Dear Friends,

My PC is an AMD-Athlon, 900, with 512 RAM, CD-ROM and CDRW. My CD-ROM is recognized by the system without any problem (as /dev/hda4, if I am not mistaken), but I can't get the Mankrake distro.to recognize my CDRW.

I have got the K3B in Mandrake but I cannot configure the system to accept my CD-writer: I have already tried to modify my /etc/fstab in all possible and imaginable manners, to no avail. I have already tried:

/dev/scd0
/dev/scd1
/dev/sr
/dev/sr0
/dev/sr1
/dev/hda
/dev/hda1
/dev/hda2
/dev/hdc
/dev/hdc0
/dev/hdc1
/dev/hdc2
/dev/hdd
/dev/hdd0
/dev/hdd1
/dev/hdd2

After that I add the following information /mnt/cdrw iso9660 defaults 0 0. Alternatively, I have also tried to add (instead of this): noauto, owner, rw, 0 0.

Nothing seems to work.

The same CD-writer is recognized, in a different partition of my HD, by Slackware Linux. There, it is recognized as /dev/scd0. I have, of course, tried all possibilities around (and similar to) that option: /dev/scd0, /dev/scd, /dev/scd1, /dev/scd2, /dev/scd3

Any suggestions?

Thank you.

Best wishes,
Macbrito.

FYI: /dev/hda4 is the 4th partition of the first hard drive.

Get this: ftp://216.254.0.38/linux/PLD/current...3-3.athlon.rpm

That'll let cdrecord work without the ide-scsi kludge - which is probably what your Slackware installation is using, which is why it works.

Your frontend may not be able to cope with it, but you can always use commandline cdrecord.

Thank you for answering me so promptly.

I will follow your suggestion and see if it works.

Best,
Macbrito

Curious, Mandrake is usually successfull in configuring common stuff.
Is this a standard IDE CDRW?
IDE device IDs:
1st IDE controller:
master - /dev/hda
slave - /dev/hdb
2nd IDE controller;
master - /dev/hdc
slave - /dev/hdd
and so on....
USB, SCSI and SCSI emulation
/dev/scd0

Check your bootloader configuration file. Do you have something like
append "hdx=ide-scsi"

Where x = a,b,c or d ... based on the above.

Look at the output of the console command dmesg. Any messages relating to the CDRW?

I just want to be clear, in case it looks like our replies are conflicting, I agree with what michaelk is saying and that's one direction to go to fix it (I use ide-scsi myself). There are now two ways to address the issue.

Dear Michaelk,

Thank you very much for your suggestions.

I was also quite surprised that Mandrake did not recognize my hardware immediately. I have had Mandrake installed before and it did recognize my whole hardware flawlessly.

Trouble is, maybe, that I repartitioned by HD and installed Slackware in a separate partition.

Since I did that, no system has ever again been able to recognize my cable modem, for example. I have tried with College Linux, Turbo Linux, Definity Linux, etc., etc. I must have tried with around 10 different distros. and none of them seems to be able to recognize my cable modem (the error messages I get have got to do with not being able to find modules of one sort or another).

Is there a way of my freezing the screen (as my Mandrake is booting), so that I can check what the system is registering as my CDRW? I suspect it is hdc but I am not too sure and I don't seem to be able to slow down (preferably freeze) the very quick booting process to find that out.

Another worthwhile point to note is that my Mandrake recognized my CDROM wrongly and I had to correct it (with a much simpler line on my /etc/fstab, where I stated "/dev/hda0 /mnt/cdrom iso9660 defaults 0 0", instead of a much longer line which included "fs= ..., noauto, ro, 0 0".

I don't understand why the apparent problems which arose only after I repartitioned my HD. In fact, I decided to install Slackware because Mandrake proved very unstable: once it "froze" and I had to reinstall the whole system, having lost some e-mail configurations (which kind of scared me because I didn't think I could trust the system).

Thanks for offering me some help. I will look at your suggestions closely and let you know if I got anywhere.

All the best,
Mauricio.

OK, Snacky, thanks for clarifying!

You can always get the boot messages by running "dmesg"

Your cdrom might be /dev/hda, but there's no such thing as hda0.

Often when it looks like you're frozen up, linux is still running fine, but maybe something's gone wrong with X. Sometimes you can get out with ctrl+alt+backspace or you can use ctrl+alt+F1 to get to the console and try to fix things. Other times you can usually get into your computer if you can ssh in from outside - yeah, I know that's not helpful if you've only got one computer.

I've run several distros and I've had exactly ONE application totally lock up my box. The only other times I'd crashed Linux was back when I was kind of new and I would try crazy things just to see if they'd crash my system (e.g. redirecting output to /dev/kmem)

OK, Snacky, helpful tips!

Dear Michaelk (and Snacky),

I did find out that my CDRW is at hdc (because I have the line "hdc=ide-scsi" at boot).

Strangely enough to me, I am still unable to mount my CDRW because I get the error message "it was not possible to read supermount" (in fact, I get the message in Portuguese and am trying to translate it into English; in Portuguese the message mentions "superblock", which I am translating as "supermount", without being 100% sure that it is the correct term).

My /etc/fstab line goes like this:

/dev/hdc /mnt/cdrw iso9660 defaults 0 0

Sorry to keep bothering you with simple questions.

Cheers,
Macbrito.

This might sound stupid of me to point out, but it won't mount if there's not a valid disc in there.

Maybe you've got a blank in the drive.

Again, that's no problem - you do not need to mount the drive to write to it (in fact, it's impossible for blank discs).

Ok, Snacky, it's always good to check because newbies do all sorts of crazy and unexpected things.

But, in this case, there is indeed a disc in the drive (and it is not blank).

OK then. Remember, this drive now works through ide-scsi emulation, so this is probably what its fstab entry should look like:
Remember, this doesn't affect writing.

OK, Snacky, I will try that possibilty.

But I did try /dev/scd0 many times before, with no success (although I had "... /mnt/cdrw iso9660 defaults 0 0", which I am not sure whether is the wrong information to have).

I'll keep looking into it.

That failing, I will try your first suggestion (with the tp://216.254.0.38/linux/PLD/curren....3-3.athlon.rpm

Thank you!

Cheers,
Macbrito

Snacky,

You said, at the end of your message: "remember, that does not affect writing".

I don't know what you mean by this: if my system does not recognize the existence of my CDRW, I don't see how your message could be understood.

I would have thought that it does affect writing (how else would I be able to write into a CDRW; if the system doesn't know it is there, how can I write into it???).

I know I must be mis-interpreting your words somehow....