[CentOS] DVD reader: Hardware problem or OS glitch?

[Lanny Marcus]

On 27 April 2008, "John" <jses27 at gmail.com> wrote:
> Message: 19
> Date: Sun, 27 Apr 2008 23:22:19 -0400
> From: "John" <jses27 AT gmail.com>
> Subject: RE: [CentOS] DVD reader: Hardware problem or OS glitch?
> Message-ID: <001f01c8a8df$137be840$0700a8c0 at ethan27>
<snip>
> Hmm - do you have one of those disks with the micro-brushes that you
> use to clean the lens of a DVD drive?  It could be nothing worse than
> that.

I will look for one of those. Might be worth a try.

>  I don't know what she used it for under XP, but if it was for reading
> commercial disks they are undoubtably easier to read than home-burned
> ones, and its possible that the linux driver is not as good either.
> OTOH, it could be something quite different :-)

Mike Peterson has the same problem on an HP box. Mine is a Dell
Dimension 4300. I believe the DVD reader was not installed in the
factory and that I installed it, later, but, I'm not positive about
that. I also believe that the Dell Dimension 4300 had CentOS 5 on it,
before I wiped the HD last Thanksgiving, but, I'm not positive about
that. Certainly this was working on that box, when it was mine. My
daughter rarely puts removable media into that box and the drive has
little use, but, that does not mean that it might not be dirty or
faulty. However, the drive seems to work properly, at all times, under
Windows XP.

That these boxes can boot from the same DVD media, and then not be able
to mount the media properly, after the installation is complete, is
frustrating.

> Did you do a mount /dev/hdc /mnt/media?

I tried that but I got this error message: mount point /mnt/media does
not exist

When I look at the /etc/fstab files in the box with the problem and in
my box, they look identical or nearly identical. Where is the
configuration file for removable media now?

I suspect that somewhere in the auto mount process, it has a problem
with the HW for the DVD reader for my daughter's box and for the DVD
reader in Mike's HP box. 

When a DVD is inserted into the DVD reader, the DVD shows up on the
GNOME Desktop, but as if the media is empty.