SCSI Emulation

[Greg Kedrovsky]

I think I have my cdrom drives configured correctly and working, so this
isn't a plea for help. But, I don't really understand why it's working.
If you time and could explain why this fix works, I would greatly
appreciate it. If you don't have the time, no big fish, okay?

I have 2 drives: 
1. (hdc & cdrom) DVD/CD-ROM
2. (hdd & cdrom1) CD-ROM/Burner

I wanted to configure them in scsi emulation in order to use XCDRoast,
etc. to burn CDs (back-ups, mostly).

In my /etc/grub.conf I added hdc=ide-scsi and hdd=scsi to the Kernel
line.

I also added two lines to my /etc/modules.conf: options ide-cd
ignore=hdc & options ide-cd ignore=hdd. 

I rebooted and spazzed (lightly, but I still spazzed). My cdrom mounts
were gone. Erased. /dev/cdrom and cdrom1, /mnt/cdrom and cdrom1 were
just deleted. Done.

I tried symlinks and could get it up and running manually: 
ln -s /dev/scd0 /dev/cdrom
ln -s /dev/scd1 /dev/cdrom1

Of course, I also had to mkdir /mnt/cdrom and /mnt/cdrom1. Then I could
mount those 2 devices - now scsi devices because of the lines I added to
the kernel in grub.conf, right?

But, reboot and they were all gone again. Drove me nuts. 

If I did ls -lR /lib | grep ide-scsi, I got the affirmative that the
ide-scsi module was loaded fine. 

Next I added 3 lines to /etc/modules.conf (and here is where I'm
confused): 
alias scd0 srmod
alias scd1 srmod
alias scsi_hostadapter ide-scsi

One reboot, /etc/fstab loaded the devices fine (it didn't before) and my
cdrom drives were both readable and recognized as scsi devices.

I am assuming those 3 alias lines did the trick. But, why? What are
those? If it's an RTFM thing, I couldn't find the FM to R the F'ing
thing. ?? You know? I got those fixes above from my RTFM. I'm just
wondering what in the stinkin' world I did.  ??

Like I said, just if you have the time. I don't need a fix cuz it
appears to be working okay. I'm just the kinda guy that chews on
something like this until I figure out the why part. 

Thanks!
-Greg

-- 
My Penguin wears a Red Hat.
http://www.greg-and-sue.com/screenshot.jpg

 - e-mail: greg at iglesia-del-este.com
 - e-mail (alt): gkedrovs at racsa.co.cr
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 - personal site: www.greg-and-sue.com