Solaris Handbook for Sun Peripherals

CD-ROM Drives

CD-ROMs provide large data capacity and have quickly become today's medium of choice for software distribution. CD-ROM drives allow you to add both operating system and application packages quickly and easily to the workstations you administer.

Most CD-ROM drives conform to the Small Computer Systems Interface (SCSI) protocol. As a result, getting a CD-ROM drive up and running on your workstation usually involves little more than plugging in the cables and, if applicable, setting the jumpers or SCSI target switch to 6 (or another number if it is a secondary drive). Refer to the documentation that accompanies your hardware for information about physical connections.


Note -

For more information about CD-ROMs, refer to "Managing CDs and Diskettes" in the System Administration Guide.


To Add a CD-ROM Drive
  1. Shut down your system.

    See "Shut Down the System".

  2. Check that the address switch for the CD-ROM drive has been correctly set.

    The SCSI address switch for CD-ROM drives is usually preset by the factory to SCSI target ID 6.


    Note -

    If you have more than one SCSI device, you must set each SCSI address switch to a different target ID.



    Note -

    Refer to the documentation that accompanies your hardware and Appendix A, SCSI Addressing to set the physical SCSI switch or jumpers on your CD-ROM drive.


  3. Install the CD-ROM drive.

    For installation information, refer to the documentation that accompanies your hardware.

  4. Turn on the power to all external peripheral device. This includes the CD-ROM drive that you plan to configure and the system.

    The system is booted and the Solaris operating environment configures the system by assigning a device address to the CD-ROM drive.

    You are now ready to mount the CD-ROM drive. Refer to "How Solaris Manages CD-ROM and Diskette Devices".

To Add an Additional CD-ROM Drive

Note -

Be sure that the target number you select is not already used by a peripheral device attached to your system. Use the probe-scsi or probe-scsi-all command to list the existing devices and their addresses. You can connect no more than seven CD-ROM drives to a single SCSI bus provided that the total SCSI bus length does not exceed 6 meters.


  1. Edit the /etc/vold.conf file to add the CD-ROM drive to the list of devices managed by Volume Management.

    Copy the existing CD-ROM line under "Devices to use" and change the device address and mount location.


    # Devices to use
    use cdrom drive /dev/dsk/c0t6 dev_cdrom.so cdrom0
    use cdrom drive /dev/dsk/c0t5
     dev_cdrom.so cdrom1
    

    In this example, a new entry was added for a CD-ROM drive with a target number of 5. When a CD-ROM containing a file system is inserted into this secondary CD-ROM drive, it is automatically mounted as /cdrom/cdrom1. If the CD-ROM does not contain a file system, it can be accessed at /vol/dev/dsk/c0t5/unnamed_cdrom as a block device.


    Note -

    For more information, refer to "How Solaris Manages CD-ROM and Diskette Devices".


  2. Shut down your system.

    See "Shut Down the System".

  3. Install the additional CD-ROM drive.

    For installation information, refer to the documentation that accompanies your hardware. In this example you would set the new CD-ROM target address to target 5 to be consistent with the entry made in the /etc/vold.conf file.

  4. Turn on the power to all external peripheral devices, this includes the second CD-ROM drive that you plan to configure and the system.

    The system boots and the Solaris operating environment configures the system by assigning a device name to the CD-ROM drive.

You are now ready to mount the CD-ROM drive. Refer to "How Solaris Manages CD-ROM and Diskette Devices".