I am at my first attempts with burning CD-ROMS. I just installed cdroast and it gives me a warning that, since my CD-writer is ATAPI, there can be serious problems, and that it would be better to use SCASI emulation.

I found out on the net that this means recompiling the kernel changing some options.

I am running with Slackware 9.1, kernel 2.4. My questions are:

1) It is better to recompile kernel 2.4 with this different options, or to download kernel 2.6? SCASI emulation is needed also with kernel 2.6?

2) Anyway: I am not a very experienced linux user, I never compiled anything, not even the smallest program. Is there some newbie guide that can bring me step by step into this delicate operation?

Thank you very much

2.6 kernels do NOT need ide-scsi emulation (it's scsi, not scasi), so if you're going to upgrade a kernel, you're better off jumping up to that anyway, as you'll get much better performance as it uses the ATAPI interfaces directly.

you shouldn't really need to recompile anythign to get scsi emulation working. in your bootloader, either lilo or grub, just add an option on the boot command saying "hdc=ide-scsi" assuming hdc is where your cdrom is. this is all that should be needed to enable scsi emulation.

Wow, I'm behind the times... I was completely unaware that a 2.6 kernel didn't require scsi-emulation.

Thanks Chris

Cool

you'll be getting rid of those dirt roads soon huh?

The wooden wheels take better to them there kinds of roads

Cool

OK. the instruction hdc=ide-scsi worked fine and I am burning cd-roms with success. Now: how exactly can I introduce that command into lilo, so that I have not to write it manually every time I boot? I tried liloconfig but it scared me off with messages like "are you sure you know what you are doing? Configuring lilo is very dangerous if you are not a guru"

However: I am happy with the fact that right now I needn't recompile anything, but sooner or later... So my first question is still standing: where can I find an easy guide to learn how to compile (kernels, but software in general)?

Thank you very much

You can set it globally in your lilo.conf or you can add it individually to each kernel image with an append line:
append="hdc=ide-scsi"

Do not fear the LILO, it is your friend, it is your destiny. Be careful though, you can make your system unbootable when tinkering with LILO... It's not as bad as it seems though, read the man page, it's quite the tool actually.

Cool

OK. Done. It worked. So my only standing question remains: where can I find a friendly guide that can initiate me to the misteries of compiling programs from source and, as a last step, compiling kernels?