cd-rw troubles

[Rob Guglielmetti]

On 17 May 2002, at 14:47, Danny . wrote:

> Hi there,
> 
> I'm having difficulties using the cd-rw that came stock
> standard with my G4800Mhz machine.
> 
> First, the only way to open the drive is via the eject
> button on the keyboard and this doesn't seem to work under
> ydl2.2. 
> 
> Second, I can't get mount to work using /dev/cdrom. It
> responds with an error message (I'm away from the machine
> right now so I will post the exact message later tonight)
> 
> Any ideas?

Yup.  I'm attaching the text from an email I received just 
yesterday, regarding this exact problem.  Pat's 
instructions here fixed everything for me (thanks Pat!).

From:           	Pat Plummer 
<blacksun@ix.gotdns.org>
To:             	yellowdog-
newbie@lists.terrasoftsolutions.com
Subject:        	Re: New install - issues 
Send reply to:  	yellowdog-
newbie@lists.terrasoftsolutions.com
Date sent:      	Thu, 16 May 2002 14:52:28 -0600

On Thursday 16 May 2002 12:01, Rob wrote:
> ::: CD Eject :::
>
> Most of my keys work properly (brightness, volume,
> console switching), but the CD eject key does not.  How
> can I fix that, and failing that, is there another way to
> eject it, maybe from the command line???  My YDL 
installer
> is trapped in there!!
> ::: CD drive :::
>
> When I double click on the CD icon on my desktop (KDE 
or
> Gnome), I get an error that it's not a valid block device.  
> Ideas?

These two things might be related. Things you should 
check:

Take a look at dmesg (dmesg | less) to see what device 
YDL thinks your cdrom
drive is. Dunno whether it will be /dev/scd0, /dev/hdb, 
/dev/hdc or what on your
powerbook. On my ANS, it is scd0, on my iMac it is 
/dev/hdb, and on my Quadra
840 it is /dev/sr0.

Once you get an idea of the correct device, make sure you 
have a cdrom symlink
present in the /dev/directory that points to this device (ls -
al /dev/cdrom) and
if not, make it:

ln -s /dev/whateverthedeviceis /dev/cdrom

Once you've done these things, make sure you have a 
line in your /etc/fstab file
that looks similar to:

/dev/cdrom      /mnt/cdrom      iso9660 
owner,exec,dev,suid,ro,auto 0 0

Make sure the /mnt/cdrom mount point exists (if not -- as 
root, mkdir 
/mnt/cdrom). Reboot.

I don't know if the eject key is even supported, [it is, -
Rob] but you should at this point be
able to issue the command via a terminal:

eject cdrom or eject /dev/cdrom

to get the disk out.

I think the second problem you mention is either that the 
cdrom is not mounted
or that /dev/cdrom is pointing to the wrong device. 

         ====================
 Rob Guglielmetti <rpg777@earthlink.net>
    http://home.earthlink.net/~rpg777