I'm trying to get everything all lined up in fstab so that I can use both my cdrw and my dvd drive. In the fstab after install, there was a link to /dev/cdrom which after digging around I found out that it was pointing to my dvd rom. Is there a command i couldn't put in that has an output of where the actual device is? In suse, the fstab had a /dev/dvd and a /dev/cdrecorder that slack does not have. Thanks in advance for the help.

What you should find is that if your DVD is /dev/cdrom then your Cd-writer should be /dev/cdrom1.

This is how my DVD (primary slave) and CD-R (Secondary Master) are shown in Slack 8.1 and Red hat 7.2.

this may not answer your question directly but if you are having an issue finding your CD-R it should assist you.

I hope this helps

OK, i have the same lineup, its easy to fix.
First filnd out what device is dvd
ls -la /dev/cdrom
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 3 Aug 6 23:52 /dev/cdrom -> hdd
OK, so your DVD (which is linked to /dev/cdrom is actually /dev/hdd
So, make it into /dev/dvd.
cd /dev
ln -sf hdd dvd
and check if it's right
ls -la /dev/dvd
rwxrwxrwx 1 root root 3 Aug 6 23:52 /dev/dvd --> hdd
ok, good.
Now if you have a IDE CDROM on slave on ide2 it will be /dev/hdc (you can find this out by doing dmesg | less and looking for the part when it recognizes all drives.
I will assume your cdrw is on /dev/sr0 (since you have to setup ide-scsi emulation if you want to use it to burn CDs anyway..) so make another link
cd /dev
ln -sf sr0 cdrom
and check it
ls -la cdrom
rwxrwxrwx 1 root root 3 Aug 6 23:52 /dev/cdrom -> sr0
ok, all set, now just edit /etc/fstab, here's mine to help, yours should be a bit different probably.

/dev/hdb1 swap swap defaults 0 0
/dev/hdb4 / reiserfs defaults 1 1
/dev/hdb2 /home reiserfs defaults 1 2
/dev/hdb3 /usr/local reiserfs defaults 1 2
/dev/dvd /mnt/dvd auto noauto,user,ro 0 0
/dev/fd0 /mnt/floppy auto noauto,user 0 0
/dev/cdrom /mnt/cdrom iso9660 noauto,user,ro 0 0
/dev/hda1 /mnt/win auto noauto,user,ro 0 0
none /dev/pts devpts gid=5,mode=620 0 0
none /proc proc defaults 0 0

hope that helps
-NSKL

okay, thanks very much for the help. The dvd links now. There's a few goofy things going on though. I run dmesg to find out where it is and this is what i get over and over:

03:07: rw=0, want=1350636751, limit=7166848
Directory sread (sector 0xa102299d) failed

nothing else will read out. I don't know what causes this. I try to mount the cdrw and I get this message:

/dev/cdrom is not a valid block device

I'm lost.

i also tried cdburner -scanbus and this is what I got:

Cdrecord 1.11a24 (i686-pc-linux-gnu) Copyright (C) 1995-2002 Jörg Schilling
cdrecord: Permission denied. Cannot open '/dev/sg0'. Cannot open SCSI driver.
cdrecord: For possible targets try 'cdrecord -scanbus'. Make sure you are root.

So I logged in as root and got this:
Cdrecord 1.11a24 (i686-pc-linux-gnu) Copyright (C) 1995-2002 Jörg Schilling
cdrecord: No such file or directory. Cannot open '/dev/pg*'. Cannot open SCSI driver.
cdrecord: For possible targets try 'cdrecord -scanbus'. Make sure you are root.

Does this mean i screwed up during installation and need to recompile kernel to get it to find the drive?

You are getting that message because /dev/cdrom IS NOT a valid block device, in fact as NSKL said, it is a symlink to the correct block device, something like /dev/hdd would be a VALID block device. Also, just to add a pinch to NSKL's great advice, my burner is /dev/scd0, and my links are setup as such. You can have multiple links to the same valid block device, such as a link called /dev/cdrom and /dev/dvd that both point to /dev/hdc This is not a problem, and is a good idea.

To enable scsi emulation, you will also have to add a line in Lilo...

If your CDRW ends up as /dev/hdd then you will add this line to your /etc/lilo.conf file:
append = "hdd=ide-scsi"

in the same "chunk" as your entry for booting slack.

So it may look like this:
image = /boot/vmlinuz
root = /dev/hdb1
label = slackware
append = "hdd=ide-scsi"
read-only

Now that's just an example, but similar to what yours may look like.

Any luck yet?

Cool

I think the drive died. During dmesg, it can't find the drive at all. I booted into suse (i have everything working under that) just to see and suse couldn't find the drive either. I just installed red hat and there were a couple times when the drive wouldn't start--it just sort of clicked and I got a message that there was no cd in drive. I ordered a new drive and will try all this again once I have it installed. THanks very much for the help.

FOr knowledge sake, could you guys explain those commands you had me enter? I understand ln creates a link, but what do the options -la and -sf mean?

Sure no problem...

According to the MAN for ln (huh huh, I like saying that, it sounds like Big Brother)
http://man.linuxquestions.org/index....ction=0&type=2

ln -sf means:
-s, --symbolic
make symbolic links instead of hard links
-f, --force
remove existing destination files

And according to the MAN for ls: http://man.linuxquestions.org/index....ction=0&type=2

-l use a long listing format (shows you where it's linked and much more)
-a, --all
do not hide entries starting with . (period)

Cool, knowledge is power, and power, well that's in the MAN! huh huh

Cool

awesome thank you very much...I'll post again when i get the new drive.

No problem, and good luck