[ILUG] DVD install

[Gavin McCullagh]

On Fri, 23 Nov 2001, Tom Mackey wrote:

> I am thinking of installing a DVD drive  in my home machine.  It is only a
> P200 with 64mb running Mandrake 7.2.   My main intetion is just to be able
> to install software from the DVD on Linux Format magazine.
> 
> Should I get a 10 speed or 16 speed ( I heard mention that a more powerful
> PC is needed for faster DVD drives.  Could that be so?)

seems a little unlikely.  No DVD or CDROM would be as fast as an IDE Hard
disk in data throughput terms, and controlling them is left mostly to the 
controller so I'd doubt it.

> If I plug it in where I had my CD is there much tweeking needed to get linux
> to recognise it?

Nil, moreorless.  You'll need to create a mount point (eg /dvdrom or
/mnt/dvdrom) just by mkdir 'somename' and perhaps to add a line to
/etc/fstab which should be fairly self explanantory.  Look at the line
that's already there for the cdrom:

/dev/cdrom	/cdrom	auto	defaults,ro,user,noauto	 0 0

/dev/dvdrom	/dvdrom	auto	defaults,ro,user,noauto	 0 0

Depending on which IDE controller you put it on and whether it's master or 
slave, the device will known to the system as:

/dev/hda	contoller #1	master (unlikely to be this)
/dev/hdb	contoller #1	slave
/dev/hdc	contoller #2	master
/dev/hdd	contoller #2	slave
etc

then link /dev/dvdrom to /dev/yourdevice by

ln -s /dev/yourdevice /dev/dvdrom

Mandrake may well do all of this for you on boot (kudzu?), I'm not sure.

Hope this helps and that I havn't made any errors which no doubt will be
pointed out sharpish by the others!

Gavin