CD-DVD

CD-DVD drive sharing

Overview

You want users on the LAN to access a shared CD or DVD drive on a SME server.

This can be achieved by creating a custom template that creates the share & mounts the drive when accessed & unmounts it when finished accessing.

Alternatively you can create a virtual CD-DVD drive in your ibays & upload iso images of the disks.

These instructions come from forum posts http://forums.contribs.org/index.php/topic,49285.0.html & an earlier contrib http://forums.contribs.org/index.php/topic,1660.msg5554.html#msg5554

Custom template method for CD drive

This method is applicable to SME 8 server & has been tested to work. SME 7 may have different mount points & paths, so investigate & adjust the accordingly.

Security warning: Having a CD or DVD drive in a sme server is considered insecure by many system administrators, and not "best practice". Typically any CD or DVD drive is removed from the server after installation of the SME OS. If you must insist or require the CD or DVD drive to be accessible to local users, then keep this point in mind.

nano -w /etc/e-smith/templates-custom/etc/smb.conf/95sharedcdrom

edit it to read

[cdrom]
  comment = CD-ROM Drive in the Server
  path = /media/cdrecorder
  read only = yes
  writable = no
  printable = no
  root preexec = "mount /dev/cdrom /media/cdrecorder"
  root postexec = "umount /media/cdrecorder"

Save with

Ctrl o

Exit with

Ctrl x

Then do

signal-event console-save
service smb restart

Log off workstations & log back in again (so users read the new smb.conf details/shares)

Insert a CD into the CD drive on SME server. Open Windows Explorer on the workstation and access the SME server name eg \\smeservername click on the cdrom share and you should see the contents of the CD displayed (in read only mode of course). Note that while the drive is accessed, it is mounted, so the CD disk cannot be ejected.

When finished reading/copying the CD, close the share access by closing Windows Explorer. If other workstations have been accessing the drive, then they will also have to close access Wait about 15 seconds for the CD drive to be unmounted Eject the CD disk

Note while mounted, the CD drive eject button will not function.

Removal Procedure

rm /etc/e-smith/templates-custom/etc/smb.conf/95sharedcdrom
signal-event console-save
service smb restart

Custom template method for DVD drive

This section incomplete & not tried.

To access a DVD drive in the server, examine the mount point, and how SME server accesses it (ie /dev/???), and change the custom template accordingly, expand template, restart smb, log off & back on workstations, and the DVD drive should be accessible in the same manner as described above. The method is essentially the same as above.

iso images in ibays method

Applicable to SME 7 or 8

This method uploads any number of CD or DVD iso images to an ibay or ibays on SME server, and allows users to access those directly, rather than needing to insert & remove seperate disks.

Create an iso image of a CD/DVD disk with

cd /mnt
mkdir mycdrepo
cd mycdrepo
dd if=/dev/cdrom of=./mycdiso.iso bs=1024k

then create an ibay in server manager, let's say mycd

Then add a row in /etc/fstab

/mnt/mycdrepo/mycdiso.iso    /home/e-smith/files/ibays/mycd/files/     iso9660 ro,loop,auto 0 0

then do

mount -a

In this way many CD's or DVD's can be shared at the same time, access for users to view or read disks can be controlled by SME server group access rights, and disk contents can be updated by simply recreating the CD or DVD iso image from the updated disk and uploading it to the same original ibay location on SME server. This method will use additional disk space on your server to store the iso images.

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