I installed Slackware 9 on my Dell Inspiron 1100... and I've gotten everything installed and working except for my cd-rom, I'm new to Linux, and I was wondering if someone could help me configure and install my cd-rom. Its the default cd-rom that comes with a Dell Inspiron 1100... if someone could give me the basic commands on how to install and configure my cd-rom or a link, something helpful, that'd be great. Thanks.

# mount /dev/cdrom is what i use.
after you type that you can access the CDROM from konsole or xwindows

My CDROM wont open unless I unmount the drive. So I use

# umount /dev/cdrom

When I try to mount the cd-rom this is the message I'm getting:

# mount /dev/cdrom
mount: wrong fs type, bad option, bad superblock on /dev/cdrom,
or too many mounted file systems

# mount /dev/cdrom/
mount: can't find /dev/hda in /etc/fstab or /etc/mtab
#

Don't know exactly what that means... or what to do or where to go from here... if anyone has suggestions, or a site that might be able to help I'd appricate it, thanks!

I have Slackware 10 on this laptop. It has a couple quirks including that the hard drive mounts as hdc and there is no floppy.

fstab should have a line that says: /dev/cdrom /mnt/cdrom iso9660 noauto, owner,ro 00

I never really use the cdrom so I have'nt figured bothered to mess with it much but Slackware 10 insists on calling it /dev/hda in the mtab and the hard drive /dev/hdc but it seems to work ok. I think that mtab works by how the device is jumped and/or where it is on the cable. /dev/hda would be primary master and /dev/hdc would be the secondary master. Anyhow, mtab should read the same as fstab except for being /dev/hda instead.

That should work, it does on mine anyhow. I suspect that your key error is that one or both of these files does not have the iso9660 in as the fs type.

My fstab says:

/dev/hdc3 swap swap defaults 0 0
/dev/hdc2 / reiserfs 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

and... my mtab says:

/dev/hdc2 / reiserfs rw 0 0
devpts /dev/pts devpts rw,gid=5,mode=620 0 0
proc /proc proc rw 0 0
usbfs /proc/bus/usb usbfs rw 0 0

do I need to add, or change anything? or am I just typing something wrong that I can't access my cd-rom? Please help, thanks!

You may need to add /dev/hda /mnt/cdrom iso9660 noauto,owner,ro 0 0 to your mtab. Not all distro's seem to need this but Slackware may.

If not that. Hmm. I'd have to think more.

I added that line to my mtab, then tryed to mount my cd-rom... this is what I came up with...

# mount /dev/cdrom
mount: wrong fs type, bad option, bad superblock on /dev/cdrom,
or too many mounted file systems

# mount /dev/cdrom/
[mntent]: warning: no final newline at the end of /etc/mtab
mount: wrong fs type, bad option, bad superblock on /dev/hda,
or too many mounted file systems
#

no final newline at the end of /etc/mtab sounds like a syntax error. Post all of both files again.

This might be the problem... my cdrom and hd have the same id...:

# df
Filesystem 1K-blocks Used Available Use% Mounted on
/dev/hdc2 19172984 9650956 9522028 51% /
/dev/hda 19172984 9650956 9522028 51% /mnt/cdrom
#

Anyone have a solution to my problem? ;-/

Can you put up the mtab and fstab files as they are now?

mtab:

/dev/hdc2 / reiserfs rw 0 0
devpts /dev/pts devpts rw,gid=5,mode=620 0 0
proc /proc proc rw 0 0
usbfs /proc/bus/usb usbfs rw 0 0

fstab:

/dev/hdc3 swap swap defaults 0 0
/dev/hdc2 / reiserfs 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

What I was looking for was to see if there was a syntax error of some kind in the mtab line I told you to put in. That's what the error message looked like. Put it in again as the second line of mtab and then reboot. Watch for any mount related error messages at boot or check the log after. If there is an error message post it.

If there is no boot error messages try mounting again. Then post any error message you may get and post the fstab and mtab as the are with that entry in mtab

If none of this works I would be curious to see what your partition table for hdc looks like as well.

There is no floppy on your laptop right? You may want to take the floppy line out of fstab as well. It probably dos'nt matter but just to avoid any confusion.

Probably doesn't help, but the cdrom on my laptop is hdc under Slackware 10 (pretty sure it was the same on Slack9 but it was a while ago).

Are you running the 2.6 kernel? If so, you can hop into your /dev folder (which doesn't have quite as much crap as it did under 2.4) Might help pin down what the system's calling it.

So, on my system
# mount /dev/hdc

works, but if I want to be specific about it,

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

Best of luck.

I'm running 2.4.26 ... should I just change the mounts for the hard drive to hda and the mount for the cdrom to hdc and where all should I change it... and could you post the exact commands? If that wont work can you explain what I need to do? Sorry I'm new to linux... Thank you all for your help!