Ubuntu 10.10

[wdhpr]

Your right Ritho. I missed it too.

Here is what you asked. A picture is worth a thousand words
I dont see an option to mount or unmount. With or without a video dvd. The third image has a mepis live cd in the tray

Thanks again for your help.

[Ritho]

Why are you using persistant root? The message you got from vlc will always occur if you are logged in as root. You must be loged in as a normal user to run VLC.

I am wondering if you have installed a kernel update or patch somewhere that did not have proper UDF support. Since video dvds are usually UDF filesystem it might be that they are simply being ignored.

[Ritho]

I assume the first image is with a video dvd in the drive? You can see the unmount volume button in the third image bottom left.

[wdhpr]

that is correct.

Sorry I'm use to using the root terminal.

this is better. I know I have libdvdread4 installed. I'm reading the read me file now. I'll post back

[wdhpr]

Well I found the problem. It has to be the dvd drive itself. It wont play movie dvd's when I boot to windows. I could of saved myself allot of trouble by trying that first.
yee gads

Thanks for your help

Wdhpr

[Ritho]

I thought you said in your first post about it that it did work in windows. I suppose you meant that it used to but had not checked in a while.

Personally I have had DVD drives that stopped reading DVD's all together but would still read CD's just fine. In fact a search on the net seems to reveal that such problems are quite common. There must be something in the electronics themselves that can go bad causing the drive to be unable to decode certain types of optical media while still being able to read other types.

Anyhow sorry to hear the drive seems to have bit the dust. You could still use it as a back reader for the the disks it can handle, and just add another drive if you have the room.

[Jojo Yee]

Originally Posted by Ritho

Personally I have had DVD drives that stopped reading DVD's all together but would still read CD's just fine. In fact a search on the net seems to reveal that such problems are quite common...

Just the opposite, my current DVD writer reads and writes only DVDs and won't read CDs, both in Windows and Linux. It used to be working for CDs

[wdhpr]

Quote from Ritho

I thought you said in your first post about it that it did work in windows. I suppose you meant that it used to but had not checked in a while.

Thats true. I did work the last time I used it to rip a dvd in windows.

Thing is I just knew It had to be a problem with Ubuntu. Lets face it. It hasn't been easy for me to get the hang of Linux (must be whats called....Growng Pains)
I too found what you did concerning a DVD players loosing the ability to read DVD's.

You don't want to hear what extremes I went through try to get that thing to work.

Anyway lesson learned
Thanks guys

Wdhpr

[wdhpr]

well I messed up my Ubuntu so bad I had to reinstall and thats ok because I changed my file system back to ext3 from ext4. I couldn't access my ubuntu file from windows. Windows xp didnt recognize the ext4 file system. (At least I couldn't get it to.) It will recognize ext3 just fine using a small app.

I am also being allot more carefull what I install and how I use the Root system and I will not be so quick to think its another Linux problem but I will still keep that thought in the back of my mind

Live and learn

Wdhpr

At least I remembered to save my important files

[Ritho]

Digging in deep is the best way to learn. Yes it comes with its price, because you will most certainly mess something up, but it is worth it.

I remember playing with some compiz transparency settings once and managed to make every window, every menu, & every panel go transparent all at the same time. i.e. I could see and do nothing to fix it because there was nothing to see. I was forced to go to the command line and uninstall compiz. This was one of my first adventures into using the "Teletype" Terminals. (ctrl+alt+F1) I am still unclear exactly why there are six of them F1 - F6. (In case you decide to see what happens when you press those key combinations, know that ctrl+alt+F7 is the one you need to get you back in the GUI.) Later I discovered I could have just stopped compiz and adjusted its configuration rather that uninstalling and reinstalling, but I learned something interesting, that has come in very useful since then.