Linux - Ejecting the CD

7.5.5.3. Ejecting the CD

In order to get the CD out of the drive after you've finished using it, the file system on the CD should be unused. Even being in one of the subdirectories of the mount point, /mnt/cdrom in our example, will be considered as "using the file system", so you should get out of there. Do this for instance by typing cd with no arguments, which will put you back in your home directory. After that, you can either use the command

umount /mnt/cdrom

eject cdrom

Blocked drives

NEVER force the drive. The trick with the paperclip is a bad idea, because this will eventually expunge the CD, but your system will think the CD is still there because normal procedures were not followed. Chances are likely that you will have to reboot to get the system back in a consistent state.

If you keep getting "device busy" messages, check first that all shell sessions have left the CD file system and that no graphical applications are using it anymore. When in doubt, use the lsof tool to trace down the process(es) still using the CD resource.