Mounting CD-ROMs on PNCE-Unix/NSCP-II/Glue Systems

How to mount CD-ROMs on PNCE-Unix/NSCP-II/Glue Systems

Alpha/Digital Unix Systems

It is now possible to mount CD-ROMS on PNCE-Unix/NSCP-II/Glue alpha systems without root access due to modifications in the automounter configurations. Basically, you just insert the CD-ROM into the drive, and then by accessing it through the path listed below the system will automatically mount it for you (if not already mounted). As with all the automounted directories, please note that the directory might not appear in ls output until you access it (causing it to be mounted)--- this is not a bug.

To use a CD-ROM, proceed as follows:

1. Insert CD-ROM into the drive, and close door, etc. Wait until it finishes spinning up ( a second or two).
2. Access the automounted directory, eg cd /cdrom/cd_device_name[,flags] where cd_device_name is the name of the CD drive device, and flags are optional flags that can be given. with some parameters. On most DEC alpha systems, the CD-ROM drive device is rz4c; if not sure submit a physhelp request to obtain the name of the device. If the CD-ROM uses the cdfs filesystem (most CD's do unless strictly for Unix) or uses the rrip extensions, you can instruct the automounter to use them by giving the flags cdfs or rrip or cdfs,rrip to the end of the device name. E.g., to list the files in a cdfs CD-ROM, you can probably use the command ls /cdrom/rz4c,cdfs
3. If you receive a /cdrom/device_name not found error, it most likely means that either:
   1. There is no CD-ROM in the drive
   2. The CD-ROM uses cdfs filesystem or rrip extensions and you did not add the appropriate flags to the end of the device name
   3. The CD-ROM is not fully spun up when you issued the command. Try it again.
   4. You have the wrong device name
4. You can continue to use the drive as normal through the path listed above.
5. When you are through with the CD-ROM, you must unmount it first. First make sure you (and none of your shells) have any directory under /cdrom/device_name as your working directory, and no programs are accessing any files underneath that directory.
6. Issue the command amq -u /cdrom/device_name[,flags] to unmount the CD-ROM. Make sure you use the same path name as you did when mounting the drive (include any flags like ,cdfs, etc).
7. You should now be able to eject the CD-ROM.

An example session

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