Automatic unmounting through CD/DVD Device button

[Ambiguous-69]

This article may be a bit negative because I am frustrated and annoyed that such a great OS has so many pitfalls one of which I am facing now dues to the lack of this feature. This problem what I am facing is my dam Audio CD is stuck in teh drive with no way of ejecting it, unmounting doesnt work because it was never mounted, the software eject doesnt work, and all this because the eject button is not recognised and is usless in the linux OS because everything has to bloody be unmounted manually yet for some reason it can automatically mount but not the other way around.

Im still waiting for this feature and have heard very little about it. One thing that will make Linux always a hobbie rather than a true viable commercial operating system is because of these anoyances of tasks that are manual but should be automated.

Can someone explain to me why linux or HAL which si meant to control devices cant automatically unmount and eject the removeble CD/DVD media when i press the eject button on the device. If this is possible then make a how to or point this out to new user or even experienced users of linux, make a whole web site based on it because it is one of the most important features you would want from an OS.

If it is not possible do this then sadly this lack of feature will keep linux as a hobbie OS rather than a viable commercial product that people would be willing to use over Windows XP.

The essential requiremenst that an OS should have is Powerful features and ease of use.

Windows XP has ease of use but lacks powerful features, flexibility and configurations that can be made to the OS.

Linux has powerful features, is flexible and can be configured in every aspect though it lacks ease of use for most tasks that are required.

Cant the developers of linux keep all the good aspects of the system and rip of all the nice ease of use and automated aspects of Windows XP so you have a OS that is stable, easy to use, flexible, highly configurable and the best of both worlds.

Yes i am pissed of, i wouldnt be pissed of as much if i saw one little section in this forum that even the Windows XP official forum lacks and makes me as a user and my opinions feel worthless.

This section is

What would you like to see implemented in the next release of linux and why so

Support and help is nice but it does not resolve and eliminate problems, the problem is still there and continues to be a problem because a new way or a need is not implemented to make life just a little bit easier and less wasteful when there are many other problems to deal with.

[dishawjp]

Wow!

I can understand that you're upset, but *normally* and by "normally" I mean with every Linux install I can remember including the SUSE 10 box I'm sitting in front of here at work, but th eeject command and the eject button on the drive work, even on an empty drive. I'm positive that the same is true on my Fedora box at home.

Do you have more than one optical optical IDE drive? If so, use the eject command with its device name, for example, on the computer I'm at at work, I can use:
eject /dev/cdrecorder
and it works. At home it would be eject /dev/dvd or eject /dev/cdrecorder depending on the device I wanted to open.

Since it's a music CD and not mounted as you mentioned, the music player app you were using XMMS or whatever should also have a button to eject the disc.

This really sounds like it may be a problem specific to your hardware.

Of course, in a pinch, just to get the disc out, the BIOS should tap the CD drive on boot up allowing you to push the button and eject the disk, or there's always the paperclip in the emergency eject hole on a standard CD drive.

HTH,

Jim

[Antifreeze]

I too have had issues with audio discs in my cd rom drive.

It seems sometimes an app can 'lock' the drive door and you have to re-boot to unlock the drive.

This happens particularly on discs the drive has trouble reading, because of scratches etc. Although I have had it happen on newly purchased audio discs.

It's almost as if the file system is trying to recognize the content of the disc, only to get confused by the garbled data. Then just 'hangs' in mid process, refusing to eject the disc because its still technically being 'accessed' but because the recognition software is hung, the drive spins down and the software makes no further attempt to move forwards in the recognition process.... if that makes any sense..

The only solution I've found in rectifying this problem is to re-boot the computer, which unlocks the drive door and re-activates the eject button.

[Ambiguous-69]

well the audio cd I know why its stuck, well partly, sometimes the burning application locks it in there K3b and sometimes it doesnt, sadly this is the only way i can see what the title of the wav file is on the audio cd since i cant just mount it and explore the contents.

But that isnt the issue, put any other type of cd in there that can be mounted and teh CD/DVD eject button will only work after it reaches a certain time limit from what i know or else it is locked in there until you right click the device and click unmount. My mouse buttons are already dying from playing to much World of Warcraft, do i really want to use the mouse buttons more times then i need to on something that already has a button on the device to achieve the same task. Its just ridiculous some of the crap you have to do just to accomplish a simple task.

I moved away and am trying to move away from Windows and the problems its plagued with (Spam, viruses, trojans, instability, application crashes, system crashes, maximum of 4 hours operation before crashes, huge memory footprint, lack of desktop customisation) only to jump into a world of new problems can surely be easily fixed but are not as if it is unimportant or serves no benefit.

[dishawjp]

Well, I just got home from work and am playing with my Fedora box just to confirm that what I wrote earleir was correct. It is. I can eject from the command line or by using the button on the drive. I can do it with auto-mounted data discs, audio CD's and empty drives on both of the optical drives in my home computer.

I wish I could be more help, but it's always "just worked" for me for as long as I can remember. It sems that this was a bit less reliable back in the RH 6.x and 7.x days, but if I remember correctly, since about RH8 or so, I've never had trouble with this.

Sorry,

Jim

[Antifreeze]

Sitting here, I have an older burnt cd in my DVD rom drive. The drive has spun down, and the cd has been mounted. If I reach down and press the eject button, nothing happens.

However, if I right click on the desktop icon and select eject, the disc will be unmounted and ejected.

Somewhere the hardware -> software link for the eject button has gotten broken.

[neighborlee]

Originally Posted by Antifreeze

Sitting here, I have an older burnt cd in my DVD rom drive. The drive has spun down, and the cd has been mounted. If I reach down and press the eject button, nothing happens.

However, if I right click on the desktop icon and select eject, the disc will be unmounted and ejected.

Somewhere the hardware -> software link for the eject button has gotten broken.

I have the same issue and yeah I can't deny it doesn't bother me. It def. is fedora and not my hardware and I believe so because eject from the hardware works in suse and other distros that I have used ;-).

I am fairly sure its not setup normally to do this because there is a speical supermount-ng patch for the kernel for fedora obtainable here:

( not sure it works as I've not tried it yet )

http://apt.bea.ki.se/kernel-desktop/

near bottom of page you can see whats used for this purpose which is supermount-ng.

clealry this is a desired OS feature so I'd think it would get included. There is nothing that can be harmed by its inclusion afaik.

cheers
neighborlee

[Antifreeze]

There is a keyboard shortcut that allows you to eject CD/DVD's via a single key press (For multi-media keyboards) .. I have assigned mine and it works well. It just bugs me that the eject button on the DVD drive dosen't work.

To be honest, I already have a whole slew of things that 'break' every time I update the kernel... I spend about a day fixing the things that break every time I do a kernel update, I really don't want to have to add yet another thing to this list. It should Just Work out of the box.

[neighborlee]

Originally Posted by Antifreeze

. It should Just Work out of the box.

Im with you on that one..and frankly I dont understand the logic behind not implementing it.

cheers
neighborlee

[neighborlee]

Originally Posted by Antifreeze

There is a keyboard shortcut that allows you to eject CD/DVD's via a single key press (For multi-media keyboards) .. I have assigned mine and it works well. It just bugs me that the eject button on the DVD drive dosen't work.

To be honest, I already have a whole slew of things that 'break' every time I update the kernel... I spend about a day fixing the things that break every time I do a kernel update, I really don't want to have to add yet another thing to this list. It should Just Work out of the box.

rehysical eject button, is this coming hopefully in Fedora 6 maybe, and if not what is the reasonging ?

thx
nl

[neighborlee]

Originally Posted by neighborlee

rehysical eject button, is this coming hopefully in Fedora 6 maybe, and if not what is the reasonging ?

thx
nl

BUMP please, as I am most curious why this has never been implemented, at least on RHEE. ( or is it there and just not in fedora ?)

( I asked on #fedora but no replies , so Im asking here )

thx
nl

[Antifreeze]

Oddly enough, since my last post, the Eject button now works in FC5, I think it might have something to do with the kernel locking the drive door when the drive is in use. Sometimes it works, some times it doesn't.