Problems with both Red Hat 8 and Mandrake 9 cdrom, hardware, ect
 

Hey people, I found this forum the other day and thought I'd ask a couple of questions that have be puzzled. I have looked on this and other forums for my answers but I havent found any so far,

First off I am also relatively new to linux, I bought mandrake 8 a couple of years ago but, i never really used it much because of a lack of winmodem support.

My first question deals with Mandrake 9, whenever i try to view the mnt directory, my dvdrom or cd writer spins as if its looking for something for a few minutes before finally letting me view the contents of mnt. it does this even if theres no cd in either drive. This is annoying to say the least. So, I tried Red Hat 8. With red hat 8, Ive noticed that this problem does not occur, but when i try to use the program to display available hardware(forgot the name), it tells me that its searching for hardware and then the program closes. I can view hardware in mandrake.

One other dilema(sp), is how to use my usb camera(mustek mdc-3500) I am clueless on this one, and Ive looked on the linux-usb site to no avail. I do know that the camera isnt supported by Gphoto or Gphoto2 but, under xp the camera is listed as a mass media storage device or something to that effect. The manufacturer doesnt have linux drivers, (i emailed them asking for linux support with no answer). I really dont know how to determine if the camera is even detected in the kernel or if i have usb enabled. I read somewhere that you have to use a scsi something to use usb, and when i installed both distro's i checked no that i didnt have any scsi adapters ect.

Any help with these issues will be much appreciated, either directly to this forum or a link somewhere else. I have searched this forum for answers but have found none that suited my problems. Also I apologize if these question have been asked before but, i really did search here and on the nvnews forum for these topics. Im downloading redhat documents as i type this.. Thanks

Some other info that may be needed are as follows compaq 5900t P3-733, 40Gb maxtor drive, Geforce2gts, conexant modem (works fine with conexant drivers), uhh pioneer dvd-115, lg 8-4-32 re-writer.

Mandrake have a program called 'supermount' and that probably whats causing your devices to spin up when you go to /mnt. For your camera you'll need to set it up at a usb mass storage device, go here for the details.

As soon as you insert the disk in Mandrake it goes for a supermount as such it reads the TOC once before and then supermounts the disks to access it. As such it rotates some time before actually letting you access it. Its the price paid for some convinience.

Actually you use scsi emulation to read various devices which don't have inherent support including IDE CD-Writers. Check out google groups for more information

Thanks, one more ?
 

Ive heard of the supermount thing, but I figured it was used both with mandrake 9 and redhat 8. When using redhat, the drives mount themselves too. So i cant understand why mandrake would spin for a while and redhat would not. Also when using either distro, and try to read some cd's I cant read files from them. Actually, what happens is that they show up in the directory with a blank white icon. As soon as i click on the icon to open or copy the file, they dissappear from the window altogether, but when i refresh the directory/window, the icons reappear and then dissappear as soo as i clcik on them.. I copied one directory out of one cd that contained a bunch of linux documentation, and whenever i tried to view the directory, it was an infinite directory, that is when i clicked to open the directory, it opened another with the same contents, and would do this an infinite number of times, so that it in the address bar, it was infinitely deep in the same folder.

Thanks for your assistance, I will try to disable supermount as soon as i find some documentation for it or i fiddle around with it some more. I will reinstall mandrake when i get home this evening, and let you know what happened.

Thanks again.

So close yet ...
 

Well, I noticed that in usbview the camera is recogonized. and when i click configure it tells me its listed in proc/bus/usb/device.

proc/scsi says this:

Attached devices:
Host: scsi0 Channel: 00 Id: 01 Lun: 00
Vendor: IOMEGA Model: ZIP 100 Rev: 14.A
Type: Direct-Access ANSI SCSI revision: ffffffff
Host: scsi0 Channel: 00 Id: 03 Lun: 00
Vendor: LG Model: CD-RW CED-8080B Rev: 1.09
Type: CD-ROM ANSI SCSI revision: 02
Host: scsi1 Channel: 00 Id: 00 Lun: 00
Vendor: USB Model: Device Rev: 1.00
Type: Direct-Access ANSI SCSI revision: 02

proc/bus/usb/devices
there is another folder called proc/scsi/usb-storage-0/ that contains a file named 1 that reads as follows:

Host scsi1: usb-storage
Vendor: Sunplus Co Ltd
Product: USB Device
Serial Number: 01.00.00
Protocol: Transparent SCSI
Transport: Bulk
GUID: 055fc233000ffffffffff700
Attached: Yes

proc/bus/usb filename drivers reads thus:
usbdevfs
hub
usb-storage
proc/bus/usb filename devices reads thus:
T: Bus=02 Lev=00 Prnt=00 Port=00 Cnt=00 Dev#= 1 Spd=12 MxCh= 2
B: Alloc= 0/900 us ( 0%), #Int= 0, #Iso= 0
D: Ver= 1.00 Cls=09(hub ) Sub=00 Prot=00 MxPS= 8 #Cfgs= 1
P: Vendor=0000 ProdID=0000 Rev= 0.00
S: Product=USB UHCI Root Hub
S: SerialNumber=1040
C:* #Ifs= 1 Cfg#= 1 Atr=40 MxPwr= 0mA
I: If#= 0 Alt= 0 #EPs= 1 Cls=09(hub ) Sub=00 Prot=00 Driver=hub
E: Ad=81(I) Atr=03(Int.) MxPS= 8 Ivl=255ms
T: Bus=01 Lev=00 Prnt=00 Port=00 Cnt=00 Dev#= 1 Spd=12 MxCh= 2
B: Alloc= 0/900 us ( 0%), #Int= 0, #Iso= 0
D: Ver= 1.00 Cls=09(hub ) Sub=00 Prot=00 MxPS= 8 #Cfgs= 1
P: Vendor=0000 ProdID=0000 Rev= 0.00
S: Product=USB UHCI Root Hub
S: SerialNumber=1020
C:* #Ifs= 1 Cfg#= 1 Atr=40 MxPwr= 0mA
I: If#= 0 Alt= 0 #EPs= 1 Cls=09(hub ) Sub=00 Prot=00 Driver=hub
E: Ad=81(I) Atr=03(Int.) MxPS= 8 Ivl=255ms
T: Bus=01 Lev=01 Prnt=01 Port=01 Cnt=01 Dev#= 2 Spd=12 MxCh= 0
D: Ver= 1.00 Cls=00(>ifc ) Sub=00 Prot=00 MxPS= 8 #Cfgs= 1
P: Vendor=055f ProdID=c233 Rev= 1.00
S: Manufacturer=Sunplus Co Ltd
S: Product=USB Device
S: SerialNumber=01.00.00
C:* #Ifs= 1 Cfg#= 1 Atr=80 MxPwr=500mA
I: If#= 0 Alt= 0 #EPs= 3 Cls=08(stor.) Sub=06 Prot=50 Driver=usb-storage
E: Ad=87(I) Atr=02(Bulk) MxPS= 64 Ivl=0ms
E: Ad=08(O) Atr=02(Bulk) MxPS= 64 Ivl=0ms
E: Ad=89(I) Atr=03(Int.) MxPS= 1 Ivl=1ms

(looks like it picks up the device) so i modified the fstab file per instructions included at linux-usb per your link.

/dev/hda7 / reiserfs notail 1 1
none /dev/pts devpts mode=0620 0 0
none /mnt/cdrom supermount dev=/dev/hdc,fs=auto,ro,--,iocharset=iso8859-1,codepage=850,umask=0 0 0
none /mnt/cdrom2 supermount dev=/dev/scd0,fs=auto,ro,--,iocharset=iso8859-1,codepage=850,umask=0 0 0
none /mnt/floppy supermount dev=/dev/fd0,fs=auto,--,iocharset=iso8859-1,sync,codepage=850,umask=0 0 0
none /mnt/mass supermount dev=/dev/sdb,fs=auto,--,iocharset=iso8859-1,codepage=850,umask=0 0 0
/dev/hda5 /mnt/nt ntfs iocharset=iso8859-1,ro,umask=0 0 0
/dev/hda8 /mnt/nt2 ntfs iocharset=iso8859-1,ro,umask=0 0 0
/dev/hda9 /mnt/nt3 ntfs iocharset=iso8859-1,ro,umask=0 0 0
/dev/hda10 /mnt/nt4 ntfs iocharset=iso8859-1,ro,umask=0 0 0
/dev/hda1 /mnt/windows vfat iocharset=iso8859-1,codepage=850,umask=0 0 0
none /mnt/zip supermount dev=/dev/sda4,fs=auto,--,iocharset=iso8859-1,sync,codepage=850,umask=0 0 0
none /proc proc defaults 0 0
/dev/hda6 swap swap defaults 0 0

i wanted to use supermount so i basically copied the cd listing and changed a couple of things then i created the directory mass in mnt and i get nothing. Any suggestions? I rebooted with the camera plugged in and turned on, and now i have a icon on my desktop that says mass, so i click on it and it says sorry , could not display all the contents of mass. but it doesnt display any contents.

Any other suggestions would be appreciated, should i do somthing different in the fstab file? Thanks again, if i get this working, Im going straight linux, Its the last device ive gotta get working..

I apologize for the length of the message, but i figured it would be better for troubleshooting.