I plugged in an external optical drive ( Dell USB Slim DVD +/- RW Drive - DW316) to my Manjaro PC with KDE Plasma (ThinkCentre m93p) and I don’t see the drive appearing in Dolphin. When I put a disc in it nothing happens either.
This disc drive is recognized by the BIOS and can boot a disc from BIOS (on that very machine). I also own a Windows machine and the drive shows up in the file explorer when I connect it to it.
I do hear the connection sound on Manjaro when I connect it to the PC, it also shows up if I do lsusb:
Bus 001 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0002 Linux Foundation 2.0 root hub
Bus 001 Device 002: ID 8087:8000 Intel Corp. Integrated Rate Matching Hub
Bus 002 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0002 Linux Foundation 2.0 root hub
Bus 002 Device 002: ID 8087:8008 Intel Corp. Integrated Rate Matching Hub
Bus 003 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0002 Linux Foundation 2.0 root hub
Bus 003 Device 002: ID 1a2c:437c China Resource Semico Co., Ltd COUGAR Gaming Keyboard
Bus 003 Device 003: ID 04d9:a09f Holtek Semiconductor, Inc. E-Signal LUOM G10 Mechanical Gaming Mouse
Bus 003 Device 005: ID 413c:9016 Dell Computer Corp. Dell DVD+/-RW Drive DW316
Bus 004 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0003 Linux Foundation 3.0 root hub
I went on Dell’s website to see if there were drivers I could install, and it clearly states that “It does not have or require updates”.
I don’t know.
It does appear to work, as it can be used to boot, as you say
and lsusb also sees it.
What does the system see when you plug it in and unplug it again?
Have journalctl -f
running in a terminal while you do it and watch the output
or sudo dmesg -w
I had some kind of similiar issue with my digicam in the past, it won’t show up in Dolphin but it was visibel when i open FireFox (or try another third party Program) for example and click on register page: File>Open File>Other Locations.
the thing is working
the issue seems to be with Dolphin
Why it apparently does not see it I don’t know
I can’t help with that - I don’t use Dolphin or Plasma - no experience with it.
The device is clearly there /dev/sr0
normally, a symlink is also created: /dev/cdrom
If you put a cd or dvd in it, you should be able to mount it
(not a music cd … those can’t be mounted, just played back)
I just tried inserting a Windows 7 installer DVD and mounted it. And now it recognizes every disc i I put in the drive. Very weird that I had to do this for music CDs to work, but now it works.
Thank you.
By the way. Silly question. What does “mounting” actually mean?
there is the / directory, the “root” directory (the slash does have this meaning)
below this are the many others, like /home /usr /tmp /run /media (you can see this in dolphin as well)
and below each of these many more - like a branching tree (upside down …)
Your personal files, for instance, are in a directory named after your user name, located below /home
you can create new directories - or use existing ones, like /mnt
to attach external file systems - like the file system on your cd in your cd drive
the files on that cd are then accessible through that directory - they will be found below /mnt (for example)
the process of “attaching” the cd file system to a directory on your existing file system is called “mounting”
An audio cd does not have a file system.
(audio players will see it and offer to play it - Dolphin might not even show it - or show an additional icon indicating an audio cd - I don’t know)
Every other dvd or cd does have a file system - so you (or the system, automatically) can attach it and thereby get access to the files on it
via the directory you attached it to.
That is very crudely and basically it.
Read about Linux/Unix file system structure and mounting - it’s very different from the way Windows does it.
Every Google search will get you better answers than this one here.