hey guys...

Im running Mandi 2007 and wanted to know how i access the mounted folders of my cd and dvd drives?

Everything always references to media:// when i try, yet there appears to be no such folder and it is a big problem to access those drives when you are trying to use a 3rd party application that tries to access /mnt as thereis nothing there to mount. ive tried to research the issue on the net but i cant find anything on it.. what little i can find doesnt seem to be saying anything that makes sense anyways.

I like mandriva except for that one problem and its reallllllllly annoying me.

At the moment im creating my own folders and mounting to them, but i often get complaints from the software and i have to continually go to root to mount and unmount them.

thanks a bunch.

I'm guessing the Mandriva 2007 uses HAL and udev to detect the disc, create the device node and then mount the disc, or present you with the option to do so.

But you would prefer a CD be mounted on another place such as /mnt/cdrom instead, is that correct?
If you create an entry in /etc/fstab for mounting a cdrom, the system may honor your preference.
For example:
If udev creates a /dev/cdrom or /dev/dvd depending on the disc type, you might try two entries in /etc/fstab:
You need the noauto option so that the system doesn't try to mount it when you boot. The "user" option allows you to mount it without having to use sudo or su.

You might also want to check if you have the "halmount" command. If you do, you can mount devices as a regular using using either the device, mount point or label as an argument.

I have SuSE to reference, so your system may be configured differently. For example, instead of hal helper programs, you system may use hotplugging instead.

Good Luck! The udev/hal system does make life easier, but making life easier often entails complications that make understanding how everything fits together very complicated. For example, how KDE or Gnome and HAL work together. And different distro's design this architecture differently.

yes .. ive tried that as well.. it doesnt seem to work. the distro seems rather persistent at making sure i only use the drives through konqueror where it can control what i mount and unmount.. i cant even get floppy to mount in kde.

I dont particularly care where its mounted so long as i can get console access to it with an absolute path which they seem to have completely eliminated. I tried mounting it to /mnt/cdrom where by default it used to be mounted to. wont allow it.. even if it doesnt complain the dir is empty.

as well in /dev i noticed that they symobolically link the devs to other devs or somewhere else in any case. i wouldnt know what processes it using to mount and unmount.

and yes, they use hotplugging as far as i remember. there is no halmount.

Thank you for the help none the less... i appreciate it. i will recheck again and make sure i wasnt doing something wrong before. Im starting to think that Mandriva is intentionally doing these things to push up profits. but thats my own opinion.

Different distro's tend to handle this differently. Even if Mandriva doesn't use hal helper programs to do the mounting, I think a proper entry in /etc/fstab will result in being able to control where it will be mounted.

Since udev creates more than one device node, you should be able to use the one you want to. Read through the current /etc/fstab file. They may use something like cdfs for cd and dvd devices. It may be as simple as adding the option "user" to allow you to mount it manually as a normal user. Also read through your /etc/hotplug/ scripts for clues. Mine only has an entry for a video editor shuttle device so I'm afraid I can't be of much help. Also check if Mandriva has a wiki which might answer your question.

You should in any case be able to mount it manually with a classic /etc/fstab entry.
On my system, if there is an fstab entry, the same device and mount point are used instead of a /media/<directory> mount point.

I don't think your difficulties have any thing to do with profit motive. The hal/udev system is new, and the sysfs system is being phased out. The HAL system has many components and can be implemented in many different ways. Some distros have opted to keep using hotplugging. SuSE switched from hotplugging to using udev rule run entries and hal helper programs. They have to deal also with how they did things in the past to not break to much.

See if you have the file "/usr/share/doc/packages/hal/spec/hal-spec.html".

When using Mandriva, the easiest way to manage your mount points is using MCC (System > Configuration > Configure your computer in the menu system).

Open MCC

Select Mount Points in the category list (left).

To control where the CD ROM Drive is mounted, open the Set where your CD-ROM drive is mounted icon.

To manage where the CD or DVD burner is mounted, open the Set where your CD/DVD burner is mounted icon.

If you need to add or change a HDD mount point, open the Create, delete and resize hard disk partitions icon. Be careful with this tool. You can not only set the mount point for each partition on your Hard Disk(s), but you can create, delete or resize partitions as well. This is the same tool used in the Mandriva Installer when you choose the Custom Disk Partitioning option.

HTH,

I think!
Which may not be a good thing. But I don't think my Mandriva 2007 is much different than my Fedora, which is where I am right now. I have a Debian testing DVD in the rom drive right now, when I look through the file manager I cannot see/access it, but when I click on the "System" icon on the desktop and click on the DVD icon, a few seconds later a window appears showing the contents of the DVD. The reason it took a few seconds for the window to show up is because the DVD was not mounted and had to be mounted. Now that I have it mounted, I close that window and check in my file browser to which I have an icon for in the panel, and now it is accessible via /media. It needed to be mounted before it showed up in the file tree.

this is the content of what MCC tells me about my dvd drive.

Mount Point: /mnt/cdrom
Device: hdc
Type: auto
Options: umask=0022,users,iocharset=utf8,noauto,ro,exec

theres no mention of media:// in the settings, nor when i go to /mnt/cdrom when a disc is loaded does it give me a directory listing in console. I know this shouldnt be difficult but its got me puzzled.. lol

you would be correct - but my problem isnt accessing them from the gui... that works fine... its all my 3rd party software and console access that im having a problem with... if i only want to go to konqueror to grab a file, im fine.. its accessing the drives from console or giving or supplying a 3rd party app with an absolute path that i have a problem with. the apps cant find the drive cause everything has been redirected to media:// and both the apps and i have no clue where that is cause its tucked away and hidden somewhere. i want the folder tree out and away from media:// where it is *easily* accessible so that my apps can find them without hassle and if i need to get files while working in the console, i can do that. even Wine chokes on it cause its looking in /mnt/cdrom where the files are supposed to be, and mysteriously arent.

Looks like some kind of mounting issue, I booted up Mandriva and mounted the DVD through Devices. In the file manager I could access the contents, but not via command line. So I mounted via command line and this is what I got:

I went into MCC/mount_points and selected the first drive the DVD was in, my fstab entry was like yours, had the "noauto" in it, so I clicked "options" hit OK and deselected noauto, and saved it in fstab. Then I ejected the DVD and re-inserted it, the window showed up asking if I want to open it, I selected yes, then I closed the file browser and opened a terminal and changed directory as user into /mnt/cdrom and typed: ls, and everything showed up. So it's just the noauto thing in fstab.

thats the same problem i was having... however.. i was not trying to mount to the hard drive... i was trying to mount to the dvd drive.. lol

mount /dev/hdc /mnt/cdrom

okay.. thanks.. will give that a try.. thanks for the help.

YES! It worked, thank you. only one other little problem with that now tho... lol.. sorry... its not a big concern so long as i can get access to them.

after turning off noauto and rebooting.. the startup log keeps reporting it can't open hdc (dvdrom) and hdd (dvdrom) because they dont exist. it also tells me the mount command doesnt exist.. but hey.. it works, im happy.. i can deal with it.. lol...

thanks a bunch. finally i can get back to a bit more normalcy.. lol

Probably because there are no discs in the drives.

I guess, we didn't have to save it in fstab, I opened an editor and put the "noauto" back in /etc/fstab and can still auto mount the disc by just not having the noauto check box unchecked in MCC/mount_points.

yes, youre right... but i used the wrong wording sorry.. said it couldnt mount them... before i did that, it never complained about that, just had to find the devices... that was the main point i was trying to make.. thanks