I have 2 cd roms one rewriter the other not. Ithe system says that there not mounted. Er.......excuse me whats that & how do I do that?

you should mount devices in linux by typing mount /dev/device /mountpoint

for example, when you want to mount your cdrom to /cdrom, type

mount /dev/cdrom /cdrom

After that you can access your cdrom through the folder /cdrom.

Thanx for that. But what are you doing when you r mounting? My cdrom seems to work but won't open again. Any reason?

/cdrom is just an empty directory to start with.

/dev/cdrom is what's called a 'special device file'. It's not a chunk of bytes like a regular file. It's sort of an access point to the hardware.

When you mount /dev/cdrom on /cdrom all the files on the CD (assuming there is one in the drive) magically appear as they should in the directory /cdrom.

Each partition on the hard drive also has an /dev/something special device file. One is designated as root '/'. Then all the files in the other devices and partitions are sort of glued in place relative to that by the mount process.

The file /etc/fstab contains the description of what should be mounted where and how.

For removable media like CD's, you generally have to unmount the device before you remove the disk, and vice-versa. The easiest way to handle this depends on your setup/distribution.

You'll probably have to type umount /dev/cdrom, then you'll be able to open the cdrom again.

So if my cdrom seems to read my cd's but doesn't open when I press the button, does that meen I have to mount it? I'm sorry for this I'm a little slow u know a little like linux

If you can read the CD contents then the drive is mounted, and the computer won't let you take the disk out. So you have to unmount it e.g.

# umount /dev/cdrom

Then press the button, and it should open. Depending on your setup, there may be some sort of desktop menu for mounting/unmounting CD drives.

There is an easier way.

Open up "disk management" from 'System Tools', click the drive you want, then click mount. It will appear on the desktop. When you're done copying files or whatever, right click on the drive and hit eject

Thanks for that Mike, I've tryed that but 'device not found' comes up........what does that meen?

Are you sure the disk is in the drive?

Yep. I get most of what's on there, except audio. I can't eject. Aaaaaggghhh, this is so frustrating as I'm sure once I find out it will be something simple..........isn't usually

Maybe the audio files are bad?

When you mount a cdrom drive it locks the drive. You can't eject. You have to unmount the drive then the eject should free up. If that is not working the only thing I can suggest is to try and eject while rebooting. That should be possible. Then if your system is auto-mounting the cdrom it should error and not mount therefor allowing you to open the drive.

Some things I would suggest:

1) try other cd's
2) try other cdrom drives and/or that drive in anothe comp.

You can't mount audio disks, you need to use a CD player. You only need to mount data disks.

Er thanx mike I've just figured out what you ment by Disk management............did I mention I am the most newbie'est newbie................Der

# Managing drives
LNAG - Accessing my drives
Rute - Device Mounting