I'm trying to rip my audio CD collection to my PC. However, for some reason, I can't. In fact, I can't even listen to them.

My fstab looks like this:

/dev/hdb1 swap swap defaults 0 0
/dev/hda4 / ext3 defaults 1 1
/dev/hdb4 /hdb ext3 auto,user 1 1
/dev/uba1 /mnt/maxtor ext3 auto,user 1 1
/dev/cdrom /mnt/cdrom iso9660 noauto,user 1 1
/dev/fd0 /mnt/floppy auto noauto,owner 0 0
devpts /dev/pts devpts gid=5,mode=620 0 0
proc /proc proc defaults 0 0

Any ideas?

fstab has zero to do with audio cds.

What program are you trying to rip/play with? Are you getting errors?

Not that it will help, but when I have experienced this it was always one of two things:

1) The volume. Open up alsamixer and make sure that the CD drive is not muted. Note, the control for your CD drive may not be the one you think it is. Try them all.

2) Hardware. The audio output cable from the CD drive is often times not hooked up correctly to the motherboard/soundcard.

So far I've tried it with KsCD, Konqueror's "Audio CD Browser" thing on the sidebar, and Grip.

KsCD says:
CD-ROM read or access error (or no audio disc in drive).
Please make sure you have access permissions to:
/dev/cdrom

Konqueror says:
An error occurred while loading audiocd:/:
The file or folder does not exist.

Grip says:
Error: Unable to initialize [/dev/cdrom]

OK, another possibilty is that everything is pointing to /dev/cdrom and that is not actually your cdrom. Here's how I locate my cdrom:

So, more information than I needed, but in my case, I now know that I have an optical device on /dev/hdc and /dev/hdd. Now, let's check out the important stuff:

So, if a program is pointing to /dev/cdrom, I know that in my case it is looking for a CD in /dev/hdd. I also know form the previous output that /dev/hdd is an optical device, so I am all set.

So, check your symlink. What do you do if your symlink is incorrect? Depends on whether or not you are using udev.

***EDIT***

By symlink being incorrect, I mean either it points to the wrong device, doesn't exist, or has incorrect permissions.

Here's what I got:

root@darkstar:/home/scott# dmesg |grep -i cd
hdc: SONY CD-RW CRX220E1, ATAPI CD/DVD-ROM drive
hdc: ATAPI 52X CD-ROM CD-R/RW drive, 2048kB Cache, UDMA(33)
Uniform CD-ROM driver Revision: 3.20
ehci_hcd 0000:00:1d.7: Intel Corp. 82801EB/ER (ICH5/ICH5R) USB2 EHCI Controller
ehci_hcd 0000:00:1d.7: BIOS handoff failed (104, 1010001)
ehci_hcd 0000:00:1d.7: continuing after BIOS bug...
ehci_hcd 0000:00:1d.7: irq 9, pci mem 0xfebffc00
ehci_hcd 0000:00:1d.7: new USB bus registered, assigned bus number 1
ehci_hcd 0000:00:1d.7: USB 2.0 initialized, EHCI 1.00, driver 26 Oct 2004
uhci_hcd 0000:00:1d.0: Intel Corp. 82801EB/ER (ICH5/ICH5R) USB UHCI #1
uhci_hcd 0000:00:1d.0: irq 11, io base 0xcc00
uhci_hcd 0000:00:1d.0: new USB bus registered, assigned bus number 2
uhci_hcd 0000:00:1d.1: Intel Corp. 82801EB/ER (ICH5/ICH5R) USB UHCI #2
uhci_hcd 0000:00:1d.1: irq 5, io base 0xd000
uhci_hcd 0000:00:1d.1: new USB bus registered, assigned bus number 3
uhci_hcd 0000:00:1d.2: Intel Corp. 82801EB/ER (ICH5/ICH5R) USB UHCI #3
usb 2-2: new low speed USB device using uhci_hcd and address 2
uhci_hcd 0000:00:1d.2: irq 10, io base 0xd400
uhci_hcd 0000:00:1d.2: new USB bus registered, assigned bus number 4
uhci_hcd 0000:00:1d.3: Intel Corp. 82801EB/ER (ICH5/ICH5R) USB UHCI #4
uhci_hcd 0000:00:1d.3: irq 11, io base 0xd800
uhci_hcd 0000:00:1d.3: new USB bus registered, assigned bus number 5
ohci_hcd: 2004 Nov 08 USB 1.1 'Open' Host Controller (OHCI) Driver (PCI)
root@darkstar:/home/scott# ls -l /dev/cdrom
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 3 2005-06-14 11:47 /dev/cdrom -> hdc

The symlink is pointing to the right place, so what's going on?

A) Make sure you know which of your two optical drives is which. Put a different CD in each one at the same time. **EDIT** Oops, I misread. Ignore A)

B) What are the permissions? On a stock Slackware setup, add your user to the cdrom group and I believe you will be good to go.

C) Before you go to the trouble of checking permission, does the CD play if you are root?

I can play the CD as root, but adding myself to the "cdrom" group did nothing.

Again, what are the permissions?

Did you try rebooting after adding yourself to the cdrom group?

Thank you - rebooting did the trick.

I had the same problem with adding users to groups and not getting anywhere. Never thought to reboot. I always found another way, but thanks for this Shilo

Old trick. Learned it with Windows.

Loging out would also do the trick, for those who want to tell their freinds that they dont' reboot

LOL! Good one

That's the main problem with windows. After using windows for 10 years
all you learn to do is reboot and/or format