...symbolic link to nowhere...?

[Fatcharlie]

Hi,

I have installed on the HDD and it worked well - everything works but i cannot mouny my cdrom.

IBM pentium 4 2.4Ghz 40Ghz HDD

I have been through the forum and found various advice. I have edited my /etc/fstab file to use the proer name of the device (seen as hdc by Knoppix), but I get the message shown:

mount: mount point /mnt/cdrom is s symbolic link to nowhere

Any help for this wet-behind-the-ears newbie?

Thanks,

Roger.

[OErjan]

there are several solutions.
either make a directory in /mnt called cd (sudo mkdir/mnt/cd)and replace cdrom with cd in fstab (kedit /etc/fstab),
OR
just remove the link and make a regular dir there.
now things should work.

[Fatcharlie]

Thanks Oerjan - I have made progress.

It seems the system is not trying to mount the cd, because if I do it with no cd in the drive, I get an error message saying 'no medium found', but I get a new error message when I actually put a cd in the drive:

>>could not mount device

the reported error was:

mount: wrong fs type bad option bad superblock on /dev/hdc,
missing codepage or other error<<

Then the cd drive runs continuously and won't let me open the drive unless I shut down the computer.

progress! At least something is happening.

Thanks,

Fatcharlie

[OErjan]

huh, how did you burn that CD? it should work great. atleast if hdc IS your player.
EDIT eh, is that a music disk?
If so they do not need mounting, you just put them in cd and play them, xmms is a good one, you might have to redirect the link /dev/cdrom though. make it point to /dev/hdc /EDIT

[Fatcharlie]

Hi OErjan,

no it's a data cd with various files, .bmp's, .doc's etc - all brunt using WinXP Home on my Dell Dimension 4800 Pentium 4 2.26Ghz (so you knwo what system I'm using).

Maybe I'll try bruning one with stuff created on Knoppix - perhaps that will work.

But I need to transfer some files from my Win XP machine to this new Knoppix machine - no network as yet so my only choice is cd's? I can't get onto the internet yet with the Knoppix machine because I need the Speedtouch script - and that's on my WinXP machine!

I feel I'm nearly there - hope you can help.

Cheers,

Fatcharlie.

[OErjan]

hmm, what does

cat /etc/fstab

say? and

dmesg|grep CD

please note that in linux CD and cd, Cd, cD are four diferent things, that is shift/capslock makes a diference.

[Fatcharlie]

Hi OErjan,

here's what I have:

Cat /etc/fstab gave quite a lot of text, and since I can't yet get it onto this machine (I am using my Windoze machine to talk to you) I have just grabbed the part I think you're interested in:

/dev/hdc mnt/cd iso9660 defaults,ro,users,noexec, 0 0

I have changed the bit which says /mnt/cd - it was /mnt/auto/cdrom before - but there was no such entry. I created a directory called /cd in /mnt and that is when I started getting a little success.

dmesg | grep CD got:

hdc: LTN486S, ATAPI CD/DVD-ROM drive
hdc: ATAPI 48X CD-ROM drive, 120kB cache
Uniform CD-ROM driver Revision: 3.20
Unable to identify CD-ROM format.

I hope this helps!

Incidentally I have discovered my Floppy works fine - is there any way I could have directed the contents of the 'cat' and the 'dmesg' results into a file on A: drive - i could have just pasted that here then.

I am sure there is a way I just don't know it!

Thanks again,

Fatcharlie.

[OErjan]

sure, redirecting output from screen to a file on floppy is a breese, just use a > and point it to some location you want the output.
to put the output on a textfile on the floppy just mount the floppy (rightklick floppy icon on desktop--> choose mount), then type

cat /etc/fstab > /mnt/floppy/fstab.txt&&dmesg>/mnt/floppy/dmesg.txt

now umnount the floppy before removing it (rightklick floppy icon on desktop--> choose unmount), otherwise the files may not be written to disk fully.
the > takes the output and redirects it where you point it (in this case a file called fstab.txt in /mnt/floppy) the && makes the two comands happen one after the other.
you can also create a file on the mounted floppy and copy paste the errors there then unmount it...

[Fatcharlie]

Hi OErjan,

I have done as you suggested and the results are:

fstab gives:

# /etc/fstab: filesystem table.
#
# filesystem mountpoint type options dump pass
/dev/hda2 / reiserfs defaults 0 1

proc /proc proc defaults 0 0
/dev/fd0 /floppy vfat defaults,user,noauto,showexec,umask=022 0 0
usbfs /proc/bus/usb usbfs devmode=0666 0 0
sysfs /sys sysfs defaults 0 0
tmpfs /dev/shm tmpfs defaults 0 0
/dev/hdc /mnt/cd iso9660 defaults,ro,users,noexec, 0 0
/dev/dvd /dvd iso9660 defaults,ro,users,noexec,noauto 0 0
# Added by KNOPPIX
/dev/hda1 /mnt/hda1 ext3 noauto,users,exec 0 0

and dmesg gives:

hdc: LTN486S, ATAPI CD/DVD-ROM drive
hdc: ATAPI 48X CD-ROM drive, 120kB Cache
Uniform CD-ROM driver Revision: 3.20
Unable to identify CD-ROM format.

I hope this gives you a clue as to why I can't see my cds!

I got the latest version of SuSE today on Linux User magazine - only trouble is it's a DVD! Doh! Maybe I can take the DVD from my windoze machine and install it in the Linux machine?

Anyway, that's another issue really - I just want to be able to get my cds working.

Thanks for all your help,

Fatcharlie.

[OErjan]

hmm, it seems like the CDrom canot read the fileformat. weird. have you tried with another disk? and how about another drive? (perhaps in a different computer)