Mounting cdrom on Core 3?

[ZiaTioN]

For the life of me I can not seem to get the proper syntax for mounting the cdrom on Fedora Core 3. I found out that they decided to change things up in Core three and move the cdrom mount points to /media instead of /mnt like it has been for years but even with this new found knowledge I can not get the device to mount.

I tossed a cdrom into the drive and tried to mount it and I get variaous errors depending on the syntax used.


mount /media/cdrom
Takes a long time and then errors with an inout/output error and says I must provide the filesystem type.

/mount -t nfs /media/cdrom
This basically just spews out the usage stuff due to incorrect syntax.

mount nfs /media/cdrom
This errors saying that the directory to mount is not in host:dir format?

I tried a few other ways but all generating some sort of error.

Any idea? I know this is suppose to be a simple thing to do but I guess I am stupid.

Oh I also tried:
mount /dev/hdc /media/cdrom

This generated the same IO error and crapped out on me.

[worker201]

What does your fstab say? Do you even have mount permissions?

Here's mine from FC3:

Code: Select all

/dev/hdc                /media/cdrecorder       auto    pamconsole,exec,noauto,managed 0 0


[Linux Frank]

Just a check but its not something silly like changing the device name e.g. cdrom0 or dvd or whatever.

[Void Main]

You can be sure that your file system type is not nfs. If should be iso9660 but you shouldn't have to tell it that as it should figure it out on it's own. Something else must be wrong because a "mount /media/cdrom" should be more than enough. Maybe there is something wrong with your disk? Does your /dev/cdrom symlink exist? If not you probably need to update your udev package. If you are getting seek errors that would point to a bad disk (or drive).

[ZiaTioN]

Maybe there is something wrong with your disk?

That is what I am suspecting because I am using a CD-RW cd to transfer new packages and kernels to these boxes. They are part of a stand alone network and therefore I can not simply use apt-get. I chose a cd-rw for obvious reasons, so I can use over and over again.

Does your /dev/cdrom symlink exist?

No but /media/cdrom and /dev/hdc both exists. According to my fstab file /dev/hdc is automounted to /media/cdrom. It looks very similar to worker201's example except it is not a cdrecorder.

If not you probably need to update your udev package.

Well I am under the impression that /dev/cdrom is not suppose to exists. Am I wrong in this? I am not sure if I have ever seen a /dev/cdrom. Used to be /mnt/cdrom and now it is /media/cdrom. Has /dev/cdrom ever been a mount point for /dev/hdc?

If you are getting seek errors that would point to a bad disk (or drive).

I would suspect a bad drive except for the fact that this is the same drive I used to install the OS on the system and it worked fine then. It has to be a bad disk. I just burned a data disk with tar.gz files onto it. I did not create an iso image so I am not sure if it is trying to use ISO9660 by default and not seeing an image file.

Also Windows has no problem reading the disk. Please do not tell me there is something that Windows can do quiet trivial that Linux can not.

[Void Main]

Does your /dev/cdrom symlink exist?

No but /media/cdrom and /dev/hdc both exists. According to my fstab file /dev/hdc is automounted to /media/cdrom. It looks very similar to worker201's example except it is not a cdrecorder.

If not you probably need to update your udev package.

Well I am under the impression that /dev/cdrom is not suppose to exists. Am I wrong in this? I am not sure if I have ever seen a /dev/cdrom. Used to be /mnt/cdrom and now it is /media/cdrom. Has /dev/cdrom ever been a mount point for /dev/hdc?

You are confusing your device with your mount point (directory). You are right that FC3 uses /media/cdrom now rather than /mnt/cdrom but the device file hasn't changed. udev is broken in the default FC3 installtion as it does not create a sybolic link to your CD's special device file. In your case your CD drive is /dev/hdc but that is not where everyone's is which is why a symbolic link is created called /dev/cdrom that points to the device file associated with your cdrom. If you update your system one of the packages in the updates is the new unbroken udev. That should not prevent you from using /dev/hdc though:

# mount /dev/hdc /media/cdrom

If you are getting seek errors that would point to a bad disk (or drive).

I would suspect a bad drive except for the fact that this is the same drive I used to install the OS on the system and it worked fine then. It has to be a bad disk. I just burned a data disk with tar.gz files onto it. I did not create an iso image so I am not sure if it is trying to use ISO9660 by default and not seeing an image file.

Also Windows has no problem reading the disk. Please do not tell me there is something that Windows can do quiet trivial that Linux can not.

Are you saying that you can boot Windows on the same machine using the same drive and same disk and it can read it? If so then it's not a disk or drive problem. But if you are telling me that Windows is on your other machine with the burner on it then it's very possible that it could read it but your other machine with an older drive can't. This is a very common burn issue where maybe the disk wasn't closed or there is some incompatibility between the drives. Can you mount the disks you installed from?

[ZiaTioN]

I think your last suggestion is exactly the issue. I am able to read the disk on a seperate windows machine in which I burned the data onto the disk from. I am also able to mount the Fedora Install disks on the Linux system in question. So basically it is the CD-RW disk that is having issues in the Fedora Core 3 box with the older cdrom.

Is there anyway I can burn this data using a RW disk to get this System with the older drive to read it?

Edit:
I think I may have found the issue. I looked into the default burn settings in Roxio Easy CD Creator and it appears Joilet instead of ISO9660 was used so I changed that and we will see if that is the issue. Stupid Roxio! (actually stupid me).

[worker201]

That should only be a real problem if you have your fstab set to only read filesystem type 'iso9660'. If it is 'auto', like mine, it should read just about anything, including joliet.

Additionally, it has been proven that different optical drives are not necessarily compatible. Media type and drive type can be factors. Only one thing is certain - if you can burn to a media type, you can read it with that same drive. Lasers are so picky that anything else is a tossup. If you're having trouble, first try another type/brand of disc. Then try another type/brand of drive.

* by type, I mean cd, cdr, cdrw, cd+rw, cd+w, dvd, dvd, dvd+r, etcetera ad nauseum

[Void Main]

Actually I just realized you said you were using CDRW media. This could also be your problem. I have *never* had luck using CDRW media on older read-only drives. It's always been hit or miss at best. I might get 1 out of 3 burns to be readable. I am sure this is highly dependant on media used and the drives in question. I bet if you try a CDR and write something to it closing the disk afterwork you will be able to read it on the older machine. Joliet is fine, Linux has no problem with that. I'm pretty sure it's the media now that I have more time to read your original message.

[ZiaTioN]

Well I changed the format from Joilet to ISO9660 but that did not seem to make a difference. But I did change a filename setting from default (like 11 chars or something) to "long filenames" (max 30 chars) and that seemed to do the trick. Not sure why but hey it works so whatever.

[Void Main]

Either that or you got a "hit" in the hit and misses I experience. CDRWs are great if you only use them in burners, other than that I have no luck with reading them on older readers.

[ZiaTioN]

Yeah I agree but in my case it just seemed the easier of two options. My other option was to dual stack the ethernet interface for both IPv4 and IPv6 plus dual stack the routers for both IPv4 and IPv6 then change my vlan assignments on the catalyst cluster and possibly run new cable. So I figured option A was a better choice but we will find out tommorrow. I left work with two kernel builds going on (didn't want to wait for "make" to finish). So if I go in tommorrow and am able to install my new kernels then all is well, if not then option B may need to be done just to bring the systems fully up to date and then go back to the original config.

I think I am going to have to try that new desktop environment in Core 3 also. Gnome is running like a dog on these P3 600's