. so try that:
mount -t iso9660 /dev/scd0 /mnt/cdrom
and see what happens. If it works, change your 'link' in your /dev/cdrom from /dev/hdc to /dev/scd0
example:
cd /dev
rm cdrom
ln -s /dev/scd0 /dev/cdrom
and all should be well with your fstab, if you keep it original
/dev/cdrom /mnt/cdrom iso9660 noauto,owner,ro 0 0

Go Forth and Multiply!

In fact, it's a dvd-rom drive and not a rw/cdrom drive.
I tried 'mount -t iso9660 /dev/scd0 /mnt/cdrom' and it said:
mount: /dev/hd0 is not a valid block device.

The fact that I got a dvd-rom drive doesn't seem to change a thing, because I get the same problem with my old computer, which got a regular cdrom drive!