I did a clean install of Slackware 10 on my machine yesterday (which previously ran 9.1 perfectly) and have encountered a strange issue with access to the cdrom/dvd drive. I noticed that normal users could no longer mount the cdrom unless they were root, this was simply rectified by changing the appropriate line /etc/fstab to the following:

/dev/cdrom /mnt/cdrom iso9660 noauto,users,ro 0 0

This only half solved the problem though as users could still not play dvd's (tried in both totem and mplayer) as the user still had 'insufficient permissions' to directly access the device. On my system /dev/cdrom and /dev/dvd are links to /dev/hdc. I figured this might be a problem with the permissions on the devices so changed all their permissions as follows:

chmod 666 /dev/hdc

This solved the problem and users could now also play DVD's. I was happy for a bit until I rebooted the system and the problem reoccurred. I can't figure out what's going on here, I can only imagine that something is re-setting the permissions on boot-up. Has anyone else experienced this problem and/or knows a way of solving this?

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

I changed the line in /etc/fstab as you did and added myself to the user group. I then set my permissions on /dev/hdd which is my dvdrom drive as follows " chmod go+rx /dev/hdd " so that the group and user can read and execute files on the dvdrom/cdrom in /dev/hdd. I have not had a problem playing DVD's using MPlayer or xine and reading data or audio CD's from this drive.

I tried the command as you suggested but with the same results as before - when I reboot it is no longer accessible. If its of any help here is my output of doing ls -la on /dev/hdc straight after boot-up:

brw-rw---- 1 root cdrom 22, 0 2004-06-27 11:23 /dev/hdc

I am also running the 2.6.7 test kernel and have the hotplug system activated. It all seems very strange as when I was running Slack 9.1 (with kernel 2.6.7 again) I never had this problem at all.

Add all users you want to play dvd to cdrom group in /etc/group, same for audio and video in /etc/group

Keefaz is right, every user has to be in the "users" group in /etc/group. My output from ls -la /dev/hdd is as follows "brw-rwxr-x 1 root disk 22, 64 Jun 9 2002 /dev/hdd" you don't seem to have the read and execution permission on the "others" part of your permissions.

Tried but to no avail again. Extract from /etc/groups:

audio::17:david
video::18:david
cdrom::19:david

Still getting a similar error messgage in both totem & mplayer:

"Couldn't open DVD device: /dev/dvd"

try in your fstab :
/dev/hdc /mnt/cdrom udf,iso9660 noauto,user,ro 0 0

->'user' without 's'
->'udf' is Universal Disk Format which is filesystem used by dvds

Thanks keefaz your last suggestion worked, everything is mounting a playing correctly now!