Problems Mounting a DVD Writer
 

Hi there,
I'm very new to Linux in general, and i have a Sony DRX-710UL Dual Layer 16x DVD +/-R/RW USB2 & Firewire that I'd like to mount on my Compaq Presario with Mandrake 10.1. Being a TOTAL noob I don't even know where to begin. Any help would be appretiated.

~scott

I think Mandrake automounts CDs, doesn't it? So what happens when you put a CD or DVD in the drive? If it doesn't seem to recognise it then it is fairly simple to fix. Open up the file '/etc/fstab' in a text editor and post it's contents here.

If you want to use the DVD writer to burn to a CD-R or DVD-R then the media doesn't have to be mounted, you just put it and open up k3b or whatever you use.

When I put in a CD or a DVD nothing happens. There is no icon on the desktop and k3b doesnt seem to reconize it. I opened up the '/etc/fstab' and this was in there:

/dev/hda3 / ext3 noatime 1 1
none /dev/pts devpts mode=0620 0 0
/dev/hdc /mnt/cdrom auto umask=0,user,iocharset=iso8859-1,codepage=850,noauto,ro,exec,users 0 0
/dev/sdb1 /mnt/removable2 auto umask=0,user,iocharset=iso8859-1,sync,kudzu,codepage=850,noauto,exec,users 0 0
/dev/hda1 /mnt/windows ntfs umask=0,nls=iso8859-1,ro 0 0
none /proc proc defaults 0 0
/dev/hda5 swap swap defaults 0 0

I' still clueless. Any ideas?
~scott

Okay, I have another question...Is the DVD burner the only drive in your compuer (apart from your hard drive)? I mean, do you also have a seperate CD drive and DVD burner?

And also, what happens if you put a blank disk in, open up k3b and try to write a file? Sorry I haven't been so helpful so far..

I have a cdrom in my computer. With it I can read and write CDs but only read DVDs. This new DVD Writer of mine is connected via USB 2.0

When I put a blank DVD-R or even just a data DVD and start up k3b nothing happens. I open up k3b and it shows me the cdrom built into the laptop, but it doesn't show the DVD writer.

My only choices of where to drag my files from are on my hard drive or the cdrom.

I'm sorry if im being redundant, this is really frustrating me and I don't want to leave out any details while trying to explain this to you.
Any other questions?

~scott

Okay, so I think I have a plan :)

As root, open up the file /etc/fstab and add this line:

This should get it recognised as a sort of USB drive, but I can't garentee it'll work. Oh, and you can change the '/mnt/dvd' part to where ever you want to mount it. If that works then you should be able to mount it with You will also have to create a directory to act as a mount point, for example if you want to keep it as /mnt/dvd you would have to create a new directory of the same name.

I could hug you.

I typed that in my fstab file and now my file manager sees it. I think another problem arose though. When I double click my DVD-R drive to see whats in it, the file manager (Xandros File Manager) just stalls. The DVD drive spins but it cant seem to tell i have a DVD in it. I'm not sure if it matters weather its a movie or just random files :scratch: .

:edit: When i right-click the DVD-R in the file manager it tells me it isn't mounted. So i opened up the terminal and tried mounting it and got this:

Susanne:~# mount /mnt/dvd
[mntent]: warning: no final newline at the end of /etc/fstab
mount: you must specify the filesystem type

Mabey I missed something in your instructions.

The thing is that I want to make backups of my DVD's, but not matter what I do, I can't get in the DVD-R drive to rip my movies or even look at the files. You've been so helpful for far and have made my migration to Linux tolerable. If you have any ideas please share.

~scott the :newbie:

P.S. I recently switched over to Xandros 3.0

You could try changing that new line in /etc/fstab a little. Replace the word 'auto' with 'iso9660' so that it now looks like this:

I hope that works better for you. :)