How can I use the CD-ROM drives on the departmental Linux or Solaris machines?
Under Solaris, any data CD which is inserted is automatically mounted under the /cdrom directory. To get your CD out of the drive, use the eject command. Under Linux, you have to mount data CDs yourself using the command mount /cdrom. You must run the command umount /cdrom before you will be able to eject the disk. You can use xmcd (among others) to play audio CDs on the Solaris machines. To play audio CDs, you have to put the CD in the drive before you start xmcd. xmcd is no longer supported on the Linux machines, so try either gnome-cd (gnome), kscd (kde), or another option for playing music CD’s on linux machines is xmms. It is somewhat complex to setup, but uses digital audio extraction instead of analog playback to get the music, meaning you can access the music as a file rather than only via your headphones. Here are the steps for using xmms to play a CD: • run xmms from the command line • put focus into the main (cd-player-controls-looking) window, and hit control-p • choose the
