I'm running gutsy on a laptop.

I purchased an external dvd rw drive and a usb to ide adapter. As soon as I plug it in to a usb port I see the dvd with the correct title in the file manager.

Lsusb shows the device.

Bus 005 Device 005: ID 04b4:6830 Cypress Semiconductor Corp. USB-2.0 IDE Adapter

dmesg show the device on plugin.

usb-storage: device found at 3
[ 4624.956000] usb-storage: waiting for device to settle before scanning
[ 4629.956000] usb-storage: device scan complete
[ 4629.956000] scsi 3:0:0:0: CD-ROM PIONEER DVD-RW DVR-116D 1.03 PQ: 0 ANSI: 0
[ 4630.064000] sr1: scsi3-mmc drive: 40x/40x writer cd/rw xa/form2 cdda tray
[ 4630.064000] sr 3:0:0:0: Attached scsi CD-ROM sr1
[ 4630.064000] sr 3:0:0:0: Attached scsi generic sg2 type 5

unfortunately I can't mount or use the device. Nothing new shows up in /media.

Any help?

By guessing and trying several things I found a solution.

mkdir /media/scd1
mount /dev/sr1/ /media/scd1

The /media/scd1 was arbitrary. My video player calls the on board dvd player scd0.

Small rant. Why can't the system do this automatically. Who will know what device to mount? Ubuntu is still a tech oriented system. Mom and Pop ain't gonna get this stuff. Well MIT grad mom and pop might.

Enough rant. It didn't work automatically under windows either and it came with a installation CD.

k

I hooked the usb drive to my desktop machine running hardy. The results were the same except I got a goofy error message from dbus.

A thirty second google search on the error message got me a solution.

I typed the following two lines in the terminal.

sudo /etc/init.d/dbus restart
gnome-volume-manager &

The new drive mounted fine.

I've been too lazy to install hardy on the laptop. I think I'll install Intrepid right away and see if I notice any other improvements.

Edit:

Althought the dbus restart automates the process my first method works as well or better under some circumstances.