More Dumb Questions from a Dense Newbie

David Bruzos david at bruzos.org
Wed Dec 22 16:03:27 EST 2004


Hi Nick:
There are no dumb questions.  The only dumb question is the one that you never ask.

The CD devices in Linux are /dev/hdc, /dev/hdd, etc (if you have an IDE based system; and /dev/scd0, /dev/scd1, etc 
(when you have SCSI).
The order of disks/partitions from Windows does not apply in Linux.  The DOS/Windows A:, B:, C:, D:, etc, are virtual  
disks that are not representative of the real hardware.  The Linux devices are abstractions as well, but they are more 
representative of the hardware in your box.

MPlayer is a great player, but you could find a faster, easier-to-use CD player for the console.  Something like, cdp, 
or cdplay, or many people like something called abcde.  I have never used MPlayer to play CD's, because when I buy 
a CD, I just rip it, and then I listen to the resulting OGG files!

Anyway, if you want to use MPlayer, /dev/hdc should be your first CDROM (if you have more than one).

Good luck!

David B.

On Wed, Dec 22, 2004 at 02:14:13PM -0600, W. Nick Dotson wrote:

> So far, I've been experimenting with the stuff I'm coming across in the second chapter of "Intro to Linux", which covers what they say are essential commands 
> for the beginner.  Among the first of these are "man" and "info".  I've been reading the entire 6 or 8,000 line manual for "mplayer".  The first page seems the 
> most imformative to someone like me because it has some command syntax patterns.  The one I'm particularly interested in is for playing a CD.  So as I can 
> remember it the command line was:
> "mplayer vcd://track[/device]
> 
> So now we get to the problem, how do I tell which device my CD-Rom drive is?  I remember the "install.howto" describing dis partitioning, that, if my memory is 
> correct, the rood of your local hard drive is 0, so I figured the swap disc would be 1.  I've tried 2, 3, etc., figuring that it would go onto the next drive when I'd run 
> out of partitions for my local drive.  I've played with "cd" but that doesn't seem to work to let me change drive, and I was wanting to get a little ahead of chapter 
> 2, so I could listen to CD's as I cleaned up my studio.
> 
> Nick
> 
> 
> W. Nick Dotson
> Technical Support Group
> Senior Support Engineer for Kurzweil 1000
> 
> 
> 
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