Media Mounting Mayhem

[youngtomedison]

I'm using Vectorlinux-5.8-SOHO-FINAL release on a Dell Optiplex 260 with 1 GB of RAM.

Whenever I try to mount a CD-ROM or DVD-ROM in Vector, it's strictly a crapshoot as to whether it'll auto-mount as it should. Sometimes it does and sometimes it doesn't

Sometimes, manually mounting each disk works and sometimes it doesn't.

The "media" icon on my desktop indicates 3 CD/DVD-ROM devices, even though only two are installed. Their designations are:

CD-ROM (cdrom) - Sony combination DVD reader and CD burner, which should be hdc
CD-ROM (dev%%2fhdd) - that's my Pioneer DVD burner
DVD (dvd)

My guess is that the system is confused (like me).

The control center and VASM (even when working as root) have no way of addressing this issue.

I've installed the new version of vl-hot.

What can I do to fix things?

[Joe1962]

This is just to point out that vl-hot is for external mass storage media, not optical drives. I never use automounting for those, so I can't really help.

[newt]

You could try disabling vl-hot, and enabling HAL to see if it works better for you.  I guess the question would be: where can that be done?  To be honest, I'm not totally sure.  Check VASM under the startup services associated with your init level, maybe it's found there.  Hopefully someone else will see this post and know how exactly to do this.

[nightflier]

I have had problems before with multiple optical drives.

My fix was to edit the section of /etc/fstab that list them, something like:
# CDROM, CDWRITER, DVD
#/dev/cdrom    /mnt/cdrom        iso9660 defaults,noauto,ro,user 0 0
/dev/cdwriter /mnt/cdwriter    iso9660 defaults,noauto,rw,user 0 0
/dev/dvd      /mnt/dvd         auto    defaults,noauto,ro,user 0 0

I replaced the "/dev/cdwriter" and "/dev/dvd" with the actual locations of my drives (/dev/hdc and /dev/hdd). This does not give me automount (don't like it anyways), but makes it easy to access the drive through Konqueror, media tab (system:/media if you want to type it in the address bar). I use vl-hot. For auto-mounting you will need HAL.

Reason why you have three icons, is that there are these three entries corresponding to whether you are using a CD-ROM, CD-RW or DVD media. I prefer to just use two, one for each physical drive. Commenting out the line for "/dev/cdrom" removed that entry.

As far as the desktop icons, you may need to edit those in a similar way.

[youngtomedison]

Hmm, funny thing happened just now. I made the edits to etc/fstab as you described (after first making a backup of the original fstab). I edited fstab as a superuser. On editing that file, I was greeted with four or so media-detection windows ("Open in new window", "Do nothing") even though there was nothing in either CD/DVD drive (one's a combination CD_RW/DVD reader, the other's a straight DVD burner). After closing all of those windows and the text editor, I tried inserting a DVD-ROM, first in one drive then the other. I could not get either drive to mount it, period. The little gear in Konqueror would just keep turning endlessly, while displaying nothing.

So, I opened the backup copy of fstab, and pasted the original lines under the #CD-ROM, CD-WRITER paragraph back into etc/fstab. Again I got a flurry of media-recognition windows, I guess 7 of them this time. I closed all of them and the text editors. I tried once again to mount that same DVD-ROM in the combination drive. It mounted OK except that now there are four optical-disk icons! (Will one go away when I reboot?).

The plot thickens...

[Penguinista]

This is nuts! I have the same problems with VL 5.9.1 SOHO on my system (HP Laptop with a DVD player). I've tried the above advice and played with fstab (as root). After enabling HAL I can play DVD movies, audio CDs and access the files in my MMBD (disk 2). In some cases the KDE open daemon pops up and the media plays with the appropiate app. In the case of a data CD, I have to open Konqueror and go to media, click the "CDROM" icon in order to mount the CD. Then I can see the files but I cannot copy them to my hard drive. Why is that? Do I need a special file manager?

Also, when I try to set up Gslapt sources it does not recognize my CD no matter what path I plug in. My DVD is recognized as /media/hda

BTW, what is the line for fstab if I want to set up automount of my DVD?

 

[bigpaws]

Take a look at /etc/fstab compare /dev/dvd and /dev/cdrom
I would bet that /dev/dvd is commented out (# in from of it) do the
same thing to /dev/cdrom and all should be well.

Konqueror is probably the most powerful file browser out there.

The reason for the cdrom copying maybe permissions which maybe
fixed with commenting out /dev/cdrom

To mount you sources for gslapt you can use:

SOURCE=file:///dev/hda/<continue the patch as needed>

HTH

Bigpaws

[Penguinista]

Thanks bigpaws, I'll give it a try.

[Penguinista]

bigpaws, I commented out /dev/dvd in fstab and everything works well, except for:

I noticed that if I put a data CD into my laptop that HAL recognizes it and mounts it (with KDE Daemon) no problem and I generally open it in a new Konqueror window. I then open another Konqueror window and copy files over. However, if I remove the CD and try to put in a new data CD HAL doesn't always recognize it and mount it. I find that I have to reboot the computer for HAL to recognize and mount this new data CD. Why is that? What can I do to correct it?

[lagagnon]

Why not just refresh the file manager after inserting the new CD?

[Penguinista]

I've tried refreshing Konqueror (view/reload), closing and reopening Konqueror and still no change. The system won't mount the CD without a reboot. hummm?

[GrannyGeek]

Can you mount the CD manually?
mount /mnt/cdrom
(if you have a line for the drive in /etc/fstab).
--GrannyGeek

[Penguinista]

Granny Geek: Yes, thank you for the reminder. It must be the KDE autoload daemon thingy that has gone beserk (btw, it recognizes the dvd drive as system:/dev/hda1). If it's not working, I open a terminal and mount the CD with mount /dev/dvd no problem. Then to copy I can either drag and drop or command line cp to /mnt/dvd. I then have to umount /dev/dvd to remove the CD and load another. I sometimes have to use Konqueror's View > Reload menu at appropriate times.