In the middle of trying to upgrade from FC4 to FC6, my PC crashed so I had to do a hard reboot (ouch!). Ever since my CD drive won't stay closed - it will close but then it immediately opens again and stays that way. I've tried to rebooting back to FC4. The reboot is fine but the CD remains open and won't close. I've tried booting from the CD with the original FC6 CD1 that I was using in the tray but it still won't stay closed.

I've spotted these messages in /var/log/messages:
Sep 27 17:35:22 marge kernel: hdc: command error: status=0x51 { DriveReady SeekComplete Error }
Sep 27 17:35:22 marge kernel: hdc: command error: error=0x54 { AbortedCommand LastFailedSense=0x05 }
Sep 27 17:35:22 marge kernel: ide: failed opcode was: unknown
Sep 27 17:35:22 marge kernel: ATAPI device hdc:
Sep 27 17:35:22 marge kernel: Error: Illegal request -- (Sense key=0x05)
Sep 27 17:35:22 marge kernel: Logical block address out of range -- (asc=0x21, ascq=0x00)
Sep 27 17:35:22 marge kernel: The failed "Read 10" packet command was:
Sep 27 17:35:22 marge kernel: "28 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 01 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 "
Sep 27 17:35:22 marge kernel: end_request: I/O error, dev hdc, sector 0

Other info that may help:
[root@marge ~]# lspci
<snip>
00:1f.1 IDE interface: Intel Corporation 82801DB (ICH4) IDE Controller (rev 01)
[root@marge ~]# uname -r
2.6.11-1.1369_FC4
I've read about a "paperclip trick" but I'm not sure this will help, and I can't see where I would put the paperclip (front of the CD drive?).

Is my CD drive toast?

Any help gratefully received!

Generally the paperclip is used to OPEN the unit, if it's hung up. It goes in the tiny hole near the tray, on the front. Then gently push.

Have you tried 'hdparm -w' in a root console? It may reset the drive for you..

Well, there are two possibilities:
1] Your crash during upgrade messed up your OS
2] Your CD drive is broken.

If you can boot to a live CD (knoppix, kubuntu, everyone has an emergency disk like this to hand, no?) and your CD drive is properly behaved then the fault lies with your OS. If you can't even get the tray to close to boot from a live CD, then it's likely your CD drive is broken (but maybe GFG's command will fix it?)

The fact that you crashed during an upgrade sounds nasty. I'd make a backup of essential personal files at once, then reinstall from scratch, unless you are prepared to accept weird errors sometime in the future.

And welcome, "liquorvicar" [], to LQ!

Tried:
[root] hdparm -w /dev/hdc
and got:
/dev/hdc:
and in /var/log/messages:
Sep 28 08:36:21 marge kernel: hdc: DMA disabled
Sep 28 08:36:21 marge kernel: hdc: ATAPI reset complete

So far so good.
So tried
eject -t /dev/hdc
and it closes and immediately reopens again. Rebooted and same thing, it closes and reopens and remains open.

I can't even get the tray to close when in the setup mode from the BIOS during boot so I'm guessing it's not an OS thing. Looks like my drive is toast then :-(

The crash during upgrade seemed to be when it was looking to fire up a graphical interface; it said it was searching for one, then came up with garbage then just went totally blank so I had to reboot. I'm thinking I should probably have run the upgrade in text only mode.

Thanks for the responses, and the welcome!