What nacky means is that the writing application does not rely on the the fstab file. You configure the application with the CDROM device.

Go look at the output of dmesg and see if there are any error messages relating to the CDRW.

Hi, there!

I have checked my /etc/lilo.conf, which looks like this:

boot=/dev/hdb8
map=/boot/map
default="linux"
keytable=/boot/br-abnt2.klt
prompt
nowarn
timeout=100
message=/boot/message
menu-scheme=wb:bw:wb:bw
disk=/dev/hdb bios=0x80
image=/boot/vmlinuz
label="linux"
root=/dev/hdb8
initrd=/boot/initrd.img
append="devfs=mount hdc=ide-scsi hdd=ide-scsi acpi=off quiet"
vga=788
read-only
image=/boot/vmlinuz
label="linux-nonfb"
root=/dev/hdb8
initrd=/boot/initrd.img
append="devfs=mount hdc=ide-scsi hdd=ide-scsi acpi=off"
read-only
image=/boot/vmlinuz
label="failsafe"
root=/dev/hdb8
initrd=/boot/initrd.img
append="devfs=nomount hdc=ide-scsi hdd=ide-scsi acpi=off failsafe"
read-only
other=/dev/hdb1
label="windows"
table=/dev/hdb
other=/dev/fd0
label="floppy"
unsafe

If I configure my CDRW (at /etc/fstab) as /dev/hdd, I get the following error message:
file system invalid, invalid option, superblock (supermount??) invalid at /dev/hdd, or execessive number of file systems mounted


If I configure my CDRW (at /etc/fstab) as /dev/hdc, I get the following error message:
mount: /dev/hdc: it is not possible to read superblock (supermount??)

I tried modifying my "append..." line in my /etc/lilo.conf, in order to eliminate the dual possibility (hdc=ide-scsi and hdd=ide-scsi). That didn't work either.

Is the "devfs=mount" part of my /etc/lilo.conf necessary? Coult that be giving me trouble?

Thank you.

Cheers,
Macbrito

I know nothing about devfs so I won't presume to comment on it.

Again, are you sure you have valid ISO-9660 cd roms in those drives when you're trying to mount them?

Reading a device and mounting a filesystem are two separate things. You can have an unmounted disk device and still read and write to it, in a way. Mounting just gives you a way to read the filesystem structure.

You CANNOT mount CDR blanks since there's no filesystem on it. So you certainly won't mount your cd burner before burning a disc. I had, and used, my cd-burner for quite some time before I ever once tried to mount it.

Hi, Snacky,

Thanks for letting me know those facts.

Yes, I have been trying these commands with a commercial CD-ROM in the drive which I have used for other purposes (like burning an image in Windows-XP), so I would expect the CD is OK for testing the mount command.

Trouble is I would expect the /dev/scd0 to work OK because I am emulating a scsi device. The fact that it is recognized by the system as hdc is somewhat confusing to me.

It doesn't work with /dev/scd0 or /dev/scd1.

It returns an error message saying "this is not a valid block(ing) device".

Thanks for wasting your precious time with my tiny problem, though.

Best,
Macbrito.

Have you looked at the output from dmesg yet?

Yes, Michaelk, I have looked at dmesg: it tells me, as far as can gather, that my CDRW is recognized as hdc.

What puzzles me, then, is that "/dev/hdc /mnt/cdrw iso9660 defaults 0 0" will return me an error message saying "hdc is not a valid block(ing) device".

Thanks anyway.

Best,
Macbrito.

Michaelk,

Here is the output of my "dmesg":

Linux version 2.4.22 (root@midas) (gcc version 3.2.3) #6 Tue Sep 2 17:43:01 PDT 2003
BIOS-provided physical RAM map:
BIOS-e820: 0000000000000000 - 000000000009fc00 (usable)
BIOS-e820: 000000000009fc00 - 00000000000a0000 (reserved)
BIOS-e820: 00000000000f0000 - 0000000000100000 (reserved)
BIOS-e820: 0000000000100000 - 000000001ffec000 (usable)
BIOS-e820: 000000001ffec000 - 000000001ffef000 (ACPI data)
BIOS-e820: 000000001ffef000 - 000000001ffff000 (reserved)
BIOS-e820: 000000001ffff000 - 0000000020000000 (ACPI NVS)
BIOS-e820: 00000000ffff0000 - 0000000100000000 (reserved)
511MB LOWMEM available.
On node 0 totalpages: 131052
zone(0): 4096 pages.
zone(1): 126956 pages.
zone(2): 0 pages.
Kernel command line: BOOT_IMAGE=kurumin ro root=348 hdc=ide-scsi
ide_setup: hdc=ide-scsi
Initializing CPU#0
Detected 908.098 MHz processor.
Console: colour dummy device 80x25
Calibrating delay loop... 1808.79 BogoMIPS
Memory: 515348k/524208k available (1813k kernel code, 8472k reserved, 614k data, 116k init, 0k highmem)
Dentry cache hash table entries: 65536 (order: 7, 524288 bytes)
Inode cache hash table entries: 32768 (order: 6, 262144 bytes)
Mount cache hash table entries: 512 (order: 0, 4096 bytes)
Buffer cache hash table entries: 32768 (order: 5, 131072 bytes)
Page-cache hash table entries: 131072 (order: 7, 524288 bytes)
CPU: L1 I Cache: 64K (64 bytes/line), D cache 64K (64 bytes/line)
CPU: L2 Cache: 256K (64 bytes/line)
CPU: After generic, caps: 0183f9ff c1c7f9ff 00000000 00000000
CPU: Common caps: 0183f9ff c1c7f9ff 00000000 00000000
CPU: AMD Athlon(tm) Processor stepping 04
Enabling fast FPU save and restore... done.
Checking 'hlt' instruction... OK.
POSIX conformance testing by UNIFIX
mtrr: v1.40 (20010327) Richard Gooch (rgooch@atnf.csiro.au)
mtrr: detected mtrr type: Intel
PCI: PCI BIOS revision 2.10 entry at 0xf1150, last bus=1
PCI: Using configuration type 1
PCI: Probing PCI hardware
PCI: Probing PCI hardware (bus 00)
Disabling VIA memory write queue (PCI ID 0305, rev 03): [55] 89 & 1f -> 09
PCI: Using IRQ router VIA [1106/0686] at 00:04.0
Applying VIA southbridge workaround.
Linux NET4.0 for Linux 2.4
Based upon Swansea University Computer Society NET3.039
Initializing RT netlink socket
Starting kswapd
VFS: Disk quotas vdquot_6.5.1
Journalled Block Device driver loaded
vesafb: framebuffer at 0xe2000000, mapped to 0xe080d000, size 1536k
vesafb: mode is 1024x768x8, linelength=1024, pages=4
vesafb: protected mode interface info at c000:03c5
vesafb: scrolling: redraw
Console: switching to colour frame buffer device 128x48
fb0: VESA VGA frame buffer device
pty: 512 Unix98 ptys configured
Serial driver version 5.05c (2001-07-08) with HUB-6 MANY_PORTS MULTIPORT SHARE_IRQ SERIAL_PCI enabled
ttyS00 at 0x03f8 (irq = 4) is a 16550A
ttyS01 at 0x02f8 (irq = 3) is a 16550A
Real Time Clock Driver v1.10e
Floppy drive(s): fd0 is 1.44M
FDC 0 is a post-1991 82077
RAMDISK driver initialized: 16 RAM disks of 7777K size 1024 blocksize
loop: loaded (max 8 devices)
Uniform Multi-Platform E-IDE driver Revision: 7.00beta4-2.4
ide: Assuming 33MHz system bus speed for PIO modes; override with idebus=xx
VP_IDE: IDE controller at PCI slot 00:04.1
VP_IDE: chipset revision 6
VP_IDE: not 100% native mode: will probe irqs later
VP_IDE: VIA vt82c686b (rev 40) IDE UDMA100 controller on pci00:04.1
ide0: BM-DMA at 0xd800-0xd807, BIOS settings: hdaMA, hdbMA
ide1: BM-DMA at 0xd808-0xd80f, BIOS settings: hdcMA, hddio
PDC20265: IDE controller at PCI slot 00:11.0
PCI: Found IRQ 10 for device 00:11.0
PCI: Sharing IRQ 10 with 00:0b.0
PDC20265: chipset revision 2
PDC20265: not 100% native mode: will probe irqs later
PDC20265: (U)DMA Burst Bit DISABLED Primary PCI Mode Secondary PCI Mode.
ide2: BM-DMA at 0x8000-0x8007, BIOS settings: hdeio, hdfio
ide3: BM-DMA at 0x8008-0x800f, BIOS settings: hdgio, hdhio
hdb: C/H/S=0/0/0 from BIOS ignored
hda: LG DVD-ROM DRD-8160B, ATAPI CD/DVD-ROM drive
hdb: QUANTUM FIREBALLP AS40.0, ATA DISK drive
blk: queue c03a9ebc, I/O limit 4095Mb (mask 0xffffffff)
hdc: LG CD-RW CED-8120B, ATAPI CD/DVD-ROM drive
hdd: IOMEGA ZIP 100 ATAPI, ATAPI FLOPPY drive
ide0 at 0x1f0-0x1f7,0x3f6 on irq 14
ide1 at 0x170-0x177,0x376 on irq 15
hdb: attached ide-disk driver.
hdb: host protected area => 1
hdb: 78177792 sectors (40027 MB) w/1902KiB Cache, CHS=77557/16/63, UDMA(100)
hda: attached ide-cdrom driver.
hda: ATAPI 48X DVD-ROM drive, 512kB Cache, UDMA(33)
Uniform CD-ROM driver Revision: 3.12
hdd: attached ide-floppy driver.
hdd: 98304kB, 196608 blocks, 512 sector size
hdd: 98304kB, 32/64/96 CHS, 4096 kBps, 512 sector size, 2941 rpm
Partition check:
hdb: [PTBL] [4866/255/63] hdb1 hdb2 < hdb5 hdb6 hdb7 hdb8 >
hdd: hdd4
SCSI subsystem driver Revision: 1.00
kmod: failed to exec /sbin/modprobe -s -k scsi_hostadapter, errno = 2
kmod: failed to exec /sbin/modprobe -s -k scsi_hostadapter, errno = 2
kmod: failed to exec /sbin/modprobe -s -k scsi_hostadapter, errno = 2
md: linear personality registered as nr 1
md: raid0 personality registered as nr 2
md: raid1 personality registered as nr 3
md: raid5 personality registered as nr 4
raid5: measuring checksumming speed
8regs : 1301.600 MB/sec
32regs : 745.600 MB/sec
pII_mmx : 2126.000 MB/sec
p5_mmx : 2712.400 MB/sec
raid5: using function: p5_mmx (2712.400 MB/sec)
md: md driver 0.90.0 MAX_MD_DEVS=256, MD_SB_DISKS=27
md: Autodetecting RAID arrays.
md: autorun ...
md: ... autorun DONE.
LVM version 1.0.5+(22/07/2002)
Initializing Cryptographic API
NET4: Linux TCP/IP 1.0 for NET4.0
IP Protocols: ICMP, UDP, TCP
IP: routing cache hash table of 4096 buckets, 32Kbytes
TCP: Hash tables configured (established 32768 bind 65536)
NET4: Unix domain sockets 1.0/SMP for Linux NET4.0.
FAT: bogus logical sector size 5632
UMSDOS: msdos_read_super failed, mount aborted.
FAT: bogus logical sector size 5632
FAT: bogus logical sector size 5632
reiserfs: found format "3.6" with standard journal
reiserfs: checking transaction log (device ide0(3,72)) ...
for (ide0(3,72))
ide0(3,72):Using r5 hash to sort names
VFS: Mounted root (reiserfs filesystem) readonly.
Freeing unused kernel memory: 116k freed
Adding Swap: 2097136k swap-space (priority -1)
ISO 9660 Extensions: Microsoft Joliet Level 3
ISOFS: changing to secondary root
hdd: hdd4
hdd3: bad access: block=64, count=2
end_request: I/O error, dev 16:43 (hdd), sector 64
isofs_read_super: bread failed, dev=16:43, iso_blknum=16, block=32
hdd: hdd4
hdd: hdd4
reiserfs: found format "3.6" with standard journal
reiserfs: checking transaction log (device ide0(3,71)) ...
for (ide0(3,71))
ide0(3,71):Using r5 hash to sort names
hdd3: bad access: block=64, count=2
end_request: I/O error, dev 16:43 (hdd), sector 64
isofs_read_super: bread failed, dev=16:43, iso_blknum=16, block=32

Best regards,
Macbrito

ls -l /dev/hd* (to display devices)

/dev/hdc on my system is a symlink.

Michaelk,

When I give the command "ls -l /dev/hd*", my cdrwiter is displayed at the top of the list, as "/dev/hda".

This does not make sense, since "/dev/hda" is the way that Mandrake recognizes my cdrom (not my cdwriter), according to the line I included in /etc/fstab (which works OK)