Hi! I thought I was starting to get the hang of Linux but it seems I may have been a little too eager to take off my "Linux Noob" nametag.

I've used SuSE before, and played around with Knoppix for a while, but eventually I discovered Zenwalk and really fell in love with Linux after that.

So... for my brand new computer, I was eager to have Linux up and running, and so after doing a little research, I thought I was ready for Slackware 12.1. Famous last words, right?

Actually installing went fairly smoothly. Slackware didn't have any problem finding my DVD-RW during installation, but I am at a loss as to how to manage to mount the device, either from the console OR while in XFCE. I've tried Googling for info, which seemed pretty straight forward, even editing the /etc/fstab didn't sound like too difficult of a job, but I'm just having no luck.

Slackware called my DVD-RW /dev/sr0 during the install. Does this mean anything specific?

being creative I think it means scsi recording device....I have the same style of hw and device.

It appears slackware does not automatically add your local user names to groups like audio plugdev video etc so add those groups to your local name.

2) I always like to amend /etc/fstab to show users in lieu of user as well

If you run `dmesg | less` you should be able to find a line for your DVD-RW drive and see what it is recognized as. For example, mine shows up as the following:
From that line I can see that it is recognized as hda -- and therefore to mount it I would need to specify /dev/hda. If you want to list almost all possible locations for CD/DVD/hard drives, you could always use `ls /dev/hd* /dev/sd* /dev/sr*`, but that's more difficult to interpret than dmesg output. To mount the drive, try the following in a terminal, as root:
That should allow you to browse the contents of the DVD (note that you should replace /dev/hda with whatever your drive is recognized as). Type `umount /dev/hda` as root to unmount the drive. XFCE also includes an automounting utility that makes use of HAL. To use that (so you can mount the drive as a normal user instead of root, and so you can mount it graphically instead of using the above command), you need to be part of the cdrom and plugdev groups (you should also be a member of the audio and video groups for other reasons). To add yourself to those groups, use the following command as root for each group listed above:
You may have to restart for the changes to take effect (or at least log out and log back in). Then try using XFCE's automounting tools to mount the drive as a normal user, and without the need for the command-line.

Note that you don't have to specify the DVD drive in /etc/fstab, but you can if you want the drive to be mounted consistently in the same spot. The permissions must be set properly if you specify the drive in fstab, or else HAL will not let your normal user mount the drive (HAL respects the information in /etc/fstab).

also, you can mount easily from the console using pmount. It comes with pmount-hal, which will basically do the same thing from the command line that using HAL with KDE's/Xfce's automount from the GUI will do. This also requires you to be a part of the plugdev group.

Hi,

When you 'adduser' then I like to add the user to the following groups;
BTW, Welcome to LQ and Slackware.

Mods,

if you have time, onebuck's answer may need sticky status?

lp group is important for Slackware 12.1 as well (see CHANGES_AND_HINTS.TXT).

I tend to be old fashioned with su as well, so I add my admin users to group wheel and modify
/etc/suauth
so that only members or group wheel can su to root.

games group is still used by some games as well.

When a new user is added, if the box admin is paying any attention and reads the note that comes up, all they have to do is arrow down to populate these additional groups.

Hi,

Problem is that a lot of people don't read the presentation screen. They just press enter!

Another thing is that most people don't even read the documentation that PV has provided; Announce 12.1, Slackware-Howto, CHANGES_AND_HINTS.TXT, UPGRADE.TXT. Plus the other text files relevant to their needs.

If they read the above then a lot of the issues would be minimal.

You can lead a horse to water but you can't make it drink..........

Thanks for the responses!

T3slider's advice was right on. After a few minutes of careful tweaking, I am able to mount both my dvd-rw and my floppy drive from both the command line and from XFCE. Yay!

However, I did run into a couple of snags:

* I am having no trouble viewing the contents of data cds, but audio CDs seem to be a different story. When I attempt to mount with an audio disc I get
*EDIT* Whoops! Just figured out you don't actually mount audio CDs Looks like this problem can be fixed with a little Audacious tweaking.

* The other quirk I seem to find is that while automounting seems to run smoothly, if I hit the eject button on the drive, it pops up an error saying it "failed to eject" due to not being a volume or drive. Weird. I am able to manually umount from terminal, which isn't so bad.

when you run strings /usr/bin/eject you will see eject works on fstab entries and in particular /dev/cdrom

so with root powers symbolic link your currect device (say) /dev/hdc (if atapi dvd)
ln -s /dev/hdc /dev/cdrom

pls check your links first tho

Instead of making a new thread, I figured I'd just post my question here.

I'm trying to set up my mount points and want to make sure I did it right.

I have three optical drives: DVD-RW, DVD-ROM, and a USB CD-RW.

I ran dmesg | less and found them listed as hdc, hdd, and sr0.

Then I ran a ln -s for /dev/dvd-rw, /dvd-rom, and /cd-rw respectively.

Then I mkdir for /mnt/dvd-rw etc.

Finally I edited my fstab as such:

How'd I do?

Looks OK to me, but you could just test it out using a CD (and/or DVD) to make sure it mounts to the correct place when you pop in a CD/DVD. I don't know if the symlinks in /dev will last a reboot or not -- that is something you'd have to figure out (or wait for someone else to answer). You could always just use the real device names in fstab instead of symlinking if they don't survive a reboot. If you *really* want them to work but they don't survive a reboot (again, not sure if they do or don't), you'd have to add a rule in /etc/udev/rules.d/.

This is not related to your cd/dvd, but...

Did you really intend that name or should that be /usr/local?


Apologies if I'm second guessing you, but it looked sort of odd and jumped out at me.