[Discuss] Fedora 28 Doesn't See External DVD Drive on USB Port

[cra at wpi.edu (Anderson, Charles R)]

No it certainly is not the case that everyone using Fedora 28 has
problems with external drives.  Was your system upgraded to Fedora 28
from an earlier Fedora version, or was it installed fresh?  I ask
because I've never had these issues, but I always install fresh rather
than do upgrades.

/etc/fstab is a file that contains the listing of each filesystem on
each device.  If you open a command line Terminal and type:

cat /etc/fstab

you can see what yours has in it.  However, I don't think this is
related your problem--but we can return to this possibility later
after checking a few things.  

The URL you posted refers to external hard disks or flash drives, not
CD/DVD drives.  Modern Fedora systems do not have removable media
devices listed in /etc/fstab.  Instead, they are mounted by udev
automatically when the device is connected (and media is inserted).
This is the udev configuration file that controls this process for
CD/DVD drives:

cat /usr/lib/udev/rules.d/60-cdrom_id.rules

But this is informational if you wanted to know how this stuff is
supposed to work under the hood--you shouldn't need to edit anything
there.

After you plug in the USB, does the USB device show up in "lsusb"?
Open a terminal and run these two commands:

lsusb

dmesg | grep sd

and paste the output in an email reply.

On Sat, Dec 29, 2018 at 10:12:22PM -0500, Nancy Allison wrote:
> Thank you, Dan.
> 
> You've provided some details that I can follow, but I am not well enough
> grounded to know how I would use them. (For example, I have no idea where
> fstab lives or how I get to it.) If I can find someone to help me out
> painstakingly, with a generous donation of their time and effort, I (they,
> really) can undoubtedly fix the problem. I may wait until the next
> InstallFest for help.
> 
> But this leaves me wondering, can it really be that everyone using Fedora
> 28 struggles along with this same problem that obviously affects plenty of
> people? CDs and DVDs are not used as much as they once were, but they are
> still in use. If you google "fedora 28 doesn't recognize external dvd
> drive" you get people struggling with this back in 2010 and 2011. Is this
> what Fedora is like -- everyone struggles with problems individually? And
> you really have to have a lot of technical knowledge to deal with these
> problems as they come up. Maybe Fedora is just too tecchie for me, but it
> seems as if Ubuntu was, too, when I used it before Fedora. Maybe Red Hat is
> easier for a non-technical person to handle?
> 
> Just thinking out loud. Thanks for the additional info.
> 
> On Sat, Dec 29, 2018 at 7:12 PM Dan Ritter <dsr at randomstring.org> wrote:
> 
> > Nancy Allison wrote:
> > > Hi, all.
> > >
> > > When I plug in my external disk drive into my Fedora 28 machine, it does
> > > not show up in Nautilus.
> > >
> > > I go looking online, and, sure enough, this problem has occurred for
> > plenty
> > > of people for 5+ years over many releases of Fedora.
> > >
> > > I find a discussion in which someone evidently solved the problem. Here
> > is
> > > what the person reported:
> > >
> > > "NVM - found the cause. Old entry in fstab for a second swap not present
> > on
> > > sdb1 and first USB disks being assigned sdb. Cleaned that up and now all
> > > drives plugging correctly.
> > > Willtech ( Sep 23 '18 )"
> > >
> > > How do I apply this information? Where is fstab? When does a first swap
> > > occur? When does a second swap occur? What does it mean to be assigned
> > sdb?
> >
> > /etc/fstab consolidates mounting information.
> >
> > Each active line defines:
> >
> > <file system> <mount point>   <type>  <options>  <dump> <pass>
> >
> > For example:
> >
> > /dev/scd0   /media/cdrom0   ISO9660     ro      1   1
> >
> > device/partition name, then where you want it mounted, then the
> > type of filesystem.
> >
> > If you have a single disk called /dev/sda, for instance, you
> > might see your external CD show up as /dev/sdb. If there's
> > already a /dev/sdb listed in the file, that will conflict.
> >
> > Hope that helps.