Hey, I have a few linux questions....

1) When you are using the 2.4 kernel and use scsi emulation for cdrw drives... how do you mount them for read and write?

I am trying mount /dev/sr0 /mnt/cdrw. It says it is mounting a read only device.

2) I am using slack 10 by the way. I am assuming the "automount" is not working. Do I have to specify a different fs when mounting audio cds? I do the iso9660ish thing and its a no go. I didn't know how to get around this.

3) I am using fluxbox as my wm aswell. Have any of you guys been able to install themes that use pixmaps? I choose the theme from the list, Sn33z-mod, and it loads. The only problem is that it doesn't load the pixmaps. I added the session.screen0.imagePath (<= no the actual command) to my INIT file... and still not go. I am thinking this might not be supported in the version that comes with slack 10. I might need to upgrade my fluxbox wm. Hopefully not.

4) The last, and final question. I use xterm and rxvt(sp?) as my terminals under fluxbox. I've been reading through the man pages on them and can't find out how to set their opacity. I found out how to make the background of the terminal the background of my desktop for a psuedo transparency... but I can't find out how to make it semi transparent. Is there an argument I miss read or do I have to set this in some config file?

ok... that about does it for my linux questions. Sorry there were so many. Hopefully if they get answered other people with the same questions can look at them an be like "Hey! Good to know!". I have done some google searching on these too... and I haven't found much. Anyways... if anyone knows one or all of them... I would be in your dept.

Thanks,
Brandon

Alright, who are you and what have you done with the real Brandito? There were minimal misspelled words in that entire post. Grammar was passable. There was even an attempt at proper capitalization. What gives!

1.) Simple answer: you don't. Any type of CD-style optical media is always mounted read-only. Writing to such discs (unmounted, of course!) is done using raw SCSI commands. Luckily, those are bundled in a nice API which is used by the command 'cdrecord'. There's probably others as well. Front-ends exist for cdrecord, such as K3B, XCDRoast, and others.

It sounds like you're used to cp-ing a file directly onto a mounted CD. I don't know how other distros are set up, but that sounds like a version of the kernel heavily modified to do on-the-fly packet writing. I've had bad experiences with that method of making CDs and I advise you to avoid it, too.

2a.) Slackware (not "slack") is an excellent distribution, and my favorite.

2b.) Unless you mean boot-time file system mouting as dictated by /etc/fstab, there's no such thing as automounting. Other distributions use the 'supermount' and 'submount' patches to be more "Windows-like," but in my opinion they are an ugly kludge and a terrible security hole.

2c.) Another simple answer: you don't. There's no need (and really, no way) to mount audio CDs. Just open up a CD player application and hit play.

3.) Can't help you. I only use [black|flux]box when I absolutely need X over a very slow network connection. I run it without any frills. Themes slow it down too much for me.

4.) Unless xterm and rxvt have been updated, I don't think that's possible. You're looking for either aterm, eterm, or wterm to use pseudo-transparency. Maybe the KDE and GNOME terminal apps provide this as well. I don't know since I don't use them.

Of course, now that X is getting real transparency, you should be able to use any term and have a see-through command prompt. Of course, that's in the -current branch, and the X.org group still deem it beta if I recall correctly.

3. What version of fluxbox are you using? Slackware 10 comes with 0.1.14, you can find a slackware package of version 0.9.10 on any mirror, pick one from http://www.slackware.com, try looking under the slackware-current/slackware/x/ directory (if my memory still serves me correctly) then use pkgtool to remove the old version and install the new one. I haven't tried using any other themes or pixmaps, so I can't help you any further there. You might want to clean out your ~/.fluxbox directory before starting the new version for the first time so it will set up all the options correctly.

4. Try aterm. I start it with these options:
aterm -ls -tr +sb -rv -sh 60
Change the 60 if you want it lighter/darker.

Oh yeah. I'd forgotten about that little annoyance. Fluxbox maintainers really need to mark a new 'stable' release instead of calling a development package "stable" and the actual stable branch old and outdated. Grr.

Thanks the info. guys! Between the both of you I think I have everything I need. I am using fluxbox 1.14 by the way. I do need to upgrade it, or so it appears. Well, cool. Thanks again.

Brandito

Castorite... when I use xmms on an audio cd it can't find any of the songs. If I using something like kcd player it does work. Hmmm. Interesting.

Do you have the CD player plug-in properly configured?

Do Options->Preferences, select the Audio I/O Plugins tab, and select the CD Audio Player plugin. Make sure the 'Enable' box is checked. Go into the options dialog by clicking on the "Configure" button.

If you haven't added or deleted drives, there should only be one drive listed.

In the "Device:" field, you need to enter the device path of your CD-ROM. That would be:
/dev/hdn for regular CD-ROMs,
/dev/sr0 (sometimes /dev/scd0) for SCSI-emulated CD-ROMs,
/dev/sbpcd for the truly ancient Creative CD-ROMs, or
/dev/sdn for real SCSI drives and usually anything else that uses SCSI commands (USB, Firewire, Serial ATA).
This is the block device (or symlink to it) that xmms will send drive commands to in order to read the disc.

In the "Directory:" field, you need to enter a directory where you will be browsing for tracks. It usually is something like /mnt/cdrom/ for consistency, but it could be somewhere in your home directory for convenience. When xmms detects that you have changed to that directory in the Open File dialog, it will internally overlay the contents of it with a listing of the tracks on the disc.

Either analog or digital audio extraction work fine.

Regarding the CD Info tab at the top of the Configure dialog, I've never used CDDB or FreeDB for my CDs. I just don't have a need, so I've never set it up.

Try some of that and see if it helps. I seem to remember when I was setting up xmms for the first time, the CD player had some sort of issue.

Good luck.