CD rom doesnt work

I installed Mandrake a few weeks back, and have had nothing but problems ever since. My modem is a winmodem so I cant connect to the internet, my dual boot loader does not ever want to work right, and now I cant access files on the cdrom drive. I dont understand why linux can play an audio CD just fine, but when I go to /dev/cdrom there is nothing there even though the disc is full of mp3's. I used the utilities to make sure that the cdrom had been installed. What could the problem be? Please dont flame me if I missed something simple after all I am very new to Linux.

Did you mount the cdrom?
If not try to mount the cdrom with a command similar to this:
mount -t msdos /dev/cdrom /mnt/cdrom
of the command does not work read the mount man pages for the command syntax of the mount command for your linux distro.
After you have mounted the cdrom go to /mnt/cdrom and there should be the content of your cdrom.

Regards
Bad_Karma

Like the man said, be sure you are mounting the CDROM. *nix CD Players do not generally require a mount of /dev/cdrom to listen to audio files. However to read the data on the CD it will need to be mounted.

Not 100% sure how Mandrake sets the permissions on /dev/cdrom by default, but genericly speaking you will need to be root to mount drives or devices. This can be changed of course but for security reasons I don't recommend that you do it.

One of the frustrating things about Linux distro's is that they each have their own ideas about how to setup /etc/fstab.

So try these: (very generic, should cover most /etc/fstab setups)

[root@yourbox:~]# mount /dev/cdrom /cdrom

[root@yourbox:~]# mount /mnt/cdrom

[root@yourbox:~]#mount -t msdos /dev/cdrom /cdrom

( as mentioned above)

[root@yourbox:~]# mount -t cd9660 -ro /dev/cdrom /cdrom

(not very common anymore, and not very likely)

Well what version of Mandrake are you running? I believe 8.1 does it all automatically.

Is the Linux the only OS you have on your Hard Drive? If you install linux with windows still on your drive I know the problem! Let me know and i will reply back.


Also check to make sure it is mounted first:D

If it is automounted, check the /mnt/cdrom or /mnt/cdrom1 directory. That is where mandrake mounts cdroms. If it isn't mounted already, you may want to mount is with:

mount -t vfat /dev/cdrom /mnt/cdrom

instead of the original suggestion:

mount -t msdos /dev/cdrom /mnt/cdrom

The vfat will let you see the full name of the file, the msdos (or fat) paramaters mount it with the 8.3 file naming convention.

Remember, you have to be root to manually mount drives.

Hope this helps.

Happy Hacking

As far as i can remember, mandrake does supermounting for cdroms, whuch would give you an /etc/fstab like this -
/mnt/cdrom /mnt/cdrom supermount fs=iso9660,dev=/dev/cdrom 0 0
/mnt/floppy /mnt/floppy supermount fs=vfat,dev=/dev/fd0 0 0

What are your problems with the boot loader (lilo i assume)? If configured correctly it should give you no problems - its not exactly buggy software.

Quote:

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Originally posted by UberC0der

root@yourbox:~]# mount /mnt/cdrom

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This is the one that finally mounted my cdroms. The problem was that after they were mounted all the files on them were visible, but when I tried to eject the CD's, the computer wouldnt let me eject them. I restarted the computer, and took the CD's out, but then all of the sudden it says that access to /mnt/cdrom and /mnt/cdrom2 is denied, even to root. I tried to mount them again, but it says that they are already mounted. What could the problem be?

as for winmodem not working under linux, all popular linux distributions now have made available patches that allow you to work with winmodem. I know for RedHat for sure, you can check out Mandrake's website for this.

Quote:

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This is the one that finally mounted my cdroms. The problem was that after they were mounted all the files on them were visible, but when I tried to eject the CD's, the computer wouldnt let me eject them. I restarted the computer, and took the CD's out, but then all of the sudden it says that access to /mnt/cdrom and /mnt/cdrom2 is denied, even to root. I tried to mount them again, but it says that they are already mounted. What could the problem be?

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When you manually mount using the "mount" command, it ties up the resource until you manually unmount it using the "umount" command. Try this: When you are ready to eject the cd, type:

umount /mnt/cdrom

NOTE: yes the command is umount, not unmount. Note the lack of an "n" after the first "u"

Hope this helps.

Happy Hacking

As gaxprels said, you have to unmount the cd from the mount table by issuing his/her said 'umount /mnt/cdrom'. This will unmount the cdrom from the device (/dev/cdrom say), update /etc/mtab (that's the file on RH, should be the same for Mandrake), and now the mount point (/mnt/cdrom) will be empty of all cd-rom related data.

There is some other things about umounting that I've included so you don't have to reboot your machine.

# mount /mnt/cdrom
# cd /mnt/cdrom
# ls

<random files here>
# umount /mnt/cdrom
umount: /: device is busy (or some generic message like this)
# cd / (get out of the /mnt/cdrom directory)
# umount /mnt/cdrom
# eject (this should now eject after the umount)

You can't eject a cd if the drive is mounted, and you can't umount a file system if A: you're currently sitting in the mount point, B: if there are any open files or file locks on the file system, or C: if you're using something like HP with Oracle and have a cdrom pfsmounted and you regularly 'umount' it, it won't unmount, you have to pfsumount it. Weird shite...

Hope this helps you on your trek to expertise in the mount/umount field!