On Sat, 19 Mar 2005 03:43:53 +0000, C Toews <toewsc@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote: > > I'm hoping this is a bonehead question with an easy answer: I just > installed Fedora Core 3 from a dvd. The installation seemed to go fine, but > I've noticed that /dev/cdrom doesn't exist, with the apparent consequence > that I can't play CD's. Except on a very cursory level, I don't really > understand what the entries in the /dev directory represent, and in > particular I don't understand when or how they are produced. I do know that > the cd drive works because I've checked it on the windows side (its a dual > boot). Any idea why the /dev/cdrom directory (directory? file? I'm not > sure what it is) wasn't created? More relevantly, is there any way to > create it, and associate with the relevant hardware? > > Any ideas would be deeply appreciated. > > Thanks, > Carl Hi Carl, What exactly do you mean when you say you can't play CDs? You mean you cannot play audio CDs? Or you stick a CD (data) in the drive and cannot see it at all? If you cannot play audio CDs, then I'd check several other things first. Check your volume levels. For some reason, FC3 seems to default (at least sometimes) to having sound disabled. Check your hardware. Depending on how you are trying to play the CD, you may need a cable that goes from the CD drive to your soundcard. What program are you trying to use to play the CD? Further, this could be a problem with sound in general. Can you hear any sounds (play wav files, etc)? Linux is quite different in the way it handles hardware devices. Each device in your system (a device is something that you input from or output to) is represented by a "file" in the /dev directory. Everything in the file system is a file or some kind. There are directory files, actual files, symbolic link files, and device files (to name a few). Now, if /dev/cdrom were to be created on your system, it would be a symbolic link (or symlink for short) to /dev/hdX where X is a, b, c, d, etc. depending on how your cdrom drive is hooked up (or at least it is a symlink on my system). It uses hdX because it, like a hard drive, is connected through the IDE bus. My cd-rom is actually /dev/hdc (secondary master on the IDE bus). I suggest you look and see if you can find a similar file. It also may have multiple symlinks to it, like cdwriter or dvd depending on what your system decided it liked (you obviously have a DVD drive, since that is how you installed). If your program you are trying to use is looking for /dev/cdrom, and it cannot find it, then I suggest figuring out what hdX is the cdrom and pointing it to that instead. Yes, there is a way to manually create device files, it's called MAKEDEV in the /dev directory. But that is somewhere you don't really want or need to go. If your cdrom is really not having a device file made for it, then I don't know what is going on. If you need help figuring out which /dev/hdX is you cdrom drive, the take a look at fstab. Run this command in a terminal: cat /etc/fstab Lines containing /media/<some_optical_drive_name> should give you some clues. If you are still stuck, then send us some more details about what you want to do and what you have tried that has not worked. Jonathan
