mounting a cd drive
 

Hey people, i'm a supernewb when it comes to linux..i'm working at this company, and it's up to me to teach myself linux, anyway, i've learned that to access the cd drive it has to be mounted first, so when i typed in the mount/bla bla bla stuff it says I have to be root to do this..is there a way I can do this myself, or do i have to find my boss...

Provided you haven't made a mistake when typing the command you need your user to be fitted with the right to mount CDs. In most companies I'd rather find the administrator rather than the boss, though... ;)

Robin

Yeah as above, find an admin or suitable person who has permissions to either mount it for you or give you the capabilities.

I must say this though, did you tell them you had some linux experience? A company refusing to train and let you learn yoruself is seriously harming it's productivity and efficiency.

experience
 

I'm supposed to take a class on it starting next week, I was just trying to get a head start..

hehe.. I'm having to do the same thing. Diving in head first, bumbling my way through the command line using online doc and forum help.. but I tell you, I can install an rpm now like the wind :P

well that's cool that you can install an rpm like nothing...what is an rpm? =)

RedHat Package Manager.. I guess they're like executables or a libraries for RedHat. They're already compiled so you don't have to get source code and compile it to install something. Makes installs a little quicker!

I did basically the same thing you did, dive in head first.

Mounting the drive is quite a strange concept, especially if your a noob and you have been using MS all your life.

at any shell (i think you have to be root, or have admin or something) type mount /dev/hdc /mnt/hdc

/dev/hdc is your cd rom (this may varry....hdb hdc hde etc....)

and /mnt/hdc is basically the folder you will be able to find the cd rom at. Windows uses drive letters (c: d: a: etc). Linux uses a folder to mount the drive

anyways, i hope that was a help. Im kinda a noob myself....only been using linux for a few weeks, but i might as well at least try adn help.

The best way to find out where you CDrom drive is is to try Sometimes this is in the /usr/sbin/ directory and you need to type the entire location. This will list everything in /proc/partitions. Then you will know exactly what command to issue to mount the CDrom. Make sure the directory you are trying to mount to exists, i.e., don't try to mount to /mnt/hdc if /mnt/hdc does not exist.

Typically mounting/unmounting can only be done by root, unless a certain drive is specified as otherwise in the /etc/fstab file. If you don't know anything about fstab, read this: http://www.tuxfiles.org/linuxhelp/fstab.html

In addition, there is a program called "sudo" that allows regular users (only those specified in the sudo configuration) to run root commands without having full root access, like knowing the root password. When sudo is configured, you just have to prepend "sudo" to the command you need to run as root. Take a look at the home page for sudo: http://www.courtesan.com/sudo/

Finally, newer versions of KDE and Gnome have an automount daemon that runs in the background. If this is running then KDE/Gnome should ask you what you want to do with your CDrom once a new CD in inserted. This is really the easiest way to use a CD, since you don't have to have any root permissions to do it. You can find out if automount is running by typing You don't have to be root to do this either. Just look for /usr/bin/automount (or something similar) on the right side of the information it gives you.

Good luck on using/learning Linux. If you have any questions feel free to email them to me if you can't otherwise find the answer (my email is in my signature).

~Justin