valan

Hmm that wasnt the part of dmesg I was hoping for. See if there's a file /var/log/boot.msg or something similar, or use dmesg right after boot. When it boots, during the probing ide things stage, you will see a message similar to this if it is detected:
hdc: DELL SOMETHING OR OTHER DVD/CDRW
It might go by too fast to see it, which is why you should check dmesg or your /var/log/boot.msg (or similar if you have it) to see if it is detected. Another way to find this out is through /proc/ide. cd to /proc/ide and you will see links to hda, hdb, etc. Go into each one and you'll see a file model, cat each one and hope one of em says your dvd drive.

MuD

Yeah, I went to /var/log/dmesg and this is what I found:

Linux version 2.4.29 (root@midas) (gcc version 3.3.4) #6 Thu Jan 20 16:30:37 PST 2005
BIOS-provided physical RAM map:
BIOS-e820: 0000000000000000 - 00000000000a0000 (usable)
BIOS-e820: 00000000000f0000 - 0000000000100000 (reserved)
BIOS-e820: 0000000000100000 - 000000001ff74000 (usable)
BIOS-e820: 000000001ff74000 - 000000001ff76000 (ACPI NVS)
BIOS-e820: 000000001ff76000 - 000000001ff97000 (ACPI data)
BIOS-e820: 000000001ff97000 - 0000000020000000 (reserved)
BIOS-e820: 00000000fec00000 - 00000000fec10000 (reserved)
BIOS-e820: 00000000fecf0000 - 00000000fecf1000 (reserved)
BIOS-e820: 00000000fed20000 - 00000000fed90000 (reserved)
BIOS-e820: 00000000fee00000 - 00000000fee10000 (reserved)
BIOS-e820: 00000000ffb00000 - 0000000100000000 (reserved)
511MB LOWMEM available.
On node 0 totalpages: 130932
zone(0): 4096 pages.
zone(1): 126836 pages.
zone(2): 0 pages.
Kernel command line: BOOT_IMAGE=Linux ro root=302
Initializing CPU#0
Detected 2593.560 MHz processor.
Console: colour dummy device 80x25
Calibrating delay loop... 5177.34 BogoMIPS
Memory: 514860k/523728k available (1831k kernel code, 8484k reserved, 607k data, 120k init, 0k highmem)
Dentry cache hash table entries: 65536 (order: 7, 524288 bytes)
Inode cache hash table entries: 32768 (order: 6, 262144 bytes)
Mount cache hash table entries: 512 (order: 0, 4096 bytes)
Buffer cache hash table entries: 32768 (order: 5, 131072 bytes)
Page-cache hash table entries: 131072 (order: 7, 524288 bytes)
CPU: Trace cache: 12K uops, L1 D cache: 8K
CPU: L2 cache: 512K
CPU: After generic, caps: bfebfbff 00000000 00000000 00000000
CPU: Common caps: bfebfbff 00000000 00000000 00000000
CPU: Intel(R) Pentium(R) 4 CPU 2.60GHz stepping 09
Enabling fast FPU save and restore... done.
Enabling unmasked SIMD FPU exception support... done.
Checking 'hlt' instruction... OK.
POSIX conformance testing by UNIFIX
mtrr: v1.40 (20010327) Richard Gooch (rgooch@atnf.csiro.au)
mtrr: detected mtrr type: Intel
PCI: PCI BIOS revision 2.10 entry at 0xfbb30, last bus=2
PCI: Using configuration type 1
PCI: Probing PCI hardware
PCI: Probing PCI hardware (bus 00)
PCI: Ignoring BAR0-3 of IDE controller 00:1f.1
Transparent bridge - Intel Corp. 82801BA/CA/DB/EB PCI Bridge
PCI: Using IRQ router PIIX/ICH [8086/24d0] at 00:1f.0
Linux NET4.0 for Linux 2.4
Based upon Swansea University Computer Society NET3.039
Initializing RT netlink socket
Starting kswapd
VFS: Disk quotas vdquot_6.5.1
Journalled Block Device driver loaded
vesafb: framebuffer at 0xf0000000, mapped to 0xe080d000, size 3072k
vesafb: mode is 1024x768x16, linelength=2048, pages=84
vesafb: protected mode interface info at c000:5768
vesafb: scrolling: redraw
vesafb: directcolor: size=0:5:6:5, shift=0:11:5:0
Console: switching to colour frame buffer device 128x48
fb0: VESA VGA frame buffer device
Detected PS/2 Mouse Port.
pty: 512 Unix98 ptys configured
Serial driver version 5.05c (2001-07-0 with HUB-6 MANY_PORTS MULTIPORT SHARE_IRQ SERIAL_PCI enabled
Real Time Clock Driver v1.10f
Floppy drive(s): fd0 is 1.44M
FDC 0 is a post-1991 82077
RAMDISK driver initialized: 16 RAM disks of 7777K size 1024 blocksize
loop: loaded (max 8 devices)
Uniform Multi-Platform E-IDE driver Revision: 7.00beta4-2.4
ide: Assuming 33MHz system bus speed for PIO modes; override with idebus=xx
ICH5: IDE controller at PCI slot 00:1f.1
PCI: Found IRQ 9 for device 00:1f.1
PCI: Sharing IRQ 9 with 00:1d.2
PCI: Sharing IRQ 9 with 00:1f.2
PCI: Sharing IRQ 9 with 02:03.2
ICH5: chipset revision 2
ICH5: not 100% native mode: will probe irqs later
ide0: BM-DMA at 0xffa0-0xffa7, BIOS settings: hdaMA, hdbio
ide1: BM-DMA at 0xffa8-0xffaf, BIOS settings: hdcMA, hddMA
hda: WDC WD1200JB-75CRA0, ATA DISK drive
blk: queue c03ad460, I/O limit 4095Mb (mask 0xffffffff)
hdc: probing with STATUS(0x00) instead of ALTSTATUS(0x7f)
hdc: Lite-On LTN486S 48x Max, ATAPI CD/DVD-ROM drive
hdd: probing with STATUS(0x00) instead of ALTSTATUS(0x7f)
hdd: HL-DT-ST CD-RW/DVD-ROM GCC-4480B, ATAPI CD/DVD-ROM drive
ide0 at 0x1f0-0x1f7,0x3f6 on irq 14
ide1 at 0x170-0x177,0x376 on irq 15
hda: attached ide-disk driver.
hda: host protected area => 1
hda: setmax LBA 234441648, native 234375000
hda: 234375000 sectors (120000 MB) w/8192KiB Cache, CHS=14589/255/63, UDMA(100)
hdc: attached ide-cdrom driver.
hdc: ATAPI 48X CD-ROM drive, 120kB Cache, UDMA(33)
Uniform CD-ROM driver Revision: 3.12
hdd: attached ide-cdrom driver.
hdd: ATAPI 48X DVD-ROM CD-R/RW drive, 2048kB Cache, UDMA(33)
Partition check:
hda: hda1 < hda5 > hda2
SCSI subsystem driver Revision: 1.00
kmod: failed to exec /sbin/modprobe -s -k scsi_hostadapter, errno = 2
kmod: failed to exec /sbin/modprobe -s -k scsi_hostadapter, errno = 2
kmod: failed to exec /sbin/modprobe -s -k scsi_hostadapter, errno = 2
md: linear personality registered as nr 1
md: raid0 personality registered as nr 2
md: raid1 personality registered as nr 3
md: raid5 personality registered as nr 4
raid5: measuring checksumming speed
8regs : 3003.600 MB/sec
32regs : 1970.800 MB/sec
pIII_sse : 3338.800 MB/sec
pII_mmx : 3046.400 MB/sec
p5_mmx : 2995.200 MB/sec
raid5: using function: pIII_sse (3338.800 MB/sec)
md: md driver 0.90.0 MAX_MD_DEVS=256, MD_SB_DISKS=27
md: Autodetecting RAID arrays.
md: autorun ...
md: ... autorun DONE.
LVM version 1.0.8(17/11/2003)
Initializing Cryptographic API
NET4: Linux TCP/IP 1.0 for NET4.0
IP Protocols: ICMP, UDP, TCP, IGMP
IP: routing cache hash table of 4096 buckets, 32Kbytes
TCP: Hash tables configured (established 32768 bind 65536)
Linux IP multicast router 0.06 plus PIM-SM
NET4: Unix domain sockets 1.0/SMP for Linux NET4.0.
FAT: bogus logical sector size 0
UMSDOS: msdos_read_super failed, mount aborted.
FAT: bogus logical sector size 0
FAT: bogus logical sector size 0
reiserfs: found format "3.6" with standard journal
reiserfs: checking transaction log (device ide0(3,2)) ...
for (ide0(3,2))
reiserfs: replayed 45 transactions in 0 seconds
ide0(3,2):Using r5 hash to sort names
VFS: Mounted root (reiserfs filesystem) readonly.
Freeing unused kernel memory: 120k freed
Adding Swap: 1052216k swap-space (priority -1)
Linux agpgart interface v0.99 (c) Jeff Hartmann
agpgart: Maximum main memory to use for agp memory: 439M
agpgart: Unsupported Intel chipset (device id: 257, you might want to try agp_try_unsupported=1.
agpgart: no supported devices found.
scsi0 : SCSI host adapter emulation for IDE ATAPI devices


The emphasis (bold) is mine. Linux detects the drive but it won't show up.

boris

Yes, Linux found your drive at boot and assigned it "hdd" name.
Now it is up to you to mount this drive somewhere.
For example:

# mkdir /mnt/hdd (create the mount point)
# mount /dev/hdd /mnt/hdd

You must do this as root and then set read/write permissions for users.
Now your software can access this drive through its mount point.
(Some multimedia programs, however, like these devices unmounted)