Gnometoaster Documentation
December 20. 1999
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Setting up your System to use Gnometoaster
If you have installed all of the above packages, the hardware requirements are met, and you have an SCSI burner, then you can skip this section. If, like me, you have an IDE burner (HP 7x00 series, Acer, other cheap burners) you have a bit of tweaking to do first . . .
An Aside (How IDE burners work)
CD Recordable's were SCSI first, then, when the technology stabilized, IDE burners hit the market. The reason new technology goes to SCSI first is that it is faster, and has better transfer rates. Once improvements in IDE were introduced (UDMA) and fast machines got cheap, IDE was feasible. However, at this point all CDR software (Windows and Unix) was designed to work with SCSI only.
Rather than rewrite all CDR software, developers decided to make the IDE burners appear to be SCSI devices to the CDR software. In Windows, this is done via Adaptec's ASPI layer. In Linux, one has to make the OS think that the drives are in fact SCSI. This is done by recompiling the kernel without IDE CD-ROM support, but with SCSI emulation support, SCSI CD-ROM support, and SCSI generic support compiled in. Details for setting this up can be found in the next section.
Setting up your Kernel for CD Writing
If you've never recompiled your kernel, and you really want to try burning, then read on. If you'd rather ditch your current CDR and pick up a new SCSI one, feel free. Either way, know this: Recompiling the kernel isn't a question of if in Linux, it's a question of when. Also, it's not that bad, and isn't as scary as it sounds. So, without further adieu, here we go:
- Download and install your kernel sources. If you're using RedHat, SuSE, Caldera, or Mandrake, a copy
should be on your CD. For Red Hat/Mandrake it is in /RedHat/RPMS/kernel-source*.rpm, make sure to
grab the headers and the docs as well (kernel-header*.rpm and kernel-doc*.rpm) Install by typing:
rpm -Uvh <rpm>
On a Debian system, you can use dselect or apt to get the sources. If this isn't
working, any system can take the latest sources from http://www.kernel.org.
- At the prompt, type:
# cd /usr/src/linux
then:
# make menuconfig
- A bunch of files will compile, then a screen will present itself (Pictured right)
- First, arrow down to Block Devices, hit enter.
- Now, move to ATAPI CDROM support, and disable it (use the space bar).
- Next, move to SCSI emulation support. Enable it and compile it into the kernel (*) not (M)
- Exit out of block devices (right arrow, enter)
- Go to SCSI Support.
- Enable SCSI Support. To be safe, go through and enable SCSI Disk (should already be compiled
in) as well as SCSI CD-ROM and SCSI Generic (again, (*) not (M) ). I usually disable Probe All
LUN's and Verbose reporting, as they are just annoying to me.
- That should be everything you need for the Kernel options, to be on the safe side (especially if you
downloaded the Kernel sources from www.kernel.org ) go through all of the other options. If you
want to make things more efficient, disable the stuff you don't need (AppleTalk springs to mind.)
Be careful not to remove anything important. This is serious stuff. You could render your system
unusable!
- Now, exit after saving your configuration, and type the following:
# make dep; make clean; make bzImage
# make modules; make modules install
- That should cook for a while (5minutes on a fast machine, 30minutes on a slow one) if it goes well
(doesn't mention recursive errors and says something along the lines of a kernel being built that is
approx. 620k) do the following:
# cp ./arch/i386/boot/bzImage /boot/vmlinuz-SCSI_EMU
- Now we edit lilo.conf... Open the file /etc/lilo.conf for editing (You can use vi, emacs, xemacs,
kwrite, whatever) Your original file should look something like this:
boot=/dev/hda
map=/boot/map
install=/boot/boot.b
prompt
timeout=50
image=/boot/vmlinuz-2.2.9-19mdk
label=linux
root=/dev/hda1
read-only
The new version should look like this:
boot=/dev/hda
map=/boot/map
install=/boot/boot.b
prompt
timeout=50
image=/boot/vmlinuz-SCSI_EMU
label=linux
root=/dev/hda1
read-only
image=/boot/vmlinuz-2.2.9-19mdk
label=linuxOld
root=/dev/hda1
read-only
If you are following all of this, you will have noticed that the file has changed in two ways: First,
we added /boot/vmlinuz-SCSI_EMU (The kernel we just built) Secondly, we made its label
"linux" and the old kernel's label "linuxOld" Chances are, your old kernel won't be called
vmlinuz-2.2.9-19mdk (unless you're using a stock Mandrake 6 machine) so DON'T JUST COPY
AND PASTE what I wrote.
- Save your changes and exit, now type lilo. You should see:
Added linux*
Added linuxOld
- If that all worked, type sync;sync That's it, you should be safe to reboot.
- Once your system has rebooted, type dmesg | more. Look for the entries that mention SCSI devices.
On my system, the device /dev/scd0 is on ID 0,0,0 and the device /dev/scd1 is on ID 0,1,0. These numbers are very important. Write them down.
- Start Gnometoaster. You remember, the application that's made you read through all of this!
This is a document on Gnometoaster, not kernel compiling, if the above didn't get you up to
speed, please see the Kernel Recompiling How-To, and the CDR How-To. These are great
resources that go in to much detail.
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