Is there some way to unmount the cdrom when the eject button is pressed regardless of what programs might be using it?

I find it very annoying that I have to go to the console to kill various programs just because I want to unmount the cdrom

If you're using the KDE desktop (standard with Knoppix) you should be able to just
right-click on the CD-ROM icon on the desktop and select unmount.

If that doesn't work, rather than killing the programs, have you tried to do
#umount /dev/cdrom
or whatever is the correct path to your CD-ROM?

If the device is in use, however, there may be no alternative but to stop whatever
program happens to have it in use.

The thing I want is to have a functioning eject button on the cd/dvd drive. What is the point of having it there if you can't use it?

If you mean the way you used it in Windoze, then you'll not have that in Linux in the same manner. Actually, in Windoze if you have a program(s) running that's using the CD-ROM and you hit the eject button, the OS has to kill the program(s) for you before it ejects the CD. This does, on some Windoze OSes, give you the ole BSOD.

In Linux your drives are mounted. That's really good, for you can't crash your system or cause one of those BSOD's like you can do in Windoze. But the flipside is that you have to unmount your CD-ROM device before you can "use the eject button," and if you have a busy device, you have to stop the programs which are using it. IMO, it's quite a bit more intelligent than an OS which just crashes if you hit the eject button.

And, the point of having an eject button is to move the cup holder out of your case so you can set a cup of coffee there - hey, with your sig, you should know that

hehe Chinaman, you are right, I should know about using my cdrom drive as a cup holder

But I still thing that there should be some way to get the cdrom unmounted when the user presses the eject button. This is more user friendly, especially for users switching from Windows to Linux. It could also be useful for a mp3 or divx box where the user could switch cd's just by pressing the eject button; instead of going through many menues.

An option would be to install supermount like Mandrake. You do not need to explicitly use the mount / umount commands. However, convenient it can lead to other problems.

Supermount works great with (internal) CD/DVD and floppy drives. Only problem I had was when using it with (external) hotplug devices.