Multimedia :: cdrom not mounting - can't play anything

I have been able to get my cdrom drive to mount and use files on CD before, but it is not working now. I tried to mount it in emelfm (this worked before) - but now it freezes, and I can't get the CD out of the drive. It has been this way off and on for a while now (even before I installed DSL). What to do?

I've put those two aliases in $HOME/.bashrc
alias cdout='sudo eject -r'
alias cdin='sudo eject -t; sudo mount /dev/cdrom /mnt/cdrom'

After doing source .bashrc i can close the tray and mount the cd by typing cdin.

Of course you can elect to just type in a terminal:
sudo mount /dev/cdrom /mnt/cdrom to mount the CD and
sudo umount /mnt/cdrom to unmount it and be able to remove it.

original here.