Linux Ubuntu boot problem

I'll start by saying I'm very new to Linux. Anyways, I when I first installed Ubuntu I only had a DVD drive connected. Everything was fine until I connected my CD burner. Now it hangs as it's "Starting Ubuntu". It only hangs when I have both drives connected. If I only connect one, it's fine. What do I need to do to make it work with both?

 

Does it produce an error message? Tried editing /etc/fstab?

 

There aren't any error messages. It just hangs while it says "Starting Ubuntu". I haven't been able to get past that. I haven't tried editing /etc/fstab. What exactly would I do?

 

Are you dual booting? If so does Windows boot OK?

 

Here's a guide to /etc/fstab:
http://www.tuxfiles.org/linuxhelp/fstab.html

 

Nope, I'm not dual booting. I only have Ubuntu on the thing. Thanks for the guide, I'll take a look through that.

 

In that case are you sure your jumpers are set correctly on the drives? If they are, any idea what boot options you're using?

edit: Ooo, just had a thought: maybe the second drive is taking the device number of the boot drive. So where before the HD may have been /dev/hdb, now the second CD drive is taking /dev/hdb, and the HD is now /dev/hdc, in which case you may just need to edit your bootloader config file. That's /etc/lilo.conf if you are on lilo, I'm not sure about grub though.

 

If by the jumpers on the drives you mean master/slave/cable select, then both optical drives are set as cable select. It doesn't seem to matter which drive is master and slave as I've switched the cable and gotten the same result. The bios does recognize each drive separately and whatnot. I haven't changed any boot options.

In the case of editing the bootloader config file, what exactly would I do? Sorry, I'm new to Linux as a whole. Any more details regarding that would be greatly appreciated.

 

I've just checked and Ubuntu uses Grub, which is a black art to me. Try telling to guys at the Ubuntu forums, or even on Ubuntu's IRC about the problem, and they should be able to help!

 

I had trouble with two optical drives when I first installed Ubuntu. They were both on cable select which shouldn't have been a problem, but it seems Ubuntu is sensitive to that sort of thing...

Change the jumpers so that they match the drive's Master/Slave positions on the cable, and then try to boot Ubuntu again. That solved my problems with dual optical drives.