How to properly mount a DVD-R/W drive and how to use it from the command line?

Olaf Greve o.greve at axis.nl
Thu Oct 6 04:55:05 PDT 2005


Hi,

This'll surely be a really novice question, but I'd like to get it right 
in one go, and RTFM-ing using Google somehow didn't produce uniform 
enough results for my likings. :)

The situation: I just installed FreeBSD 5.4-Release AMD64 on my new 
machine (though the question is most likely not specific to the AMD64 
version, I guess), and upon installation time the machine had a DVD-ROM 
/ CD-RW drive. Yesterday I received a new drive, being a DVD-RW drive, 
and I replaced the previous one with the new one. O.k., no problem so 
far, and the BIOS seems to properly identify the drive.

When booting the machine, the drive is -I think- identified as "DVDW" as 
/dev/acd0, and the mountpoint it (re!)uses is /cdrom.

Now, this is where the issue lies. When putting a CD-ROM in the drive, 
and trying to access it through the /cdrom mountpoint I get an empty 
directory listing (not correct) and when manually trying to do the 
following:
mount /dev/acd0 /cdrom
I get the error (on all CD-ROMs):
mount: /dev/acd0 on /cdrom: incorrect super block

Now, the entry in /etc/fstab for this device is set to:
/dev/acd0 	/cdrom	cd9660	ro,noauto	0	0

Which is fine for a CD-ROM drive.

However: what should the proper settings be for a DVD-RW drive? Surely 
at least the 'ro' flag is incorrect, but is that all?
Also: are there other locations where I should tell FBSD (and if so: 
how) about the presence of the new drive?

Finally: I do not intent to run X on the machine, as it'll be a 
webserver only (well, incl. DB stuff etc.), and the drive is intended 
for being used to make remote back-ups on DVD-RW (yes: someone will 
physically swap the DVDs when necessary ;) ). What I'd like to know is 
what the easiest/best ways are to do so from the command-line. Does 
anyone have some scripts for this? Or perhaps some pointers to a good 
(preferrably free) program or tutorial?

As always: thanks in advance for your time, and your answers. :)

Cheers,
Olafo


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