Getting my DVD drive working with Knoppix.

**Arkon** · 11-14-2004, 04:16 AM

Hello, I'm new to this site, and I am also a new linux user. I bought a linux format magizine with a DVD of live Distros on it. Well I installed knoppix, but after it's installed I can't get it to dectect my dvd drive. Well, I don't know how to go about having it dectect my dvd drive, but all I know is that it's not listed anywhere. Where do I go to have KDE/Knoppix/Linux attempt to detect my dvd drive. Also, do you know of any good knoppix, KDE, or Gnome books I could go looking for. I really want to get away from my "windows zombie" ways.

Thanks,

Arkon

**kelmo** · 11-14-2004, 09:25 AM

http://www.knoppix.net/forum/viewtopic.php?t=12577

I t's hard to speculate why knoppix did not find your dvd drive without some more info of your pc's configuration and what you did to boot knoppix.

**mzilikazi** · 11-14-2004, 03:42 PM

kelmo is right. It's hard to say without knowing some hardware details about your system but you can't play dvd's without libdvdcss.

Code:

wget http://download.videolan.org/pub/lib...2.8-1_i386.deb
su
dpkg -i libdvdcss2_1.2.8-1_i386.deb

Then you also need to configure Xine or mplayer or whatever you use to watch dvd's. Most apps default to using /dev/dvd so presuming your dvd drive is /dev/hdb you'd simply create a symlink like so:

Code:

ln -s /dev/hdb /dev/dvd

**globaltekit** · 11-14-2004, 07:42 PM

I performed the task as you suggested mzililkazi, now instead of zine just not playing the DVD it locks up. I also did a ln -s /dev/cdrom /dev/dev and /dev/hdc /dev/dev it did not work. the error message states that it can not find /dev/dvd/ HELP

Originally Posted by mzilikazi

kelmo is right. It's hard to say without knowing some hardware details about your system but you can't play dvd's without libdvdcss.

Code:

wget http://download.videolan.org/pub/lib...2.8-1_i386.deb
su
dpkg -i libdvdcss2_1.2.8-1_i386.deb

Then you also need to configure Xine or mplayer or whatever you use to watch dvd's. Most apps default to using /dev/dvd so presuming your dvd drive is /dev/hdb you'd simply create a symlink like so:

Code:

ln -s /dev/hdb /dev/dvd

**mzilikazi** · 11-14-2004, 09:58 PM

Originally Posted by globaltekit

I performed the task as you suggested mzililkazi, now instead of zine just not playing the DVD it locks up. I also did a ln -s /dev/cdrom /dev/dev and /dev/hdc /dev/dev it did not work. the error message states that it can not find /dev/dvd/ HELP

Silly you did not read directions very well.

It is /dev/dvd NOT /dev/dev. Now you need to remove those crazy symlinks you made.

Get root

Code:

su
rm -f /dev/cdrom /dev/dev
ln -s /dev/hdc /dev/dvd
ln -s /dev/hdc /dev/cdrom

Now check it to see if it's done correctly.

Code:

ls -al /dev/dvd

It should say:

Code:

lrwxrwxrwx  1 root root 9 Oct  6 17:24 /dev/dvd -> /dev/hdc

The same for /dev/cdrom.
Now, if your dvd/cdrom drive IS in fact /dev/hdc then it should work.

**Arkon** · 11-14-2004, 11:46 PM

well, I have a dvd drive that came with my pc, a Hitachi DVD-ROM GD-5000.
and btw, I don't really want to watch dvd's on it. I just want to use it for my cd's and such. And I can't get it dectected. by the way, thanks for the quick review.

**globaltekit** · 11-28-2004, 01:50 AM

Thanks for the corrections, mzilikazi, I got rid of the sym links as you suggested and performed the commands as you stated.

su
rm -f /dev/cdrom /dev/dev
ln -s /dev/hdc /dev/dvd
ln -s /dev/hdc /dev/cdrom

ls -al /dev/dvd = lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 10 Nov 14 03:51 /dev/dvd -> /dev/cdrom

ls -al /dev/cdrom = lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 8 Nov 27 19:22 /dev/cdrom -> /dev/hdc

Afterwards I placed a DVD into the drive and nothing happened. I thought it would have initiated xine automatically, but it did not. I also clicked on xine and it froze up again. I uesed Kpackage Mgr to load xine and all of its dependencies. Whats wrong NOW?????

**mzilikazi** · 11-28-2004, 02:49 PM

AFAIK Xine does not have the ability to start automatically when you insert a DVD. Just to confirm, you did install libdvdcss as posted above right? Check the configuration of XINE to make sure it's using /dev/dvd (should be default).

Is DMA enabled for your dvd drive?

Code:

hdparm /dev/hdb
/dev/hdb:
 IO_support   =  1 (32-bit)
 unmaskirq    =  1 (on)
 using_dma    =  1 (on)
 keepsettings =  0 (off)
 readonly     =  0 (off)
 readahead    = 256 (on)
 HDIO_GETGEO failed: Invalid argument

You can also try mplayer. From command line it's like this:

Code: