reading a dos cdrom with .pdf files.

[Ash]

Gary Kline wrote:
> 	People,
> 
> 	I have several CDROMS all of which seem to be DOS type.

Data CDs are generally IS0-9660 with various extensions.

> 
> 	At first I tried the disc in my CD player.  Nope; then 
> 	in one of my 5.3 machines using mount_msdosfs.  (probably
> 	with the wrong flags, I admit.) As a last resort  I put the

Wrong flags, unless the CD-ROM has a FAT/FAT32 file system (possible but 
unlikely).

> 	disc in my RH-8 platform intended to reboot into W2K. But
> 	a cup of coffee later I find that Red Hat had already popped
> 	up a window with the title of the disc and that it is a
> 	1.1MB pdf file.  I doubt this CDROM is a an ISO-9660 
> 	(or whatever).   But it's nice that  RH knew automagically 
> 	what to do with it and to pop up  the pdf reader.  

Why do you doubt it's ISO-9660?

> 
> 	I know there is the genius in FBSD-land to do this; probably
> 	just enough not people.  My question is: what are the FBSD

FreeBSD is geared to be a great server operating. The feature you want 
(auto mounting device) isn't necessarily desirable on a server. While it 
is possible to configure, it is not something that is available 
immediately "out of the box".

I'm not saying that FreeBSD doesn't make a great desktop. IMO FreeBSD 
makes a wonderful desktop, provided you take the time to read the docs 
and configure it properly.

> 	commands to let me mount this disc and let me read the
> 	files to be able to point acroread at them?
> 

This is clearly explained in the man pages as well as the handbook 
(Section 16.6.7 "Using Data CDs").

Assuming that you have a /cdrom directory, are using an IDE CD-ROM drive 
and do not have atapicam(4) configured the following command should work 
for you:

	#mount -t cd9660 /dev/acd0 /cdrom

If I'm not mistaken, upon install, a /cdrom directory is created when an 
optical drive is detected (if you have multiple optical drives you also 
get /cdrom1, /cdrom2, /cdrom3 ....) and /etc/fstab is configured 
appropriately to allow you to type the following to mount your first 
optical drive on /cdrom:

	#mount /cdrom

If you are using SCSI/USB/Firewire drives or IDE with atapicam(4):

	#mount -t cd9660 /dev/cd0 /cdrom

> 	tia,
> 
> 	gary
> 
> 
> 

-Ash