[Sderby] My CD Writer setting under Linux

[Simon Hales]

Hi

Firstly, the exact syntax of the command is "cdrecord -scanbus"; it seems
that at least one of the commands below had a slight typo.

My second guess is that you might not have something called "SCSI
emulation" set up properly.  The standard Linux CD burning programs such
as cdrecord are designed to talk to SCSI drives, not IDE ones.  For IDE
devices to work, the Linux kernel must not be allowed to support any drive
you want to use for writing as an IDE CDROM drive.  Instead, the kernel
must pretend that it has found a SCSI card in your computer with a cd
writer on it.

Can't be very specific without knowing about your distribution (I only use
Debian) but before CD burning will work, you need to have IDE CD support
disabled in your kernel (or at least configured to ignore the writer
drive).  The name of the module you are looking for is "ide-cd.o" I
think.  You then need to enable a kernel feature that pretends that you
have a SCSI card in your system and that your CD writer is attached to
this and not to an IDE cable.  I think this is in a module called
"ide-scsi.o".  Finally you need to have kernel support for SCSI cd drives,
which I think is in a module called "sr_mod.o" and support for SCSI
"generic" devices (used to send low-level cd-writing commands to the
drive) which is in a module called "sg.o".  Note: SCSI emulation will only
affect the CD writer and any other CD drive(s) in your system, and will
not affect your IDE hard disks.

I learned most of what I know about CD writing under Linux from the "CD
Writing Howto" which is part of the "Linux Howtos" documentation project.
Any decent distro should have a package with a copy of these.  On Debian,
I just download a Linux kernel source from ftp.uk.kernel.org and use the
wonderful "make-kpkg" utility to compile a custom kernel containing all
the features, such as ide-scsi that I want, and have it wrapped up into an
archive that I can install like any other Debian package.  The recommended
procedures for adding and removing kernel driver "modules" or compiling
and installing new kernels vary so much between distros that I can't tell
you exactly how to get these features on your system.

Converting a system to IDE-SCSI emulation is a bit of a pain, as all your
CD device names change from IDE devices (/dev/hd?) to a combination of
SCSI cd devices (/dev/sr? or /dev/scd?) and SCSI "generic" devices
(/dev/sg?") so some configuration files need changing, but it is
definitely worth it to get CD writing going.  I never write CDs under
Windows if I can help it, and tend to get IDE-SCSI set up on any new
system as a matter of course during installation even if there is only a
CD ROM installed.  CD ROM drive work just fine under IDE-SCSI (sometimes
even better than using the normal IDE support) and setting them up that
way from the start minimizes hassle if I later add a writer.

Hope this is at least some help and is pointing in the right area.  I'm
sure that between the members of this list we can get you set up.  Once it
is set up, it just works, no fuss, no hassle, over and over again!

Regards

Simon

Powered by Debian/GNU Linux	(http://www.debian.org)
        and FreeBSD		(http://www.freebsd.org)

On Sun, 19 Oct 2003, My Freeserve wrote:

> Date: Sun, 19 Oct 2003 18:32:53 +0100
> From: My Freeserve <tony at shaw5336.freeserve.co.uk>
> Reply-To: South Derby LUG General Mailing List <sderby at mailman.lug.org.uk>
> To: sderby at mailman.lug.org.uk
> Subject: [Sderby] My CD Writer setting under Linux
>
> Hi Mandy
>
> The information below is what you have asked me to provide, I hope it
> will be off help you in trying to solve me set-up my CR Writer.
>
> cdrecord -- scanbus outputs:
>
> Cdrecord 1.11a32 (i586-mandrake-linux-gnu) Copyright (C) 1995-2002 Jorj
> Schilling
> cdrecord: No such file or directory. Cannot open '/dev/pg*'. Cannot open
> SCSI driver.
> cdrecord: For possible targets try 'cdrecord -scanbus'. Make sure you
> are root.
>
> I am logged in as the root user and 'cdrecord -scanbus' out puts the
> same as 'cdrecord --scanbus'
>
> The CD writter works ok under Windows'98se correctly.
>
> I am would like to Burn both Audio & Data CD's
>
> I have set-up the CD writer as /dev/ide/host0/bus1/target1/lun0/cd under
> the Linuxconf 1.28
>
> Thank you.
>
> P.S.
> Sorry for the 'My Freeseerve' bit but I have 2 seperate e-mail accounts
> and I get board with them saying just the account name all the time.
>
>
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