[H-GEN] CDROM mount problem on Open SUSE.

[Anthony Irwin]

andrew laidlaw wrote:

> That works, at least from the root, so I take it /dev/hdc is good, 
> that the problem's probably not gui related, and I've got a good 
> chance by editing /etc/fstab to improve the /dev/hdc entry as 
> previously suggested?
>
> It's a read only file, and won't edit with gedit. I tried to save a 
> copy of the original file as /etc/fstabtest, but got the message: 
> "could not save the file "/etc/fstabtest"".  I'm sorry to be so 
> stupid, but this is literally the first issue in Unix I've had.  Okay, 
> so logging in as the root does the trick.

When changing to root in the command prompt you can type 'su -' or use 
the sudo command which is a great tool. All system files will need root 
access to change them to see the permissions on a file use the 'ls -l' 
command.

>
> Having edited fstab, rebooting now.  Was I right to assume fstab is 
> data only read at boot, so no effect until reboot? 
>
> Anyway, now rebooted and it doesn't work.  The exact line I used was:
>
> /dev/hdc     /media/cdrecorder    iso9660    ro,user,noauto 0 0
>
> And of course it still can't mount manually from the ordinary user.

Ok I am guessing that this last bit is probably that you a not a part of 
a group that has access to the cdrom (most distros now have groups that 
allow access to the cdrom,floppy,audio etc) or the permissions on 
/dev/hdc is not set correctly.

Below is how my Debian system is set up:

# ls -l /dev/hdc
brw-rw----  1 root cdrom 22, 0 2005-02-26 16:38 /dev/hdc

Ok so the command above tells you that the group of the hdc device is 
cdrom and that it is set to have rw access. Some other distros may have 
disk or something elses as the group.

So now you need to see what users are a member of the cdrom group by 
running the command below.

# cat /etc/group | grep cdrom
cdrom:x:24:irwa82

 From the output of the above command I can see that my user irwa82 is a 
member of the group and should be able to access the cdrom group.

If you want to see all the groups you are a member of then you can run 
the groups command as shown below.

# groups
irwa82 dialout cdrom floppy audio video plugdev cvsuser

The output above lists all the groups I am in as you can see their is 
dialout for the modem which I never use and cdrom, audio, video etc. 
These groups allow access to the various devices that would normally 
need root access. I imagine suse would have different group names for 
things but should be somewhat similar.

If you try doing the above you will probably find that you are not a 
member of the group on the /dev/hdc device or the device is not 
configured in the way mentioned above to allow users access to the 
device via the group permissions.

Kind Regards,
Anthony Irwin