This is part of The Pile, a partial archive of some open source mailing lists and newsgroups.
Subject: Re: CD ROM and mount problem From: Ramon Gandia <rfg@nook.net> Date: Tue, 25 May 1999 11:35:58 -0800 Greg W wrote: > > Have a basic install of RH5 on an older pentium 60 style board, never really > needed the cd rom after install till one day some time back, could not get > it to mount, at that time i was not sure of the rom's history. Today I > needed to install a package so I put another cd rom drive that i know works > into the system, i get > > /dev/cdrom is not a valid block device > > Anyone familiar? > > In fstab it looks ok, have cd entry with iso9660, i cannot remember exactly, > but i believe this is the same error messages as with other cd rom. /dev/cdrom is not a device, it is a LINK to the real device. If you change the real device, like from a Proprietary CDROM to an IDE, or vice versa, or change the assignment from master to slave, etc., then you also have to change the link in /dev or it will bomb out. As an example, with an IDE CDROM drive originally installed as master on the secondary interface, the link will say /dev/cdrom --> /dev/hdc The link is created at the time you installed RH5.0 by their install script. Now, you change the drive to slave, it will not magically become hdd, but you have to edit the link in /dev to make it /dev/cdrom --> /dev/hdd In Pentium 60 machines and similar vintage, the most likely situation is that your original CD drive was proprietary and used the sound card as an interface board. Heavens know what the actual device is. Now, if you change the drive, as from a Mitsumi to a Wearies, then the real device will also be different. In fact, it may not even work with the sound card interface. The best bet is to use an IDE/ATAPI CDROM drive. They are all pretty standard. If you do not want a case of the slowies, you should not put the CD drive on the same ribbon cable as the hard drive. Many CD drives have poor IDE interfaces that slow down the hard drive if they are on the same interface. Do that, change the link, and it should come right up, provided you have IDE/ATAPI CDROM support compiled in your kernel or you insmod the proper module. The kernel support for a proprietary drive will NOT work for an IDE/ATAPI or vice versa, and most install scripts will put the one you need, but not the other. === Subject: Re: CD ROM and mount problem From: Steve Borho <sborho@ststech.com> Date: Tue, 25 May 1999 15:07:22 -0500 On Tue, May 25, 1999 at 06:44:09PM +0000, Greg W wrote: > Have a basic install of RH5 on an older pentium 60 style board, never really > needed the cd rom after install till one day some time back, could not get > it to mount, at that time i was not sure of the rom's history. Today I > needed to install a package so I put another cd rom drive that i know works > into the system, i get > > /dev/cdrom is not a valid block device Assuming it's an IDE drive: /dev/cdrom is probably not pointing at the right IDE device. Use dmesg or read /var/log/messages and try to determine what IDE device name the Linux kernel gave to the cdrom, then make sure /dev/cdrom points to the right place. If it's not an IDE drive, then we need more info to help you (like manufacturer and model number, etc). ===