[ubuntu-uk] Lock empty CD/DVD drive from command line

[Andy Loughran]

Rob,

Possibly a bit late now, but why not get either a

a) usb CD drive
b) slot-loading CD drive (where you push the CD into a slot, like in a
car stereo, rather than a tray-based drive.

Regards,

Andy

Rob Beard wrote:
> Hi folks,
>
> Not sure if anyone could help on this one...
>
> My youngest daughter who is nearly 3 is in the habit of messing around 
> with my PC when I'm at work.  At first she did things like hit the reset 
> button or power button and now it's more of ejecting my DVD drive.
>
> Unfortunately the last time she did this she also lent on the drive and 
> physically broke the mechanism.  Now I've just got a new drive but and 
> I'd rather avoid it happening again (drives are cheap, but it's an 
> inconvenience having to buy a new one).
>
> As a temporary measure I've put a disc in the drive, made sure it's 
> mounted and then gone into the disc in a terminal (which when the eject 
> button is pressed it says that the disc is in use).  What I'd like to do 
> though is disable the eject button by software.
>
> I did a google search and found this... 
> http://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic-p-1190847.html#1190847
>
> As great as it is though it doesn't seem to work (despite altering the 
> code to point to /dev/scd0 rather than /dev/hdc).
>
> So I wondered if anyone had got any other ideas on how to do this?
>
> I'd probably forget to keep a disc mounted in the drive knowing my luck 
> so it would be handy to say have a command line utility to lock the 
> drive say when the screen saver is active?
>
> (I presume it's possible to send some sort of command to the drive to do 
> this?).
>
> Rob
>
>