# [SOLVED] How to access my cd/dvd drive?

## chief_officer

Friends,

I'm continuing my n00b questions. 

I am unable to cd to my dvd drive. Here is my 

```
dmesg | grep CD
```

 output:

```
hdc: TOSHIBA DVD-ROM SD-C2502, ATAPI CD/DVD-ROM drive

Uniform CD-ROM driver Revision: 3.20
```

from here I see that my dvd drive is /dev/hdc. Then I try to 

```
cd /dev/hdc
```

 the output is bash: cd: /dev/hdc is not a directory. Then I try 

```
ls -l /dev/hdc
```

 and then the output is brw-rw---- 1 root cdrom 22, 0 Jun 10 20:58 /dev/hdc. All my final naive attemptsto reach my dvd fail. 

There is a simple point I am missing but I can't figure out. Can somebody point me to the right direction?

Regards,Last edited by chief_officer on Thu Jun 15, 2006 6:13 am; edited 1 time in total

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## NeddySeagoon

chief_officer,

A few things, your CD/DVD is a block device like any other, its accessed the same way.

You need an entry in /etc/fstab like 

```
/dev/cdrom      /mnt/dvd        iso9660,udf     noauto,ro,users         0 0
```

You should find that /dev/cdrom is a symbolic link to /dev/hdc like this

```
ls -l /dev/cdrom

lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 3 Jun 10 09:48 /dev/cdrom -> h
```

You will need to 

```
mkdir /mnt/dvd
```

if it does not exist.

With that right, you can put a data CD/DVD in the drive and as any user, do 

```
mount /mnt/dvd
```

to make the content of the media available at /mnt/dvd. The other information the mount requires is read from /etc/fstab. 

```
mount /dev/cdrom
```

will also work.

You need kernel support (module or built in) for iso9660 and udf filesystesms.

There is one exception to the above - Audio CDs. They do not have a filesystem and cannot be mounted. CD players use raw device access to control the drive to play the CD.  You need to be in the cdrom group. Video DVDs are played this way too. They do have filesystems that match the data on the disk but dvd players do raw device access to play the film, so such DVDs need not be mounted either.

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