K3b is in my opinion a terrific CD burning application. I find it easier and more intitive to use than any other, and it is also the most feature rich.

With Mandrake 9.1 k3b is included in the main distribution for the first time. However setting up k3b does give grief to a lot of people.

Configuring any CD burning app can be difficult. The CD writer has to be configured as a SCSI emulated device or else the cdrecord back end cannot use it. The user has to be a member of a group which has write permission to the CD writer, and execute permission to cdrecord and ither back end applications.

K3b attempts to simplify this setup by having a special configuration utility to automate the configuration. Unfortunately the setup utility is not aware of 'supermount' which is a Mandrake specific feature, and if the user allows the k3b setup programme to configure their /etc/fstab file, there will be two entries for the CD writer. One with Supermount enabled, and one without supermount. K3b will then try to mount a CD drive that is already 'supermounted' and things go downhill from there.

So here is how I set up my Mandrake 9.1 to work with k3b. I am not saying this is the only way to do it. Your mileage may vary.

1/ First install at a minimum k3b, cdrecord, and cdrdao RPMs. If you intend to burn DVDs you will need more besides.

2/ By default Mandrake 9,1 will set up your CD writer as SCSI emulated IDE, and your CD ROM as normal IDE. I find that it is easiest to get any CD burning app to work in 'on the fly' mode if both devices are ide-scsi. There is no impact on other applications.
Edit /etc/lilo.conf and in the 'append' lines put entries for both your devices. So for instance if my CD-ROM is hdc, and my CD-writer is hdd, my append line looks like
append="devfs=mount hdc=ide-scsi hdd=ide-scsi acpi=off quiet"

Write the lilo configuration to your boot sector with 'lilo -v' in a root terminal. If there are any errors you have made a editing mistake and must fix it before rebooting.
Before rebooting edit your /etc/fstab file to reflect the fact that your CD drives have changed names. hdc is now called scd0, and hdd is now called scd1. Here is what my fstab entries look like.

none /mnt/cdrom supermount dev=/dev/scd0,fs=auto,ro,--,iocharset=iso8859-15,codepage=850,umask=0 0 0
none /mnt/cdrom2 supermount dev=/dev/scd1,fs=auto,ro,--,iocharset=iso8859-15,codepage=850,umask=0 0 0

You may now reboot. After rebooting your CD devices should continue to work exactly as they did before.

3/ Run k3b setup
You will see a list of helper applications k3b has found. Depending on what you want to do you will need more or less of them.

Next you will see a screen listing your devices. Note the paths show the full path to the scsi device.


The Cdrao driver will be listed as 'auto'. Highlight it and change the selection to 'generic-mmc' for both the CD-ROM and the CD-writer. . This will work for the majority of devices. Your individual device may require a different driver. Set the read and write speeds to appropriate values for your devices.


In the next page. Highlight the CD-ROM and click in the right hand column 'Mount Point' overwrite that with the mount point defined in your /etc/fstab file for that device.
Do the same for the CD-writer.
Make sure the 'Let k3b setup create fstan entries' tick box is unchecked before proceeding to the next page.


On this page enter all the users who are going to be permitted to burn CDs. It is OK to let k3b modify the devices, and cdrecord/cdrdao permissions.


That completes the K3b setup.

4/ Now start k3b itself and open the 'Settings>Configure k3b' GUI.

In the 'Programs' Tab you should see ticks next to all the applications you need to use, and in the Devices Tab you should see both your CD-ROM and your CD-writer.
You might need to select one more time the 'generic-mmc' driver for them both.


That is it. K3b is now ready for use.

I hope it all worked :-)