CD eject won't work: "unable to eject, last error: Invalid argument"

[oldman]

Colin Brace wrote:

> Every so often Fedora stops letting me eject CDs:
>
> $ eject /dev/cdrom
> $ eject: unable to eject, last error: Invalid argument
>
> Why does this happen? I've seen both on my desktop as well as my 
> laptop, and I saw it under FC3 and well as FC4. Nothing seems to solve 
> it except straightening out a paperclip and ejecting the disk manually 
> and rebooting. As far as HCI design goes, it is a worthless error 
> message.
>
    Did you check that /dev/cdrom is pointing to the right device? or 
that it hasn't been deleted?
    Did you try ejecting the CD by the device rather than the shortcut? 
(i.e. eject /dev/hd? or /dev/sd? )

    If it doesn't work specifying the device, I would begin suspecting a 
hardware problem, if the shortcut /dev/cdrom is missing or pointing to 
the wrong device maybe a software problem? although if you have the same 
problem on multiple machines seems to eliminate the hardware problem.

HTH
Scott