The Problem

Users of Fedora Core 2 are encouraged to keep their system updated via yum or up2date. The update for the kernel moved from 2.6.7.x to 2.6.8.x. Authors of the kernel felt CD burning by a non-root user posed a security risk. Therefore the ability to burn CDs as a non-root user was removed.

In my case, however, I found that all CD burning ability was removed. My fully updated Fedora Core 2 machine would not burn CDs even when I logged in as root, or su'd to the root user from a non-root account when I was in the 2.6.8.x kernel. In fact, my TEAC DVD/CDRW was recognized only as a CD reader.

This situation presents a serious problem for those of us who make regular backups to CD. Regrettably, after using the 2.6.8.x kernel for about a week with no observed issues, I removed all my previous kernels. Thus when I finally discovered that I had a problem with burning CDs, I had no kernel below 2.6.8.x. To complicate things further, although I use a /etc/yum.conf that is only slightly¹ modified from that found at http://fedorafaq.org/samples/yum.conf, I was unable to install the older kernel. This paper details the steps I took to re-install a working 2.6.7.x kernel to my Fedora Core 2 machine, so that CD burning is available for all users.

If a user has not deleted the previous kernels, then the ``easy'' solution is to either:

• Open a terminal, su to root, give it your root password, and start the CD burning application.
• Reboot into a kernel version that is below 2.6.8.x.

However, if a user has deleted the older kernels, or if (like me) the su trick doesn't work, then the process of re-installing a kernel may not be obvious. The following solution seeks to guide a new user through the steps I used to re-install the kernel with the objective of having CD burning ability for both root and non-root users.