[Gllug] cd rom access

[Mark Preston]

Hi Gary,
It's probably a good idea to try and access a cdrom as root first.
Stick some cdroms into your cdrom drives first.
Then, if you open up a bash terminal window as user gary, and at the 
command prompt type:-

su

(then press the return/enter key to complete the command)
You should be prompted for the root password.
Once you have typed this in and pressed <enter> then you should see the 
prompt change from gary at ... to root at ...
Then type:-

mount /mnt/cdrom

If you don't get any error messages then you should get the root prompt 
back again.
Then type:-

cd /mnt/cdrom

Then type:-

ls -l

If you see the files on your cdrom listed then you have succeeded in 
mounting your cdrom under Linux. The rest is then due to permission setting.
Once you have finished, you need to unmount this filesystem. This would 
typically be the case when you finish using one CDROM and would like to 
use another CDROM, you need to unmount the first one before removing the 
CDROM from the drive. To unmount a filesystem (such as the one we 
mounted above) type:-

  umount /mnt/cdrom

Remember to type 'umount' and not 'unmount'. There is no "n"!

Then try the same with

mount /mnt/cdrom2

etc.

If you get errors then post them to the list.
You should make special directories just for mounting devices, and leave 
them empty. Technically you can mount your cdrom anywhere in the 
directory tree, even a directory that is not empty. However, any files 
in that directory will become invisible in the virtual file system. They 
will still exist on disk, but you will be unable to access them until 
the file system that obscures them is unmounted. For example, If you 
mount your CDROM at /usr, you would not be able to access to most of 
your installed programs in that directory as long as the mounted 
filesystem remains mounted.


BTW it's best to turn off HTML when posting email messages to this list, 
just send plain text please.
Regards,
Mark Preston



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