After some thrashing about and good advice I have got packet writing on a cdrw working. I tried to patch the redhat 7.2 kernel without success. / Ben Fennema, //Peter Osterlund, and // Sergiy Kudryk guided me to the following procdure: 1. Download clear kernel 2.4.10 from linux.org 2. Download ext3 patch for kernel so I can use my ext3 file system 3. apply packet-2.4.10.patch in /usr/src/linux patch -p1 < packet-2.4.10.patch 4. apply ext3 patch 5. build and install kernel 6. edit /etc/fstab add /dev/scd0 /mnt/cdrw udf noauto, owner 0 0 Somewhere in the install of the packet code there was created a /dev/pktcdvd0 with permissions ---Sr----x. Trying to pktsetup /dev/pktcdvd0 /dev/scd0 produces an error "Inappropriate ioctl for device" I made a /dev/pktcdvd1 using the mknod command in the instructions, and this one works. Aside, on another machine the install procedure produced a pktcdvd0 with the right permissions. I must say that Linux and open source is an amazing phenomenon. Very clever people have given to the public not just great software, but priceless help and advice. Heartfelt thanks rfjones /