You are mounting the DVD, right?

Thank for your reply.

Don't think so (don't really know what I'm doing)?!?

All I've done is put the DVD in the DVD drive
(which is what I usually do).

You suggest me trying to mount it? If so, how?
[I don't recall unmounting it - think one of the
distros messed it up? I must have installed
about 10+ time wiping the hard drive.]

Sheng-Chieh

Just putting something in the drive doesn't tell the OS to do something with it. Take a look at this article and its comments on mounting. It may look complicated at first glance, but it's actually pretty simple.

>> Just putting something in the drive doesn't tell the OS to do something with it.

Well, it doesn't, but sometimes an OS is pre-set to detect and automount. In sidux KDE seems to be doing this, which is nice.

I am surprised distros like SimplyMEPIS and Mandriva don't do this.. Weird.

I have been using Mandriva 2006 for 8+ months.
I never had problem and ended mounting things
- it always automounted. Something fishy occurred
after I tried to install/uninstall various distros.
Some blanked out on me - so I just moved on and
tried another distro. Maybe one of the distro
messed things up?!?

I'm also surprised that when you do a fresh install
of Mandriva 2006, it failed to automount. I.e., did
something happens to the hardware?

I'm going to tried to mount the drive - will get
back to you.

Sheng-Chieh

I just tried

mount -t iso9660 /dev/hdb1 /mnt/cdrom -o rw,omask=000

same with hdb6 or hdb instead of hdb1.

I get a message saying

[root@localhost rscheng]# mount -t iso9660 /dev/hdb1 /mnt/cdrom -o rw,omask=000
mount: /dev/hdb1 already mounted or /mnt/cdrom busy
mount: according to mtab, /dev/hdb1 is mounted on /
[root@localhost rscheng]# mount -t iso9660 /dev/hdb6 /mnt/cdrom -o rw,omask=000
mount: /dev/hdb6 already mounted or /mnt/cdrom busy
mount: according to mtab, /dev/hdb6 is mounted on /home
[root@localhost rscheng]# mount -t iso9660 /dev/hdb /mnt/cdrom -o rw,omask=000
mount: /dev/hdb already mounted or /mnt/cdrom busy
mount: according to mtab, /dev/hda is already mounted on /mnt/cdrom
[root@localhost rscheng]#

when I device:konqueror

I see

CD-ROM (hda) .... 0B Mounted CD-ROM

but I put a disc in and double-click the link, I get

no items - no folder [never mind]

It went thru?!? I'm copyied the disk. Strange?!?
Any clue on what is happening.

Sheng-Chieh

Update:

The drive doesn't read other disks. I think I may have gotten "lucky".
Same errors. I suspect I have a hardware problem, not a mounting problem.
Is there a hardware component that could be bad? I know the external
CD/DVD is fine since it's fine w/ my laptop. Maybe it's something
between the drives (internal or external) and the OS?!

Your thought? I.e., think I'm having a hardware or software problem?

Sheng-Chieh

1. Konqueror says your CD drive is hda, but you tried to mount hdb and some of its partitions, which is probably your harddrive.

2. Sounds like it could be a driver issue. What OS does the laptop use?

I tried with mount on hda.

...etc...# mount -t iso9660 /dev/hda /mnt/cdrom -o rw,omask=000
mount: No medium found

According to the article you posted, hda is my hard drive.

on hdb

...etc...# mount -t iso9660 /dev/hdb /mnt/cdrom -o rw,omask=000
mount: /dev/hdb already mounted or /mnt/cdrom busy

Update: I just went thru all my backup disks. I concluded 1 (or 2?)
are bad disks and one of them I was really trying to use. Also,
I need to be more patience after I put in the disk, i.e., wait 20
seconds for the disk to automount. Then I can click the CD icon to
see the disk.

Sheng-Chieh

p.s. My laptop OS is Xandros OCE 3 while my desktop is Mandriva 2006
(problem w/ desktop DVD). I think Xandros will still go thru the
mounting process if I am impatience while Mandriva, I need to wait
abit before moving forward.

p.s.s. I'm going to try centOS again and see if the waiting is the
problem too. I want to see if centOS works better anyway. Mandriva
has been buggy - can't use internal modem because can't install kernel;
can't compile voice recognition (sphinx), maybe because of no kernel.

hda is only your harddrive if your harddrive is the first IDE master. Apparently in your computer, that isn't the case.

A decent linux distribution will create /dev/cdrom, /dev/cdrw and /dev/dvd . If there are multiple cd/dvd drives, they will get numbered. These are all links to /dev/hd{letter of cd/dvd drive}, and therefore equivalent to it. This avoids all the "which hd is my cd?" trouble.

If those aren't there, you can check by running "eject DEVICE" and seeing if the CD tray ejects ("eject -t DEVICE" to inject it).