can't mount cdrom

[bscott at ntisys.com]

On Sat, 7 Dec 2002, at 6:23pm, greg at freephile.com wrote:
> I never knew that Linux wouldn't read that format without ripping the
> files with CDParanoia or some such utility. ... After all, KSCD and other
> players will recognize it.

  Actually, no computer can read Red Book audio ("music CDs") without
"ripping" it from the CD, in a process called "Digital Audio Extraction", or
DAE.  The "files"  you see in certain programs and file managers are not
"real" files in the usual sense; they do not exist in any filesystem the OS
is aware of.  Some programs just "pretend" they can see files.  What they
are really doing is sending the special commands needed to extract the audio
tracks from the CD, and then converting it on the fly.

  I'm not sure what distribution and release you are using, so I don't know
what you might already have installed.  Many systems include all the tools
you need for ripping with the distro.  For example, my Red Hat 7.3 install
includes cdparanoia (for DAE), oggenc (for encoding Ogg-format versions of
the extracted audio), and grip (a GUI front-end for everything).  All I have
to do is feed the computer CDs, and grip turns them into .ogg files.

-- 
Ben Scott <bscott at ntisys.com>
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