Adding A CD Writer
If you recently added a cdburner to your computer, you could use the HardDrake new hardware detection utility to install it. HardDrake will attempt to recognize and setup any new hardware. HardDrake has a GUI front end or you can use the console mode detection during boot up. To activate HardDrake at boot up, go into the "Mandrake Control Center" (called Drakconf in pre 8.x versions) and then Startup Services and make sure that HardDrake is checked. Then reboot.
Another way would be to just pop in the Mandrake installation cdrom, choose "Update" instead of "Install" and Mandrake should recognize and install your cdburner for you.
If you want to set up your cdburner yourself, see the CD-R(W) section on the following url:
http://www.mandrakeuser.org/hardware/hremov3.html
Xcdroast Does Not List Other CDrom Drive
I have 2 CDrom drives, one is a CDRW and the other is a standard CDrom drive. When I opened Xcdroast it did not let me select the standard CDrom drive as a choice for the 2nd CDrom drive. The problem is that Xcdroast only recognizes SCSI CDrom drives. The solution:
Open the /etc/lilo.conf file with a text editor and where it says:
append="hdx=ide-scsi" change it to look like this:
append="hdx=ide-scsi hdx*=ide-scsi"
(The hdx stands for whatever the appropriate entry is for your CDwriter and the hdx* stands for whatever the appropriate entry is for your standard CDrom drive)
For Grub:
Open the /boot/grub/menu.lst file with a text editor, where it says hd*=ide-scsi add hd**=ide-scsi.
Burning .ISO Image Files With Cdrecord
Open a console, cd to the directory where your .iso is located and type the following:
cdrecord -v -eject speed=X dev=x,y,z imagename.iso
Replace X with the speed that you'd like to burn the cd with (usually 4, 8, 12, 16 etc...). If you don't know the speed of your CD burner, use 20, cdrecord will automatically adjust this number to the capabilities of your hardware.
Replace x,y,z with the correct numbers for your CD-R(W) device, to find out the correct numbers type:
cdrecord -scanbus
The numbers next to my cdburner are 0,0,0 so I entered dev=0,0,0 .
Using an alias to burn iso's:
On my machine, I've defined an alias for the cdrecord command line above in my .bashrc:
alias burniso='cdrecord -v -eject speed=12 dev=0,0,0'
Now all I've got to do is type:
burniso imagename.iso
and the rest happens all by itself.
Mounting .ISO Image Files
It can be useful to check if the ISO image is correct before finally burning it. To do this you can mount the ISO image as if it was a real CD:
1) su to root and create an empty directory:
mkdir /mnt/iso
2) Mount the ISO image (connect the ISO image to the directory):
mount -o loop,unhide -t iso9660 -r imagename.iso /mnt/iso
3) Now you can use the command "ls" to inspect the CD image:
ls /mnt/iso
4) To unmount:
umount /mnt/iso
Links:
CD-Writing How-To:
http://linuxdoc.org/HOWTO/CD-Writing-HOWTO.html
Graphical front ends to Cdrecord and Mkisofs:
http://sites.inka.de/~W1752/cdrecord/frontend.html