Can't open cdrom unless in root user?

I have a cdrom that only lets me view files if I go as root in console, which bugs me because after that I need to do everything as root since I save these files afterwards. This might be a beginner's issue, but I'm a beginner in linux So how can I make my simple user be able to view the contents of the cd?

EDIT : Sorry I totally forgot to say my distro.. I'm running Ubuntu 9.04 x64

 

This will depend on what version and distribution of Linux you are running, but assuming it's something relatively modern, you could try the following.

Comment out any CD and/or DVD line in your /etc/fstab file. Like this;

Code:

#/dev/cdrom		/mnt/cdrom		auto		noauto,users						0 0

(The # character at the beginning comments out the entire line). Save the file, reboot, and see if your user account can now access the CD.

If that still doesn't work you want to make sure your user account is a member of the right group, thereby giving your user account the correct privileges to read from the optical drives. To add a user to a specific group you would use the command;

Code:

useradd -G {group-name} [username]

The word inside of the {} brackets is the group name, and the word inside of the [] brackets is your username. When you issue the command you just type in the groupname and username without any brackets. In this case the group should be cdrom, and if the username was joe, you would issue the following command to add your user account to the cdrom group;

Code:

useradd -G cdrom joe

Try adding your username to the cdrom group, reboot, and see if your user account can now access the CD. If that doesn't work, try adding your user to the plugdev group, reboot and see if it now works.

Please note, you will need to do the editing of the /etc/fstab file, or adding users to groups, as the root user, or with the sudo command.

Good Luck..

 

I commented a line about the cdrom in the fstab file like you said and it fixed it. Thanks alot