I am a newbie to linux I am currentyl working with Redhat versions 7.3, 8, and 9.1 . I can mount all the cds I want on 7.3 but when I install 9.1 it doesn't even try. When I upgraded to 8 it acts like it's gonna mount but there is nothing in the cd window. I have only 64 Mb of ram on this laptop and I think that may be the problem for version 8 and 9. It is also only a 233 Mhz processor. I can't seem to find minimum requirements for GUI on any of these distros. Can anyone help me figure this problem out. BTW I am using mount in Root login to ensure it's not a user problem. Thanks in advance.

This is by far no solution for the problem, haha, but I am running Redhat 9 on an Inspiron 3000 and I as well have no luck mounting CD's. 'dmesg' gives me lots of hdc errors, and eventually mount commands time-out/give up and give the error message 'mount: No such directory'. I'm pretty sure it's not a matter of directory really, simply because of the dmesg file.

Does anyone have any ideas what could be going wrong w/ our CD drives? It boots perfectly from the drive (I installed the OS via the CDROM). I'm currently running Wmaker on this laptop (easier on resources), but it doesn't mount in Gnome or KDE either.

Is there a CDROM configuration utility we need to run perhaps? Any help would be much appreciated - I can handle my laptop not wanting to play sounds (soundcard problems still, haha), but mounting CD's is kinda important.

Thanks.

Whip out a terminal and open up /etc/fstab and post the results.

I believe these are the default redhat 9 values... but here's my fstab.

LABEL=/ / ext3 defaults 1 1
LABEL=/boot /boot ext3 defaults 1 2
none /dev/pts devpts gid=5,mode=620 0 0
none /proc proc defaults 0 0
none /dev/shm tmpfs defaults 0 0
/dev/hda3 swap swap defaults 0 0
/dev/cdrom /mnt/cdrom udf,iso9660 noauto,owner,kudzu,ro 0 0

I have also tried creating a /mnt/temp and mounting the cdrom to there... no luck. I've tried manually using the mount command w/ something like "mount -t iso9660 /dev/cdrom /mnt/cdrom", same problem.

If I check dmesg, I'm seeing things like this when I try to mount:

hdc: attached ide-cdrom driver.
hdc: ATAPI 24X CD-ROM drive, 128kB Cache, DMA
Uniform CD-ROM driver Revision: 3.12
UDR-fs DEBUG lowlevel.c:57:udf_get_last_session: XA disk: no, vol_desc_start=0
UDF-fs DEBUG super.c: 1421: udf_read_super: Multi-session=0
UDF-fs DEBUG super.c: 410: udf_vrs: Starting at sector 16 (2048 byte sectors)
hdc: DMA interrupt recovery
hdc: lost interrupt
UDF-fs DEBUG super.c: 1157: udf_check_valid: Failed to read byte 32768, Assuming open disc, Skipping validity check
hdc: status error: status=0x58 { DriveReady SeekComplete DataRequest }
hdc: status error: error=0x00
hdc: drive not ready for command
hdc: command error: status=0x51 { DriveReady SeekComplete Error }
hdc: command error: error=0x51
end_request: I/O error, dev 16:00 (hdc), sector 361384

Wow, that all sounds really bad, haha, but I can boot from this cdrom just fine, so I wouldn't think the drive is busted... hope not? :-p

Anyways, hope this sheds some more light on my problems.

Here is my Fstab. I'm running RedHat 8 currently. I haven't changed anything in here manually. If anything is off than it must have done so in configuring. I hope it helps. Cuz the only thing I can think of is that I don't have enough CPU and memory power to mount the cd in RedHat 8 or 9.
LABEL=/ / ext3 defaults 1 1
LABEL=/boot /boot ext3 defaults 1 2
none /dev/pts devpts gid=5,mode=620 0 0
none /proc proc defaults 0 0
none /dev/shm tmpfs defaults 0 0
/dev/hda3 swap swap defaults 0 0
/dev/cdrom /mnt/cdrom iso9660 noauto,owner,kudzu,ro 0 0

I hope that helps. Thanks for the help.

Sorry I have not been on in awhile. I believe we were having similar problems. What I have in my /etc/fstab is:

/dev/scd0 /mnt/cdrom iso9660 noauto,user,ro 0 0

even though my cdrom is ide wierd right, hey it works so go ahead and try adding the cdrom like that /dev/scd0 then the rest of that. And then do this :
mkdir /mnt/cdrom if its not already there then do this:
ln -n /dev/scd0 /etc/fstab
ln -n /dev/scd0 /mnt/cdrom
thats how I fixed it let me know if it works if not display the error and we will take it from there.

Hrm, well, when attempting to execute the first ln command, it's telling me that /etc/fstab already exists. I'm thinking it'd be bad if I replaced that file w/ a link, hehe. Am I missing something?

Attempting a mount of scd0 from the command line gives me "mount: /dev/scd0 is not a valid block device". Dunno if that's because it's not the right device or if it's because the ln didn't go through.

still type mount /mnt/cdrom
but when I had you ln that /dev/scd0 to /mnt/cdrom it should find that those to files had been linked.
try that and let me know what happens

and here is the results.
mount: /dev/scd0 is not a valid block device
That is from disk management in Redhat 8
I did upgrade the ram which helped in speed of system, but not in mounting cdrom. I now have 128 MB of ram instead of 64.
Anymore suggestions?

I found my solution to this problem in kind of a cheezy way, haha. I gave up on RH and switched to slackware, hehe, and everything's working just fine. My fstab looks almost if not exactly the same when it comes to the cdrom, so I don't think that was the problem. What was the problem.. well, I still don't know, haha, but I do know it's working in the latest slack.