Ejecting CDs are Frustrating

[Pablo Wolter]

Jack Jackson wrote:

>
>
> Lukas Sabota wrote:
>
>> Lukas Sabota wrote:
>>
>>> Hey,
>>> Ejecting CDs, especially Audio CDs, in Ubuntu can be quite
>>> frustrating.  Often times when I would like to eject a CD from my
>>> desktop, I get a descriptive error that says: "Unable to eject
>>> media" and "Show more details".  Alright, I would like to find out
>>> more details of the problem.  My details are "eject: unable to
>>> eject, last error: Invalid Argument".  Hmm, not quite the details I
>>> was looking for.  That doesn't help me solve my problem at all.
>>> So my next step is to umount the drive through the command line.
>>> lukas at gnarley:/$  cd /media/
>>> lukas at gnarley:/media$  umount cdrom0/
>>> umount: /media/cdrom0 is not mounted (according to mtab)
>>> What? My CD is mounted! I see it on the desktop
>>> lukas at gnarley:/media$  cd cdrom0
>>> lukas at gnarley:/media/cdrom0$ ls
>>> Nothing?  Odd, where are my audio tracks?
>>>
>>> Alright, why don't I try to eject from the command line?
>>>
>>> lukas at gnarley:~$ eject
>>> eject: unable to eject, last error: Invalid argument
>>>
>>> Hmm, that desciptive error message is showing up again.  Odd.
>>>
>>> So it looks like we have two problems here:
>>> The first and less severe is that audio tracks are not mounted to
>>> the file system, there are just visible in nautilous.  Quite odd.  I
>>> believe there is a kernel patch or something that allows the
>>> mounting of audio CDs, am I right?
>>> The second is that the CD will not eject unless you use a pin or
>>> restart the machine. Even if there is some error with the CD media,
>>> there is no reason for my computer to keep the CD in the trey.  That
>>> is quite obtrusive.  And even if Ubuntu has a good reason for
>>> keeping my CD in the drive, I have no idea what that is.  "eject:
>>> unable to eject, last error: Invalid argument" gives me no insight
>>> whatsoever.
>>>
>>> I do believe this is a software problem and not a hardware problem,
>>> as this has happened through many CD drives.
>>>
>>> Luke
>>>
>> There is also one other alternative to ejecting the cd:
>> lukas at gnarley:/dev$ sudo eject -s
>> Password:
>> eject: unable to eject, last error: Invalid argument
>> lukas at gnarley:/dev$
>>
>> This ejects the CD, but still prints the error message.  One
>> shouldn't require root privileges to eject a CD.
>>
>> What's the deal with that?
>>
>> Luke
>>
> I believe this is usually caused by the fact that a program or
> terminal is set to look in it. Close all windows which display the CD
> contents and cd / from terminal windows which are viewing the cdrom
> contents. Then do eject /media/cdrom and it should work just fine, no
> sudo required.
>
>
try as root:

# lsof -V /cdrom

This will let you know wich programs are using your CD-ROM drive and not
allowing you to umount it. Replace /cdrom with the mount point of your
drive or use /dev/hdc as in my case.

Pablo.