I'm using red hat 8.0. After about 2 cd's being inserted into cd-rom i seem to have a problem ejecting the 3rd cd. i've tired right clicking on cd-rom and telling it to unmount but that doesn't change anything. I've also tried to do the typed command but that doesn't work either. Maybe i'm using the wrong command (i can't remember what i typed). Has anyone had this problem and how did you get it to eject?

I think i had the same problem, I think its because of rebooting with a cd mounted. But I did "umount /mnt/cdrom" doesnt work and tried just ejecting it. So i went into the /etc/mtab file and deleted the line with the cdrom mounted. That worked for me.

Tru commanding:

eject

Guys ,
remeber one thing. If you have an open terminal window for the cd (meaning you are brosing the cd in a terminal window), Linux will NOT let you open or unmount the cd.
Check this and let us know..


Hope that helps...

Or any other file manager/browser/window. Anything looking at any directory on the cd will give the device busy error.

Well I closed anything that was browsing the cd and it still wouldnt let me unmount it. A program musted have been running still in the background, but i didnt check. So I justed deleted a line in the mtab file.

That's awful and a very bad way of umounting a device. You shouldn't ever have to edit this file, for no reason ever. Next time do it properly, find out what is using or accessing the drive in question and shut it down properly.

yes, i agree, just i couldnt figure it out right away and thats the only way i saw to get it out. I have only had to do that once, I think the power
went out or something thats why the computer shutdown.

If in doubt, a shutdown should fix things.

When u choose shutdown, the shutdown script will be run and first, all processes will be killed, then all mounted filesystems will be unmounted. This is one reason why its important that you don't fiddle with mtab directly, otherwise its possible that the drive will not be unmounted and shutdown.

This should help if the problem occurs in the future.

Alex

P.S. if you have a command prompt sitting in a cd-rom directory (type 'pwd' which will tell you if you are) then you can't unmount either. One thing ive done numerous times is to move to a directoy on the cd as a normal user, then su to become root, do some package installation, and then change directory off the cd. I then try to unmount and it won't let me. The reason is because my normal user is still sitting on the cd-rom drive, but i can't tell coz i have temporarily become root using 'su'.

P.P.S. d_lake, the link at the bottom of your sig is wrong. it has a typo in it.

Am I the only one that unmounts devices by name instead of mount point? try

umount /dev/cdrom

ill ask the newbie question - how can i find out
which process has the lock on the cdrom?

at a command prompt>$ ps -ef|grep cdrom
gave me zilcho, but it still wont let me umount.

this only seems to happen to me while in a wm,
typically kde. i oftentimes use konquerer to
search thru a cd and i then shutdown ALL konq
windows before it realizes im not looking at cdrom
anymore. at the moment, i am sitting at a machine
that has this symptom has occurred, but i cant
seem to locate what is locking the cdrom mount.

i had changed my fstab to users, from owner, 4 cdrom
which i like. also ive gone in as root on a console
to see if i can locate what has it locked - still no luck.

finally, in desparation, ive killed X - and now it is ok.

i normally start slack90 in telinit-3 and go to kde using
startx. anyone have a clue what process in X is able
to -hold- the cdrom and how can i kill it?

tia, h.