Coudn't open DVD device: /dev/dvd
 

That's because there is no /dev/dvd!!!
OK. I'm running Red Hat 9 on a Dell Latitude C600 with 512 GB of RAM and an Intel Pentium III 850 MHz processor. My video adapter is an ATI Technologies Inc Rage Mobility M3 AGP 2x. I'm running the 2.4.20-13.9 kernel and KDE v3.1-11. I recently purchased a CD-RW/DVD combo drive from Dell and installed it. The drive works fine booting from my Windows 2000 Professional partition. I have already downloaded and installed MPlayer including the following RPMs:

mplayer-common-0.90-1.i686.rpm
mplayer-gui-0.90-1.i686.rpm
mplayer-skin-default-1.0-2.noarch.rpm


I have not yet installed the following file, because I'm not sure that I need it yet.
mplayer-vidix-rage128-0.90-1.i686.rpm

At any rate, when I insert a DVD, Konqueror launces and shows the /mtn/cdrom drive with the contents of the DVD (as if it were a CD-ROM).

Also, when I run the GUI version of MPlayer, I get the message quoted in the subject line of this post, "Coudn't open DVD device: /dev/dvd.

Thinking that the problem I am having may be due to a driver problem, I checked http://support.dell.com for a Linux driver for my DVD drive, but to no avail.

Any help or info would be greatly appreciated.

By the way, I have already searched on Google for help, as well as Red Hat's website.
Sincerely,
Eric

What do you do when you need to access a cd-rom?

I'm guessing probably use /dev/hdc? (on mine that's what it is, it may be different on yours)...

If thats the case you need to create a symlink to the real device

IIRC:

ln -s /dev/hdc /dev/dvd (as root) (check man ln first...my syntax may be off...I don't trust my memory)

OK. I fixed my own problem:

Using the DVD Playing HOWTO at http://www.europe.redhat.com/documen...ing-HOWTO.php3

The actual solution was to open a console window and run the following command,

# ln -s /dev/cdrom /dev/dvd

I tried MPlayer right after running the command as root and it worked like a charm.

I hope this proves helpful to someone out there.
Eric

This was so useful a link. Thanks to all of you who have participated in this.

--rksubbu