Re: /cdrom -vs- /dev/hdc

[Seneca <seneca-cunningham@rogers.com>]

On Wed, Feb 12, 2003 at 06:46:37PM -0500, Bruce Park wrote:
>  I'm having some trouble loading my audio cd through /cdrom directory. 
> Before I start talking about the problem, here are the files that are of 
> use to this problem.
[...]
>  I can actually load audio files through /dev/hdc and /dev/cdrom but I 
> cannot load them through /cdrom. I can mount and run data cds perfectly 
> through /cdrom but the audio files don't show up there for some reason.
>  Does anyone have an idea why this doesn't work? I'm looking to solve this 
> problem rather than to ignore it and use /dev/hdc or /dev/cdrom to load 
> audio files. Any help or suggestion is greatly appreciated.

Data disks generally have a file system, while audio disks generally
don't.  You need a file system to mount the disk.  You can get a list of
tracks that are on a disk using a package like cdcd (on the command
line, "cdcd tracks").

You are probably familiar with the basic concept of formatting floppies
for general use. The formatting first sets the sector size, interleave,
the number of cylinders used on the disk.  After that, a file system may
be put onto the disk, a common one being FAT12.  When that is done, you
can mount the floppy.  However, the disk does not need to have a file
system put onto it; a fair number of my floppies that I use don't (file
transfer using "tar -rf /dev/floppy/0u1440 foo").  If I try to mount
one one of those floppies, I get an error.  I can, however, read the
files contained in the archive.  All I do list the files is
"tar -tf /dev/floppy/0u1440", to extract, "tar -xf /dev/floppy/0u1440
foo".

With many audio CDs it is a similar situation to that of floppies with
no file system.  While you can listen to the disks by specifying the
drive, you cannot mount them.  You can take a look at the contents, but
you need to use something designed for that task.

-- 
Seneca
seneca-cunningham@rogers.com