Help requested - CD-ROM problems in RH 7.2

[Bolin, Robert]

Hi all

I'm having a problem with setting up RH 7.2 on an old Pentium Pro with 64Mb
RAM and a 6x or 8x CDROM (can't remember which) for my parents. The distro
installs fine, but then "forgets" how to talk to the CDROM. The error being
thrown out when I tried to mount a CD was something like "/dev/cdrom is not
a valid block device" (I think - sorry I didn't think to write it down and
the box is at home). I believe (and certainly in this case) RH symlinks
/dev/cdrom to /dev/hdc.

I've done some quick searching on the web and found a couple of things that
suggest that it may be related to RH 7.X enabling DMA support in the kernal
- one website mentions "The most common issues seen are (snip) the CDROM is
not accessible after installation" which kinda describes the problem. Now
this page (http://www.exocore.com/technologies/linux/rhl71dma/) suggests
adding "/sbin/hdparm -d0 /dev/hdc" to /etc/rc.d/rc.sysinit which should fix
the problem except that I'm not sure where to add the line and when I added
it based on educated guesses, the computer either ignored the line or
complained that /dev/hdc was not a valid device (it is btw).

Can anyone help me by suggesting where in rc.sysinit I put the line, or
suggest another way of overcoming the problem? If I can't fix the problem,
it'll be another computer to the dark side (M$ reinstall) :-(

Rob



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