DVD/CD-ROM Drive Missing

lhcs01 · 02-04-2010, 09:52 PM

My daughter has a Dell desktop unit 2.5Ghz & 2MB RAM. I got rid of the win distro that it came with and installed Ubuntu 6.4 from a DVD and everything worked fine. I have done distro updates over the net and it is now at Ubuntu 9.14.

We purchased a new printer the other day a Lexmark Pro205. I went to there site and downloaded the Linux drivers and burnt a CD on my laptop. I went to install the software on the Dell desktop and much to my surprise there was no DVD/CD-ROM drive showing on the unit.

How could it just go away? what do I need to do to fix this?

funnyG · 02-04-2010, 10:49 PM

Hello lhcs,

is there just no DVD icon on your desktop (Gnome I guess) or is there no device file for your DVD drive (like /dev/hdc) ?

funnyG

lhcs01 · 02-06-2010, 02:16 PM

Thank you funnyG,
Correct no DVD icon on the Gnome desktop. The device opens and closes the tray when the button is pressed but nothing seems to get mounted. I am not sure what you mean by a device file? I have been using Linux for a number of years but am still a newbie when it comes to fixing things because from my experience everything just works with Linux.

funnyG · 02-09-2010, 05:39 AM

Hello lhcs,

I am not sure whether Ubuntu has correctly detected your DVD drive (it should have). If the DVD icon simply disappeared from your desktop it should still be visible in your default file manager. You could drag that icon from the file manager and drop it on your desktop.

If this doesn't work could you please open a console program and enter "cat /etc/fstab" and paste the output here to see if there is an entry missing in your fstab file that prevents your DVD drive from being shown.

funnyG

onebuck · 02-09-2010, 08:15 AM

Hi,

You could look at the 'dmesg' output to see if the system recognized a cdrom or dvd device.

Try something from the 'cli' like 'dmesg |grep -i dvd' to see if the device was recognized;

Code:

~# dmesg |grep -i dvd
ata5.00: ATAPI: HL-DT-ST DVD+/-RW GSA-T11N, A102, max UDMA/33
scsi 4:0:0:0: CD-ROM            HL-DT-ST DVD+-RW GSA-T11N A102 PQ: 0 ANSI: 5

If you find that the device is indeed there but not possible to mount automagically then look at the static file '/etc/fstab'. Please post it? You could look at '/media' to see if the device is mounted.

Just a few links to aid you;

Linux Documentation Project
Rute Tutorial & Exposition
Linux Command Guide
Utimate Linux Newbie Guide
LinuxSelfHelp
Getting Started with Linux
Advanced Bash-Scripting Guide
Linux Home Networking

The above links and others can be found at 'Slackware-Links'. More than just Slackware® links!