want to burn a cd... but don't know how - using a very fresh install of slackware (2 weeks old) with about nothing else installed - i want to go to debian... and have the minicd iso downloaded, but... how do i go about doing it? im just mainly looking for something simple... not neccisarily the whys and wherefors and hows behind it - not for now i doubt much'l sink in...

this is just random thoughts on what ive done so far and what im working with: (sorry they aren't in any order)

i have 2 drives, a dvd drive and a cd burner, which is not a scsi drive - just yer regular ide

i believe i have a 2.4x kernel... although i dont know the command to check...

nor do i know the command to check to see if my drives are even working
(i know how to mount cds, but thats about it)

i read something about xcdroaster that was supposed to be included with slack but i can't find it installed

when i run cdrecord -scanbus it doesn't show anything, it errors out (i understand im supposed to get 3 numbers from that and i can use that for my burner..
this is what it says:
drecord-Clone 2.01 (i686-pc-linux-gnu) Copyright (C) 1995-2004 Jörg Schilling
cdrecord: No such file or directory. Cannot open '/dev/pg*'. Cannot open SCSI driver.
cdrecord: For possible targets try 'cdrecord -scanbus'.
cdrecord: For possible transport specifiers try 'cdrecord dev=help'.

dmesg | grep ATAPI shows nothing that i can see of use, i can for example put a music cd into my dvd drive (not the burning drive) and play it in kde using whatever cd player program...:
scsi0 : SCSI host adapter emulation for IDE ATAPI devices
pg: No ATAPI device detected
pg: No ATAPI device detected
pg: No ATAPI device detected
pg: No ATAPI device detected
pg: No ATAPI device detected
pg: No ATAPI device detected
pg: No ATAPI device detected
pg: No ATAPI device detected
pg: No ATAPI device detected
pg: No ATAPI device detected
pg: No ATAPI device detected
pg: No ATAPI device detected
pg: No ATAPI device detected
pg: No ATAPI device detected
pg: No ATAPI device detected
pg: No ATAPI device detected
pg: No ATAPI device detected
pg: No ATAPI device detected
pg: No ATAPI device detected
pg: No ATAPI device detected
pg: No ATAPI device detected
pg: No ATAPI device detected


dmesg | grep CD just gives me another bash prompt - doesn't print anything

i couldn't really find anything on google (i couldn't think of any search terms that didn't pull up 1000 useless docs) and slacks "help" is a complete joke, i looked around on the forum for a bit but i didn't see anything that could help me, because im not exactly sure what i need... is it a driver issue or a cdrecorder issue or a pibkac/id10t error?

am i doing something completely stupidly wrong/missing something? im totally new so im sorry....

thanks in advance for your help

is it a scsi drive?
if it's an atapi (ide) device then you'd use /dev/cdrom (or /dev/cdrom1) as your cdrecord device.

er... no its not a scsi - just ide - and am i missing something painfully obvious? because

cdrecord -scanbus dev=/dev/cdrom
cdrecord -scanbus dev=/dev/cdrom1

both give me (almost) the same errors.

perhaps you might have to recompile a kernel for ide-scsi emulation... but forget the -scanbus, it's scanning the scsi bus, also... get gcombust, it provides enough of a frontend that can make it convenient to override the scanbus settings

You can use k3b or do,
#cdrecord -v dev=/dev/hdc filename.iso (change hdc to your cd writing device).

The advice posted above about using "/dev/hdc" may work ... it's worth a try.

Using the "/dev/hdc" as the device name instead of the three numbers was added in the 2.6 kernel. Some distros backpatched it into their 2.4 release, each distro doing it their own way, etc...

The command "uname -r" will print your kernel version, also it would be useful if you mentioned your slackware version. ("uname -a" will print out a lot more information.)

If you have a pure 2.4 kernel, you will probably have to add "hdc=ide-scsi" to your kernel boot options in your grub.conf file. (or "hdc=ide-scsi hdd=ide-scsi" if you have two cdrom drives.) Back when I was running 2.4, this caused the system to create a link for "/dev/cdrom" pointing to "/dev/scd0" . What the above does is emulate scsi for your cdrom drives, which is what the unpatched "cdrecord" was intended to use. Then, when you do "cdrecord -scanbus", the three numbers will appear.

Obviously, at least part of what I am suggesting is totally wrong because I don't know what is in your kernel. Also, I am not a slackware user so knowing your slackware version is really to help other people help you, but I hope this at least gives you something more to try.

Edit:
I am adding an excerpt from my Redhat 9 grub.conf file to show where the "hdc=ide-scsi" goes. Your line will be different, but it is the "kernel" line and the "hdc=ide-scsi" is added to the end.

If you have a fast connection, or not, and a floppy drive you can do what I did. Worked pretty darn slick too.

Go to: http://www.debian.org/distrib/netinst and follow the instructions for making bootable floppies for a netinstall. I didn't have to do any configuring, just booted from the floppies answered a few questions and read a book while my computer was churnin' away. Hope you have the same experience.

JBB

sorry about the missing info - kernel version is 2.4.29... and its the latest slackware distribution(how do i check) - 10.1 i believe? a knowledgeable (and unavailable) friend told me to install a program that keeps slack updated right after i installed, i installed and used it but dont remember the name for it and forgot to provide links for it.

so um, i want to try adding the hdc and hdd line (right after eachother) to my lilo (it installed that not grub with this distro), then reboot since its a 2.4 (im praying that its what you considered a "true" 2.4) but... lilo doesn't have a kernel line... where should i put it in this mess:

# LILO configuration file
# generated by 'liloconfig'
#
# Start LILO global section
boot="/dev/hda"
message = /boot/boot_message.txt
prompt
timeout="20"
# Override dangerous defaults that rewrite the partition table:
change-rules
reset
# VESA framebuffer console @ 1024x768x256
# Normal VGA console
# vga = normal
# VESA framebuffer console @ 1024x768x64k
# vga=791
# VESA framebuffer console @ 1024x768x32k
# vga=790
# VESA framebuffer console @ 1024x768x256
# vga=773
# VESA framebuffer console @ 800x600x64k
# vga=788
# VESA framebuffer console @ 800x600x32k
# vga=787
# VESA framebuffer console @ 800x600x256
# vga=771
# VESA framebuffer console @ 640x480x64k
# vga=785
# VESA framebuffer console @ 640x480x32k
# vga=784
# VESA framebuffer console @ 640x480x256
# vga=769
# End LILO global section
# Linux bootable partition config begins

image="/boot/vmlinuz"
root="/dev/hda1"
label="Linux"
read-only
# Linux bootable partition config ends

Thats what it looks like right now... thanks again for all your guys's help.

about the floppy drive - i dont have one, i never though i'd ever be going through all of this just to burn a cd...

I had the same trouble, gave up and burned the ISO using NERO on my Windows partition. Worked like a charm but I hated that I chumped out and got frustrated on my Linux partition

i devoted my entire harddrive to slackware... there are other computers in this house (how i managed to get this thing online) but... its becoming more of a learning experience than anything to get this burned - so far, i dont want to chump out and waste the bandwidth by re-downloading it... (or by setting up... is it samba to network with windows machines?) so yea. i'd really love to learn... but... *eep!* this is like learning everything again.... i can fix almost anything on a windows machine, but.. blah...

but. yea - where do i add in the scsi stuff to my lilo?

*bump* anyone?

image="/boot/vmlinuz"
...
append = "hdc=ide-scsi hdd=ide-scsi"

is the line you need in /etc/lilo.conf, then after the file is saved, type /sbin/lilo and reboot.

After reboot, try cdrecord --scanbus and it should have both the dvd and burner drives listed. This ide-scsi is a kernel module and Slackware's default kernel setup installs modules for almost everything the Linux kernel has, it just needs to be loaded. To check, at this point you should be able to type lsmod and see the ide-scsi module in the list.


To burn a cd use:

cdrecord dev=x,y,z padsize=63s -pad -v -data /path_to/image.iso

...where x,y,z is the burner from scanbus and /path_to/image.iso is the ISO you downloaded ie /home/darin/debian1.iso or wherever you placed it.

Alright. That worked in its entirety! I burned the cd. Thank you SO much, that was awesome advice.

You do not need to use scsi emulation with the new cdrecord even if you are using the 2.4.x kernel version. You can specify the IDE device of your CD-RW drive. Sorry I do not remember the syntax.

If you want a GUI program to help you write CD and DVD, use K3B.

user@slack10.1:/# cdrecord --version
Cdrecord-Clone 2.01 (i686-pc-linux-gun) Copyright (c) 1995-2004 Jorg Schilling

That's what is in my fresh install of Slackware 10.1 with 2.4.x kernel and I either had the syntax wrong or this version of cdrecord doesn't work on IDE, without SCSI emulation.