Unmount or deactivate cdrom drive?

How would this be done in Ubutnu 10.10? All the info I can find on this (which isn't much) is for older versions. I can't do it through my bios. Surely it's possible just to unmount the drive somehow?
Thanks.

 

I havent tried Ubuntu 10.10 so far, but is there any reason to assume that this won't work?:

Code:

sudo umount /dev/cdrom

If you get a device busy message and you don't know the reason try these commands to find it:

Code:

lsof | grep /dev/cdrom
lsof | grep /MOUNT/POINT/OF/CDROM  #adapt this line

 

If you mean power saving by switching off that component then probably not or it'll be very laptop specific. The hardware manufacturers are usually unwilling to disclose the technical information necessary for the linux software to be written.

 

I'm not entirely clear on what you mean. This may be useful though: How to reduce power consumption - ThinkWiki

 

Ah, I didn't know the cdrom drive is always unmounted unless there's media in it, so the sudo umount command doesn't do anything but say that in response.

Yes, this is a powersaving thing I'm trying to do. I was hoping to be able to switch on and off if the computer powers the optical drive.

I thought HAL was an outdated device detection method that stopped with 10.04? I don't have it on 10.10 and I'm hesitant to install it because I've seen it coupled with the term 'deprecated' on Ubuntu forums and elsewhere. Will this cause problems in kernel 2.6.35?

Thank you for your responses.

 

You can use udisks to accomplish the same:

Code:

udisks --inhibit-polling /dev/scd0 &

 

Great, thank you.

Then to enable polling again, do i just replace 'enable' with 'inhibit'?

 

No you'd want to kill that udisks process. You can omit the & if you want to undo it interactively, and then hit Ctrl+C. With the & you'd need to pkill -n udisks

 

Hmm, even with the &, I get the 'press Ctrl+C to end' option. It appears this won't survive closing the terminal it was entered in. I was hoping for something that could even last through reboots but I guess this is better than nothing.

Thanks.

 

You need to hit enter. If you want to close the window, depending on your terminal you may need to run it with nohup. I can close the window after I hit enter on gnome-terminal and it stays running.

If you want it to persist across reboots you can make a udev rule to prevent polling on your optical drive.

 

Ok, I see now. The pkill command above gives me

pkill: 3081 - Operation not permitted

however, if put a dvd into the drive, it wakes up and works fine so seems everything is alright!

 

Maybe you aren't doing it as root (sudo)? Both commands need to be done as root.

 

Yes, you're right. It needs to be as root.