Copying Files

Hey Evan;
Under root you should have all the rights (and risk untold damage to the system too) and maybe you haven't done your configuring yet and that's probably the crux of your ill.
Try this: right click on the file and copy it to the desktop. Hopefully you're in KDE or Gnome while doing this. If the files on the CD-rom are packages you'll have to run the Kpackage program. click on mnt and then CD-Rom to access the disk. you'll have to enter in a name for the disk and then you can access all the files on the disk. At any rate you'll have to run your system configuration program and set up your permissions.
I hope this helps you but I warn you that this is just my SWAG (scientific wise-ass guess)and I'm still learning the ins and outs
of linux myself. good luck!

Evan,
Can you post more information about how you are trying to copy files and exactly what the error message is?
The only way that I can duplicate your question on my machine is by using relative paths instead of absolute paths.
I use RedHat Linux. Therefore my CD-Rom is mounted at /mnt/cdrom. If I attempt to copy a file from the CD to the hard drive, I need to use the full path to do so.
For example, to copy the file /mnt/cdrom/directory/test.file to user Joe's home directory:

cd /mnt/cdrom/directory
cp test.file /home/Joe

works fine, while

cd /mnt/cdrom/directory
cp test.file home/Joe

produces this error:

cp: cannot create regular file `home/Joe/test.file': No such file or directory

Essentially Linux is telling you that you cannot create mnt/cdrom/directory/home/Joe/test.file on the CD. There are some other error messages that you might get if you tried to copy files from /dev/cdrom instead of /mnt/cdrom, etc.
If you haven'talready figured it out, can you provide more detail?

Cheers,

James