I've just right clicked on the DVD icon in the Unity Launcher in order to eject it, but instead of hitting the 'Eject' button, I missed and hit the 'Unlock from Launchpad' option instead.
How do I go about ejecting the disk from the drive now that the Launcher option is missing?
6 Answers
In order to eject a disk from the drive, whether it's a CD or a DVD, open a terminal and simply execute the eject command.
To open the CD drive / eject the CD:
- Open Terminal using Ctrl+Alt+T, and type
eject - To close the tray, type
eject -t - And to toggle (if open, close and if closed, open) type
eject -T
All these commands can be typed into the run dialogue (Alt+F2)
For more options, type eject -h into Terminal.
Opening the Tray
Commands:
- open tray:
eject - close tray:
eject -t
Easy Function for .bashrc
alias opentray='eject'
A few issues arise when ejecting drives. Sometimes they don't want to eject, because they are mounted etc. You can override this with eject -l /media/mountpoint or (/mnt/mountpoint). I wrote a function that can be called by simply typing opentray on your command line.
Notice
This works only if
- you setup a permanent mount point for your drive
/dev/sr0(same thing as/dev/cdrom, which is just symbolically linked to/dev/sr0) - your mount point is automatically created when you insert a disk into the drive. (This can be ignored if you remove/comment out all lines where rm -r "${mountdir}" exists that way the mount point will never be removed automatically)
- Must run as root unless you changed the permissions manually of mounting functions (I have never tried this)
function opentray ()
{ mountdir="/media/DVD" if [ -d "${mountdir}" ] # If directory ${mountdir} exists then if [ $(mount | grep -c "${mountdir}") = 1 ] # If drive is mounted, then then echo "/dev/sr0 is now mounted to ${mountdir}. I'll try to unmount it first and eject/open the tray." umount -l "${mountdir}" rm -r "${mountdir}" sysctl -w dev.cdrom.autoclose=0 # Ensure drive doesn't auto pull tray back in. eject exit else echo "/dev/sr0 is not mounted. Opening the tray should be easy. Ejecting/opening now." rm -r "${mountdir}" sysctl -w dev.cdrom.autoclose=0 # Ensure drive doesn't auto pull tray back in. eject exit fi else echo 'The directory "${mountdir}" does not exist. Ejecting/opening the tray.' sysctl -w dev.cdrom.autoclose=0 # Ensure drive doesn't auto pull tray back in. eject exit fi
}Closing the Tray
For completeness, you can add this alias to your .bashrc ( or .bash_aliases file) to pull the tray back in from the command line. You do not need to be root.
alias closetray='eject -t'The eject command might fail if it does not recognize your external cdrom drive. In that case, you will have to identify the /dev device manually and run the explicit command. A good candidate if you have an external USB drive is
eject /dev/sr0
The man page for eject on Ubuntu contains no force options (either -F or --force).
You may eject a "busy" (in use) DVD:
eject -mThis worked for me to replace a defective dvd with a freshly burned one to continue an installation.
In the application "Terminal" either enter:
ejecteject --force
