CD/DVD drive not recognized.

[Nigel Henry]

On Tuesday 09 October 2007 15:06, Simon Slater wrote:
> On Mon, 2007-10-08 at 19:15 +0200, Nigel Henry wrote:

> > Hi Simon. This is probably no help whatsoever, but a bit of googling
> > brought up the same problem for Fedora 7 on fedora forum from about 3
> > months ago.
> >
> > Someone there found that FC6 picked up their optical drive ok, but F 7
> > didn't. Also someone found that an i686 kernel, version 2.6.21-1.3255.fc7
> > picked up the optical drive ok (that was a testing kernel at the time),
> > whereas the earlier kernel didn't. The original kernel from my install
> > cdroms for Fedora 7 is 2.6.21-1.3228.
> >
> > What is your current kernel? Is Fedora 7 fully updated?
> >
> > I was stupidly going to suggest you tried a live cdrom, to see if the
> > drive was accessible afterwards. Doh. Not so easy with only one optical
> > drive.
> >
> > 2¢ worth of probably useless info
> >
> > Nigel.
>
> All info gladly taken on board, Nigel.  The drive worked with boot.iso
> CD where I did an NFS install (see an earlier thread).  The Fedora 7 DVD
> was purchased.  I have not run yum update yet.  It can take a long time
> on dialup.

I know the feeling, as I too am on dialup. IIRC the updates are about 800MB, 
but doesn't take as long as downloading the 5 cdrom iso's for Fedora 7 that 
someone kindly made available (8-10 days).
>
> GRUB menu shows:
>  Fedora (2.6.20-2925.9.fc7xen)
> and Fedora-base (2.6.21-1.3194.fc7)
>
> This problem happens when booting to either.  On our system I would
> retain the Xen kernel to play with virtualization, but on the system
> that I'm setting up the base kernel is all that is needed.

You see that could well be the problem, as your kernel is even earlier than my 
original one (3228), and the guy on the fedora forum got his drive detected 
using a 3255 one, which was a  testing kernel at the time.

I've just tried my earliest 3228 kernel, and the optical drive is detected ok, 
but when I went to install Fedora 7 on the same machine that has FC1,2,3,4, 
and 5 on it, along with Debian installs, etc, it wouldn't boot on my new 
combi optical drive, although live cdroms, booted ok, and I also put the 
first disk in for FC5, and that booted ok. I had to use smart boot manager on 
a floppy disc to get the first disc for Fedora 7 to boot.

Based on what I've seen on various lists, combination drives create more 
problems than a drive dedicated to a specific format, and different 
makes/models of the combo drives appear to compound the problem. Some just 
work, others don't, but that's no help to the end user though.


>
> I have deliberately avoided toying with different kernels, or even
> updating the kernel for that matter, until my knowledge of Linux grows
> some more.  I still haven't got ftape working with FC6 yet, it needs
> kernel modules being compiled as I recall. I suppose that I don't need
> to now with the new DVD burner.
>
> I'll have a closer look on Fedora Forum, thanks.
This is the one that I found using, optical drive not detected on Fedora7 as a 
search on google.
http://forums.fedoraforum.org/showthread.php?t=160361

It is the first on the list, but thought the possible kernel related problem 
was worth posting to you.
>
> --
> Regards
> Simon

Regarding kernel updates and Yum:

I use Apt, and Synaptic for updates, and all kernels are saved, but if you are 
using Yum, it only keeps 2 kernels as default. Personally I don't like that, 
and prefer to decide myself as to how many kernels I want available.

You can change the way that Yum deals with kernels though, but Yum has been 
updated on Fedora 7, so the place to edit has changed.

Originally this was in /etc/yum/pluginconf.d, and a file named 
installonlyn.conf existed. By default there are the following 2 lines.
enabled=1
tokeep=2
The first enables the plugin, and the second, how many kernels to keep.

Even though I don't use Yum, I always edit the file, and set the first line as 
enabled=0, thus saving all kernels.

Some updates later on Fedora 7, Yum itself is updated, and what I've written 
above no longer applies.

As I've said, I don't use Yum, but to make sure you keep all kernels after the 
yum package has been updated, you need to add a line to /etc/yum.conf as 
below. ( I put it after the metadata line)

installonly_limit=0
That's a zero, not an uppercase o.

Apologies for rambling on about kernels. I just don't like my kernels being 
trashed by updates.

Nigel.