I just finished getting this to work.
Here's what I had to do:
1) First get the links corrected for your two drives (CDRW and DVD). You can
check the answer that helped me from the expert mail list archive at:
http://www.mail-archive.com/expert@linux-mandrake.com/msg31476.html.
2) Next decide what software you are going to use for DVD.
I chose XINE. You can get the official release from
http://xine.sourceforge.net/.
If you want a version that will play commercial DVD's you can go to
http://gape.ist.utl.pt/ment00/linuxdvd.html
3) Before installing XINE I needed to be running XFree86 version 4.x. Even
though I had selected this during my mandrake install, it was not what I was
running.
The details and corrective actions can be found at:
http://www.thehaus.net/AltOS/Linux/ht-xfree4nvidia-mdk72.shtml.
a more detailled version can be found at:
http://members.home.net/linuxfrog/nvidia.html
(This information also has a lot of data about the NVIDIA graphics drivers,
which you can ignore if you don't need).
(Also, I did not have to follow all of the steps. I followed the instructions
for removing the version 3 rpm files, then removed the version 4 server rpm,
reinstalled it and changed the links. I am not sure why I had to remove and
re-install the version 4 server, but my attempt to create the symbolic link
failed before I tried this).
4) You need to have the link to the DVD drive set as /dev/dvd and not /dev/cdrom
or /dev/cdrom2. You can either take care of this as part of step 1 or now.
5) Make sure the dvd drive is set to use DMA. hdparm -d /dev/hdd will let you
know if this is on. If not hdparm -d1 /dev/hdd should correct this. read the
man page for hdparm before trying it.
6) Now you should be all set to install XINE and give it a whirl.
You can also set the dvd as a raw device if your system is too slow. I didn't
see an improvement, but hey - I'm still trying to figure this whole thing out.
For XINE you can check some of the FAQS, the XINE mailing list, or the IRC
channel mentioned on their home page for more support.
Matt Schroeder wrote:
> I have been running Mandrake 7.2 Kernel 2.2.17 and at bootup I see that my
> DVD is assigned to dev/hdd (Pioneer 6X)
>
> Yet when I try to use the DVD drive for a cdrom it does nothing and says the
> device doesn't exist. What didn't I do to get it to work? I try to mount
> it and it never works...
>
> In /mnt I have cdrom and cdrom2 but for all I know these may be both links
> to my master cd which is an HP 8100 CDRW
>
> I want to get dvd's playing on this thing.
>
> Actually I'd like the drive to work period. As of now it's as if it isn't
> there.
>
> I've looked all over for how to do this and even the latest 4 inch thick
> books have like 4 sentences on getting a DVD drive to run.
>
> --Matt
