[Techtalk] "I need to use Windows because ..."

[Conor Daly]

On Sat, Aug 10, 2002 at 10:03:38PM -0700 or so it is rumoured hereabouts, 
Poppy thought:
> On Sat, 2002-08-10 at 14:12, Akkana wrote:
> > Megan Golding writes:
> > That was one of my last few windows uses too!  xcdroast is a little
> > rough in the UI, but in terms of actual functionality it turns out
> > that it works better than the windows burning software I had been
> > using.  gToaster and eroaster both have somewhat nicer UIs, and I've
> > been experimenting with them lately (they look more like the windows
> > software, which means they give a little less control than xcdroast
> > does but they have an easier interface for the specific case of
> > mirroring a few hard drive directories onto a CD).  Setting up
> > the kernel to recognize an IDE burner used to be hard, but modern
> > distros handle that nicely.
> 
> Anyone have experience setting up an IDE burner in Mandrake 8.1 who
> wants to tell me how easy/hard it was?  *grin*
> 
> I've looked at the directions a while back, decided that as little as I
> burn cds, I can just reboot into windows - it's easier. but I'm rapidly
> approaching the point where my windows partition needs to be
> reinstalled. The less I have to deal with theincreasing instability, the
> happier I'll be.

AIUI, you need three things;  1. Tell the kernel to reserve your CDRW
drive for SCSI emulation.  2. Set its parameters in cdrecord's conf file.
3. suid cdrecord


1. Tell the kernel to reserve your CDRW drive for SCSI emulation...

You need to tell your boot loader to tell the kernel about the CDRW drive.
Assuming the drive is on /dev/hdd, you add 'append "hdd=ide-scsi"' to
/etc/lilo.conf and rerun lilo or you add 'hdd=ide-scsi' to the end of the
"kernel" line in /etc/grub.conf.  When the kernel boots, it won't use the
ide-cdrom module that it usually uses for CD drives. Instead it'll use the
ide-scsi module.  Your CDRW drive won't appear as /dev/hdd either, it'll
be something like /dev/scd0 instead.


2. Set its parameters in cdrecord's conf file.

As root do 'cdrecord --scanbus' and it'll return a list of devices found.
Identify your CDRW drive and note its scsi id numbers (eg. 0,0,0 or
similar).  Make an entry in /etc/cdrecord.conf to describe this device for
cdrecord.  

# This file is /etc/cdrecord.conf
# It contains defaults that are used if no command line option
# or environment is present.
#
# The default device, if not specified elswhere
CDR_DEVICE=phillips

# The default speed, if not specified elswhere
CDR_SPEED=2

# The default FIFO size if, not specified elswhere
CDR_FIFOSIZE=4m

# The following definitions allow abstract device names.
# They are used if the device name does not contain the
# the characters ',', ':', '/' and '@'
#
# drive name    device  speed   fifosize driveropts
phillips=       0,0,0   12      4m      ""


3. suid cdrecord

cdrecord needs root permissions to command the CDRW properly.  As root do

chmod +s `which cdrecord`

to set it.

That should do it (naturally, I'm not using mandrake at all and there's
probably some fundamental quirk of the distro that makes nonsense of all
the above...).


Incidentally, for anyone looking for a handy way to mirror a directory to
CDR(W), I have a little script available to do just that.  It'll make
ISO images first or (optionally) burn direct to CDR(W).  It includes
detection of the size of the CD media in the drive (including mini CDs) so 
it won't overburn a 650Mb CDR with a 700Mb directory.

It's available to any askers...

Conor
-- 
Conor Daly <conor.daly at oceanfree.net>

Domestic Sysadmin :-)
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