Hello everyone,
I have some files in a cd that I need to copy in my home directory. I am not sure how to do that. Would you please help.
When I type dmesg |more I get:
hdc: UJDA720 DVD/CDRW, ATAPI CD/DVD-ROM drive
I cannot find the directory /cdrom
thanks

make a directory cdrom in /mnt/
mount your cd-rom in this new directory
move your files to your home directory

I went to the directory /mnt and cdrom was right there. I just needed to check the content of /cdrom and all the files were there. I didn't need to run the command mount. I hope that is a correct way of doing it.
Thanks

well, i guess you have the solution...

make a dir in your homefolder and copy (cp or man cp) all files from /mnt/cdrom/ to /home/newdir/

cp : copy files
cp file1 file2 : copies file1 to file2
cp file1 [file2...] dir : copies file to other directory
ATTENTION: This can change/overwrite existing files without warning!

use of wildcards : * ? and []
e.g. ls *.c : lists all files ending with `.c`
cp data* ~/backup : copies all files beginning with `data` to
that directory.
rm *.c : removes all files with extension .c
`*` is a "shell metacharacter", the shell looks up all files that
match *.c, where * can stand for any number of characters of any
sort (alpa-numeric, special characters) and replaces *.c by the found
matching names, before ls is started.
e.g. ls /etc/?? : shows all files with a filename of 2 characters
in the /etc directory
'?' stands for one character of any sort
e.g. in a directory with the files 'oldfile', 'otherfile', 'ourfile'
ls o[lt]* : lists 'oldfile' and 'otherfile'
ls o[^lt]* : lists 'ourfile'
'[]' can be used to list alternative characters for a certain
position in a name and the ^ - sign can be used to specify that a
certain character should not appear on a certain position in a name

Is there a way to just copy a set of directories without going through each file separatly. thanks again

I actually figured out how to do it faster but I keep getting the message "could not read file /mnt/cdrom/filename" for all files. does it have to do with read permissions. when I type ls -l it gives me this dr-xr-xr-x 1 root root ....
Should i change permission to be able to copy the files?
thanks for your help

hmm... are there any errors on the disc? Scratches, abrasions, smudges?

You should be able to copy off the disc with those permissions...

copy a directory: cp -rf /from/directory /to/directory/

thank you all for your help, I can read my files now. The cd is not scratched. I am not sure what is the deal with that message