Configuring your IDE CD-Writer


Here I will describe a solution for you to be able to use your IDE CD-writer with a program like cdrecord. I am assuming kernel 2.4.x. The strategy to accomplish this is to make your IDE CD-writer appear as if it was a SCSI CD-writer for the program, eg "cdrecord".

Compiling the kernel

In IDE section:
    Disable ATAPI CDROM support. (Or enable and add append="<device>=ide-scsi" in lilo.conf eg append="hdc=ide-scsi")
    Enable SCSI emulation.
In SCSI section:
    Enable SCSI.
    Enable SCSI CDROM support.
    Enable SCSI generic support.

Now you can no longer access your cdrom with something like /dev/hdc. Instead you will access the CDROMs as though they where SCSI-drives. It will be called something like /dev/sr0. For recording you will not use the scsi drive devices /dev/sr* but rather the generic scsi devices /dev/sg*. The device used for cdrecord is something like /dev/sg0 which stands for SCSI general.
If you have an ISO-image you can do:
cdrecord speed=4 dev=/dev/sg0 myimage.iso

To mount your CD-writer / CD-reader as an ordinary CD-reader do:
mount -t iso9660 /dev/sr0 /mnt/cdrom

Some useful files

/proc/sys/dev/cdrom     To see what CDROMs you have installed
/proc/scsi/scsi

Author Per-Olof Pettersson