[NCLUG] setting up cdrw

[robert rinker]

Virgil - 

It took a while to get my Sony CD-RW to work, but I finally did it, and it
has been writing CDs faithfully ever since. The info I needed is in the
CD-WRITING Howto, but I also found out a few things by looking at the
code for some of the drivers, and the kernel docs. Or maybe it simply
requires an appropriate number of four letter words before it works. BTW,
I am using RedHat, but I don't think things would be terribly different
for you.

In addition to the LILO append line, I added the following lines to
/etc/conf.modules, as suggesting in the HOW-TO (my CD-ROM is physically
attached to hdc):

options ide-cd ignore=hdc         # tell the ide-cd module to ignore hdc
alias scd0 sr_mod                    # load sr_mod upon access of scd0
pre-install ide-scsi modprobe imm    # uncomment for some ZIP drives only
pre-install sg     modprobe ide-scsi # load ide-scsi before sg
pre-install sr_mod modprobe ide-scsi # load ide-scsi before sr_mod
pre-install ide-scsi modprobe ide-cd # load ide-cd   before ide-scsi

Note that the third line is uncommented for IDE ATAPI Zip drives - I have
one, and it suddenly also started to look like a SCSI device after all of
this (it became device /dev/sdb4, rather than hdb4, as before). Now, for
"regular" CD-ROM usage, the device is scd0, so I pointed /dev/cdrom to
this:

ln -s /dev/scd0 /dev/cdrom

However, cdrecord doesn't seem to like this device. Also, when I did

cdrecord -scanbus

it gives an input/output error, so things looked bleak. However, the CD-RW
capabilities are available through the sg device (sg = general scsi?). I
also have some "real" scsi devices, as well as the Zip drive, so my CD-ROM
is sg3. You can determine where your CD is by typing 

cat /proc/scsi/scsi

and counting (starting with 0) the entry number of the CD-ROM. So, the
command:

cdrecord -dev=/dev/sg3 filename.iso

seems to work for me. I am not sure what the dev=x,y,z form would look
like, but since this works, I am happy. I guess the caveat is that the
device sg3 is assigned by the kernel, and could change upon reboot. 

Hope this helps.

-Bob

On Sun, 3 Dec 2000, virgil denny wrote:

> Well everyone has been real helpful so far, so here we go again. I am
> running SuSE 7.0, and am trying to set up my sony cdrw. Have recompiled
> the kernel, and set append in lilo as "hdc=ide-scsi" but am having no
> luck getting anywhere. Thanks in advance.
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