linux installation woes cont. It works but...

[przemko]

Hi!
I am back After trying mandrake, SUSE, vector, puppy, gentoo and Knoppix I settled for Debian. The reason was in fact rather simple. None of the small distros allowed me to change screen refresh frequency giving me a headache and of the big ones, debian seem to be the fastes (on my Pentium II...). But I ran into two porblems, one serious one not and the google wisdom did not help me out here.
The first problem (serious) is this:
- I have HP 7500+ external CD writer connected to the SERIAL port. My machine is dual boot and the other system is Win2000. There I see my device, I can access the CDs and I can write to them. In linux I don't see the device at all althought the system claims it has deteced USB ports. I don't have those at all,. My machine is PII, 198MB ram etc (old pentium but it works I have googled around but the net wisdom only showed me that some other people had the same problem, unfortunately I did not find a solution. HP site is mum about it as well. So, could someone be so kind and help a newbie like me to enjoy linux to the max and allow me to access my external CD writer?
- the second problem (not so serious I think) is that I began fooling around with the settings and went to Control Center Linux Kernel. When I tried to access this part I got the message below. Could someone tell me what to do next? My machine is PII, 198MB RAm etc (well, I know, an old Pentium but it works...)

>Sorry
>The kernel configuration could not be read due to the following error:
>No hardware architecture was specified! Perhaps the kernel source code is not >installed >on this system, or the path to the kernel sources is entered incorrectly.
>Either your kernel sources contain invalid configuration rules or you just found a bug in >the KDE Kernel Configuraton


ThankX a lot for your help!!!!

[eerok]

The message you got about the missing kernel sources is likely true, since these aren't installed by default. I'm guessing that you want to play with your kernel config to get your drive working. Just to make this clear, kernel config is for compiling a new kernel, not for adjusting settings on the fly with the kernel you have installed, which is what I suspect you want to do.

Try

dmesg | less

to browse through what the system detected at boot. In the ordinary case, your drive would be detected, and once you have the device name you can make an entry in your fstab to mount it automatically.

If there's something especially tricky about that drive, as you suggest, well, it might take more tricks. But you might as well start with the basics I've mentioned.

[spencerf]

you probably need to enable it in your kernel.

cd /usr/src/linux
#make menuconfig

I'm sure what serial would show up as. But you should enable scsi support for cd-roms and also (at least with my 2.6 kernel) you can enable a misc. type cdrom support for various random drives.

# make && make modules_install

for 2.6 kernels not sure for 2.4's. Then make sure you configure grub or lilo whichever you use to boot into your new kernel. Then try the

dmesg | less

to see if your drive is detected!

[spencerf]

for kernel sources I think all you need to do is

apt-get install kernel-source-"whatever your kernel is".

to find out what kernel you have type:

uname -r

[farslayer]

Are you sure that drive is connected to the Serial port and not the Parallel port ?
I can't say that I have ever seen an Optical drive with a plain old serial interface. Parallel port and USB yes, serial no.. I could be wrong... All my searches for the HP7000 series and linux came back as a parallel port connection.


http://www.torque.net/parport/paride.html
http://cdrecord.berlios.de/old/priva...EADME.parallel

You might be farther ahead spending $40.00 on a nice new IDE - Dual layer DVD Burner for your machine.. but then agian I've run into a couple older PC's that wouldn't detect a DVD drive at all on the IDE interface

[przemko]

CORRECTION!!! Indeed this is LPT1 (used for line printer). Still, I have no idea how to connect it. I thought installation might see it (windoze does but helas, no. Any simple way to make linux see this thing?

[farslayer]

The ONLY info i found on Parrallel Port CD burners and making them work in Linux is in the 2 links in ny last post. and nope it doesn't look easy from where I'm sitting either, but after you get started it maay not be too bad.. fingers crossed ...