According to Mel Seder:
Hi Gilbert,
Hi Mel. I decided to post my reply to the roundtable list, in case it's of use to others too...
Can you please run those instructions by me again?
My son-in-law is running Red Hat and 8.0 and he connected a CD RW drive.
What steps do I have to take to get the drive working in linux?
First, add the following line to the /etc/modules.conf file...
alias scsi_hostadapter ide-scsi
Then, you need to build an "initrd" file for your kernel, to load the ide-scsi driver automatically on system restart. Check your kernel version number by looking in /boot for the vmlinuz-* file(s). For example, if you have a kernel called vmlinuz-2.4.18-19.7.x, you'll want a corresponding initrd file called initrd-2.4.18-19.7.x.img. (There may already be one if the installer figured you had other drivers that needed preloading.) You'd build (or rebuild) the initrd file as follows...
mkinitrd -f /boot/initrd-2.4.18-19.7.x.img 2.4.18-19.7.x
The -f option will force an existing file to be rebuilt. The next argument is the initrd file name, and the last argument is the kernel version number (so it knows which /lib/modules directory to get the modules from).
If you've got multiple kernels installed, you may want to repeat the above for each of the kernel versions you've got. Certainly, you'll want to do it for the kernel that gets booted by default.
Next, you have to tell your kernel boot loader (grub or lilo) to load that initrd file when it loads the kernel. If you're using grub (you should, as long as you're running a distribution that supports it), edit /etc/grub.conf (or /boot/grub/grub.conf, which is what /etc/grub.conf should point to), to add the following line...
initrd /boot/initrd-2.4.18-19.7.x.img
You would add that just after the kernel line for the corresponding kernel version (adjusting the kernel version as required), such as...
kernel /boot/vmlinuz-2.4.18-19.7.x ro root=/dev/hda2
(Of course, if you already had an initrd file in /boot, the grub.conf file may already mention it.)
If you're using lilo instead, edit /etc/lilo.conf to add the following line...
initrd=/boot/initrd-2.4.18-19.7.x.img
... in the section for the appropriate kernel image, then run the "lilo" command to update the lilo boot record and map file.
After that, you can reboot, and the driver should load automatically.
If you're using grub as the boot loader, there's the added advantage that anytime you upgrade your kernel, it will automatically build an updated initrd file and update the grub.conf file, so there's very little you have to worry about. With lilo, unfortunately, you'll have to repeat the lilo configuration changes above manually each time you upgrade your kernel.