Hi Everyone, I have been running Mandrake 9.1 for 2 months now and I don't miss Windows at all - anyway I have run into a snag - I purchased a Sony CDRWDVD to replace my Sony CDRW as lots of free stuff is available for linux on DVD - magazines give them away all the time and I did not have a DVD reader - so I got one as close as I could to the original CDRW - to avoid problems being a newbie - anyway I am able to read CD's and DVD's but can not burn anything - KB3 setup sees the drive and it seems to be using IDE-SCSI emulation but KB3 can not write to Fstab - I have tried as root - but same error - anyway I am at a loss what even to try but I would really like to get this resolved - I gave the other drive away so I can not burn anything - any suggestion ?

Please explain K3B can not write to fstab. I don't use the app but I don't know why it would write to fstab.

If SCSI emulation is working correctly the output from the command
cdrecord --scanbus
should display info on the drive.

Is the drive connected on the same IDE controller and setup the same ie master or slave? If you changed it then you will need to modify the bootloader.

here is what I got:

[administrator@localhost administrator]$ su
Password:
[root@localhost administrator]# cdrecord --scanbus
Cdrecord 2.0 (i586-mandrake-linux-gnu) Copyright (C) 1995-2002 Jörg Schilling
Linux sg driver version: 3.1.24
Using libscg version 'schily-0.7'
scsibus0:
0,0,0 0) 'SONY ' 'CD-RW CRX300E ' 'KYS1' Removable CD-ROM
0,1,0 1) *
0,2,0 2) *
0,3,0 3) *
0,4,0 4) *
0,5,0 5) *
0,6,0 6) *
0,7,0 7) *

I can not tell you why K3b burning software needs to write to fstab - I am not sure what fstab does ? - but with the old writer it was able to write to it and then the software was able to recognize and burn cds

sorry - also the drive is master on the second IDE port with a slave 52x cdr drive - one IDE hard drive(master) on the primary ide port - thanks in advance for your help on this

Interesting.

/etc/fstab tells the OS how and where to mount filesystems. /etc is usually for config files and only root has permission to write.

You are correct SCSI emulation looks like its setup correctly.

the only other thing I differently this load was change the bios setting for plug and play OS to NO - I thought that was the correct setting - is it - and would that affect anything ?

It shouldn't. With some motherboards you need to disable plug and pray for linux to detect some hardware.

I thought K3B was just another GUI frontend for cdrecord. Have you tried another CD burning app like xcdrecord or gcombust or cdrecord itself?

Did you change and other settings when you installed the new drive?

I just tried Gnome - toaster and it will not detect a burner - however - Gcombust was able to burn to the drive at 20x - not the 48 that the drive is supposed to run at - any thoughts ?

any apps you know that run similar to Gcombust - but more options ? - thats what was really nice about KB3 - it was like a better Nero - what do you use ?

Now - I am really going to sound like a newbie - but since I burned using GCombust now K3B detects the drive and I can burn at full speed - I did not do anything else - anyway all ok - thanks to michaelk for all your help - ISSUE RESOLVED