Heyas,


I just recently bought a Samsung SW240 CD-RW(40x12x40) and I am not sure how to set it up in Mandrake 9.1. It works fine in WindowsXP and Linux sees it as a normal CD drive.

I saw a package in rpmDrake called cdrecord and installed that and the other package it required. However, I still don't seem to be able to copy files to a CD. I get the error saying "Writing to devices is not supported". Is there something I am missing or some config setting?

Thank you,
Chris

Have you tried HardDrake (in Mandrake Control Center)?

Yes, I went to HardDrake and it sees the drive as a CD-RW, at first it tried to use the same mount point as my CD-ROM drive so I changed it to /mnt/CD-RW and kept the CD-ROM at /mnt/cdrom. I can view files on both drives, the CD-RW can read CD-RW disks that I put files on from my Windows partition, but I cannot figure out how to right files to the CD from Linux.

I'm not sure if I need to download and install come kind of CD Writing software or something?

Thanks

That I am not sure of myself, I have yet to try to write using my cd-rw drive (I have a combo drive - it's cd-rw/dvd/cdrom).
You may need CD Writing software, have you tried looking for RPM packages?

You need to make your system see the writer as a scsi device before you can write to it. Windows does exactly the same, but the program - Nero or whatever - does that as you launch it. In Linux, do this;

1 - edit the file /etc/lilo.conf as root. Make sure there is a line that starts append.... and add to make it like this -
append="quiet noapic devfs=mount hdd=ide-scsi acpi=off" - Note I have hdd because my writer is secondary slave, secondary master is hdc etc. Use whichever is right for your setup.

2 - again as root, run lilo (just type lilo in a console). This activates the changes you have just made.

3 - reboot - this is one of very few times you need to reboot in Linux after altering something.

4 - install some software - xcdroast etc.

5 - check all is well by opening a console as root and typing cdrecord -scanbus You should now see your writer listed as a scsi device.

OK, that should do it, but you seem to be interested in writing packets to the disk, like an extra hard-drive. As far as I know, this process is so risky and unstable that there is no program in Linux to do it. At the moment, you need to use cdwriting software instead. By the way, the software will show up in Applications - Archiving - CD Burning.

Thanks a lot for all your help. I finally got it working and can write to my CDs

Thanks a lot,

Chris