On Fri, Jan 14, 2005 at 11:37:58PM -0500, Bill Mills-Curran wrote:
a. There is no /dev/cdrom device. I made a sym link, but that disappears during reboot. What's the right way to get it in place & stay?
Is there a /dev/cdrecorder or similar? Something like this should have been created automatically by the scripts in /etc/udev.d. I think you can force manual creation of device nodes my mucking about in /etc/udev.d, but I haven't tried it yet.
b. The permissions on the cd player (/dev/hdc) are 600. I changed them to 666 so I could use the player, but, like the symlink (above), this change does not survive the reboot. Again, what's the right solution?
The owner of the device(s) should be set automatically by pam/consolehelper when a user logs into the console/GDM. This is set in /etc/security/console.perms.
3. No sound. I've played plenty with gnome-volume-control, but no sound. I don't even get anything from the headphone jack on the front panel.
Are you playing the CD with Analog output, or Digital Audio Extraction output? If you are using the former, you might not have an Analog audio cable between your CD drive and the sound card. This is becoming common on newer machines (one less cable == cheaper). Try telling the CD player app to use the Digital method instead. Finally, make sure the channels are unmuted and turned up. It may be as simple as finding the CD slider in the volume control and turning it up (for Analog).
$ ll mixer crw------- 1 bcurran root 14, 0 Jan 14 22:39 mixer
Even after changing these permissions, I get no sound.
No need to change the permissions to 666. See, you own the device, being the currently logged in console user.