6.5 Final - still can't mount cd/dvd drives

[ronnielsen1]

The best workaround so far is to edit /etc/fstab as root. Move the two lines for dvd / cdrom from the dynamic section to the static section and reboot.

That doesn't put media:/hdd back to being recognized as /media/cdrom1 That's the way it used to be and alot easier. What I don't know how to do is to either be able to move media:/hdd to /media/cdrom1 or create a symbolic link which I'm not too sure how to do.

[Jerry3904]

Originally Posted by ronnielsen1

daleray, the problem seems to exist when you have more than one cd drive

I only have one physical drive, and have the same problems. It's a combo drive--I wonder if that is aa factor? Maybe we should actually start a hardware list of drives that show problems?

Has anyone sent a message to Warren?

[ronnielsen1]

Has anyone sent a message to Warren?

I figured someone else did

[ronnielsen1]

Has anyone noticed there's at least 3 threads on this subject.

[Jerry3904]

Originally Posted by carlops

The best workaround so far is to edit /etc/fstab as root. Move the two lines for dvd / cdrom from the dynamic section to the static section and reboot.

Thanks. With my combo drive, I have only one line:

/dev/cdrom /media/cdrom iso9660,udf noauto,users,exec,ro 0 0

But your workaround got it working, though I get error messages if I try to click the desktop icon or use kwikdisk.

Edit: added this to the Fix Sound for audio CD entry in the Quick Fixes section of the Wiki, please check.

[ko]

Hi,

Warren does know about the problem. But there's no easy solution for it - probably not until much later in Mepis 7.0
The following is an excerpt from an email from Warren discussing the issues with multiple optical drives - just before 6.5 was released:

Originally Posted by Warren

The udev used in Dapper (and therefore in Mepis since 6.0) did not support more than one CDROM. If you had more than one, then the last one detected became /dev/cdrom The others were lost. This is how 6.0 worked.

This was a matter of negligence in the Debian tree that was finally addressed around December. A fix was attempted for edgy, but it was very buggy.
The newer combo of udev/hal/kernel/kde that can solve this problem completely, can NOT be added to 6.x. But, I have high hopes that this will not be a problem in 7.

To provide support for multiple CDROMs, I added code to 6.5 around a month or so ago. That code worked for me but it turned out to not work on some machines due to a potential race condition during boot. So a couple of weeks
ago, I modified the code again.

AFAIK, if you have the latest rc, both drives should be detected reliably EXCEPT that it is possible (due to the race condition) that which drive is assigned as /dev/cdrom v. /dev/cdrom1 may swap occasionally. To get a desktop icon for the second drive, you have to add it manually. You could get error messages like the ones reported, if you're attempting to mount the wrong drive.

This was never meant to be a perfect fix, but rather a bandaid that should work for most people with 2 drives, until we can get beyond the accursed Ubuntu 6.0 code base.

Related to the udev problems, in 6.5 I configured kde mediamounter to do as little as possible. This never worked perfectly in kde due incompatibilities between kde and hal. kde 3.5.3 was the most reliable of the old versions of
kde. But if you enable the automatic mediamounter functions in kde, you are likely to run into trouble.

Starting with kde 3.5.4 the mediamounter was rewritten to work with a newer version of hal that mounts without using pmount. This was not stable until recently. And it requires a newer hal, that is incompatible with 6.x. FWIW,
this also never worked correctly in edgy. It will probably be fine in feisty.

Some of the above may be a bit off technically, I don't have my notes handy.

Now you know where the problem originates and the current status..
The fix that I recommend is to:
- NOT enable the KDE automounter,
- to add another desktop icon for the second optical drive,
- to copy/move 2 lines from the dynamic part of /etc/fstab to the static part
(or add them)
- to create entries under /media reflecting optical drives, if not there yet.

I have used that fix -more or less successfully- in various 6.5 betas/rcs. It certainly is NOT a 100% fix.

Regards, Ko

[dekalbave]

Thanks Ko. But the only thing I have a problem with in what Warren wrote is that my CDRW and DVDRW both worked very well in 6.0.
I do wonder why that was the case.

BTW, I have Mepis 6.5 on my laptop, which only has one CDRW/DVD-ROM combo drive and it works perfectly.

FWIW, I do have feisty on another partition on my desktop and the drives work perfectly. So do the KDE apps that I like, such as K3b, Kaffeine, and Amarok (no more signal 11 errors). So, unfortunately, I think I may be forced a bit to use feisty to manage my iPod, especially for ripping CD's, until Mepis 7.0.

[ko]

Originally Posted by dekalbave

Thanks Ko. But the only thing I have a problem with in what Warren wrote is that my CDRW and DVDRW both worked very well in 6.0.
I do wonder why that was the case.

I started to have the problem in 6.01. Could indeed be due to 'hardware detection race conditions'. Minor timing differences? I don't know.

BTW, I have Mepis 6.5 on my laptop, which only has one CDRW/DVD-ROM combo drive and it works perfectly.

Exactly the same on my laptop. My CDRW/DVDRW combodrive is even represented in 2 separate dynamic fstab entries (cdrom and cdrom1)...:-)

FWIW, I do have feisty on another partition on my desktop and the drives work perfectly. So do the KDE apps that I like, such as K3b, Kaffeine, and Amarok (no more signal 11 errors). So, unfortunately, I think I may be forced a bit to use feisty to manage my iPod, especially for ripping CD's, until Mepis 7.0.

When I have fixed my 6.5 desktopsystems (both 64 and 32bit) with its 2 optical drives I'll post how I did it.

Regards, Ko

Well, I moved the fstab entries to static as suggested. I still can't mount one of my drives (dvd rom) but can mount the dvd burner drive, ONCE.

After first booting into the system, I can mount /media/cdrom (burner drive) with kwikdisk and view the files. If I unmount and try remounting it, or mount another disk, I get an error complaining that /dev/hdc can't be found in fstab or mtab.

I can now mount /dev/cdrom in konsole, but /dev/cdrom1 "doesn't exist" when I try mounting it in konsole.

[carlops]

Originally Posted by polizist

I can now mount /dev/cdrom in konsole, but /dev/cdrom1 "doesn't exist" when I try mounting it in konsole.

Post the content of your fstab, see if we can fix that