First Anna, look at /dev and here you will find all the names for your devices. You can look for things such as /dev/cdrom which is a symbolic link to a device e.g. for me /dev/cdrom is a symlink to /dev/scd1 which is the first scsi cdrom on my mcine. You might find your cdrom listed as /dev/hdc or /dev/hdb. I think what you really need is to get over to http://www.linuxdocs.org and read through the howtos. If you read some of these and ask questions on the items you don't understand, you'll get more useful answers. Sounds like your taking a run at this instead of waling. Btw, your probably having problems resolving any hosts because possibly you don't have a properly configured /etc/resolv.con file. You need to configure this file to address a dns server. It would look something like. search example.com nameserver 123.456.789.0 and you would need to get the nameserver address from your isp or point it to a publically accessible server. I'll answer any questions I can, but you really should check out the site I referenced above. You find some incredibly useful information. Not sure what to read, I think we can get you a list to start with. Also, working on it and then putting it down for several months at a time really is tought. You have to remember all you learned previously and if your memory is anything like mine, its to full and some minor details tend to fall out of my ears while I sleep. Also, one final comment. You'll find that those documents might be html so be sure you have a browser like lynx on your box if this is the case. Ah, yes the modem. You probably need to add yourself to the modem group. Look in /etc/group and find the line that says something like modem:x:4: I don't know how RedHat does it, but you might find the above line is different. I dont' have a modem and no modem group, but see what you have and if you do just add your user name at the end of the line.
