The crash happened to me as well, so I ended up compiling the latest version of kaffeine from source. It seems like kaffeine doesn't know which dirve you are using for your dvd. You can configure this by running kaffeine -> settings -> xine engine parameters -> media. There are devices listed there just change the one for the dvd player (dvd.device) to the one you are using e.g. mine is /dev/dvd2.

Right now it has /dev/dvd listed. How do I know which one I'm using? I haven't done any mounting yet. I know there's a /media/cdrom but when I try to go to /dev/dvd or /dev/cdrom it says that does not exist.

Do the following
Copy and paste the result so that I can take a look at it.

/dev/sda7 / reiserfs acl,user_xattr 1 1
/dev/sda2 /windows/C ntfs ro,users,gid=users,umask=0002,nls=utf8 0 0
/dev/sda3 /windows/D vfat users,gid=users,umask=0002,utf8=true 0 0
/dev/sda5 /windows/E ntfs ro,users,gid=users,umask=0002,nls=utf8 0 0
/dev/sda6 swap swap pri=42 0 0
devpts /dev/pts devpts mode=0620,gid=5 0 0
proc /proc proc defaults 0 0
usbfs /proc/bus/usb usbfs noauto 0 0
sysfs /sys sysfs noauto 0 0
/dev/cdrom /media/cdrom subfs noauto,fs=cdfss,ro,procuid,nosuid,nodev,exec,iocharset=utf8 0 0

Ok, try doing the following as root
Once thats done, start kaffeine and try playing a dvd.

Ok, I typed that in a shell, hit enter, and it immidiately brought me to a clean prompt. Nothing was spit out after I hit enter.

I started up Kaffeine and got this Installation wizard with one of the subheadings being:

"DVD Drive...
Can't check DMA mode. Permission denied or no such device: "/dev/dvd"."

Might this be a problem?

I went back and did the command you gave me earlier: cat /etc/fstab. The entire shell screen looks like this:

# ln -s /dev/cdrom /dev/dvd
# cat /etc/fstab
/dev/sda7 / reiserfs acl,user_xattr 1 1
/dev/sda2 /windows/C ntfs ro,users,gid=users,umask=0002,nls=utf8 0 0
/dev/sda3 /windows/D vfat users,gid=users,umask=0002,utf8=true 0 0
/dev/sda5 /windows/E ntfs ro,users,gid=users,umask=0002,nls=utf8 0 0
/dev/sda6 swap swap pri=42 0 0
devpts /dev/pts devpts mode=0620,gid=5 0 0
proc /proc proc defaults 0 0
usbfs /proc/bus/usb usbfs noauto 0 0
sysfs /sys sysfs noauto 0 0
/dev/cdrom /media/cdrom subfs noauto,fs=cdfss,ro,procuid,nosuid,nodev,exec,iocharset=utf8 0 0
#

Ok, try changing /dev/dvd to /dev/cdrom in the xine engine settings in kaffeine. If that doesn't solve the problem do "ls -l /dev/cdrom" and post the output.

Well that did something a little different this time. It actually made the DVD drive spin the DVD finally. Unfortunately, I still got those two stupid errors again that I've mentioned before that were also in the guide given in the second post of this thread. I inputted what you asked into a shell and got this as output:

# ls -l /dev/cdrom
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 3 Aug 5 19:01 /dev/cdrom -> sr0

Not sure what that means but so far, thanks for putting up with me this entire time! I really appreciate it.

Try doing as root, "chmod a+r sr0. If libdvdcss is installed, you really shouldn't be getting the second error. I am off to bed, but post back so that I know if its worked or not.

Here's what printed out:

# chmod a+r sr0
chmod: cannot access `sr0': No such file or directory

Try "chmod a+r /dev/sr0"

Shouldn't that have been /dev/sr0, ie the first SCSI device (?)

Thus, that's (as root / superuser) "chmod a+r /dev/sr0"

This will change the mode (chmod) to make the device (/dev/sr0) read-able (+r) by all users (a) ... if the device is re-writable you may as well try "a+rw". Also, cdrecord has an option "cdrecord -scanbus" which scans for all CD type devices and returns their locations.

HTH

And after a long, grueling trek to play a DVD on my linux-bound laptop, we've succeeded! Woo hoo! Thanks a lot guys. I really appreciate it. Now, the next thing on the list is getting the audio to function correctly. It appears I have some audio but the sound is horrible. I'll have to work on that later as I am rather tired myself. Thanks a bunch for all the help you guys have contributed .

-- treble54