The message 20050221154255.GB4465@pitr from Brett Parker iDunno@sommitrealweird.co.uk contains these words:
But I closed down the window, and the failed wake-up call to Wine, so there should have been nothing eyeing lustfully the CD ROMdrive.
I can't remember what your system has running on it, but I've had that problem with bits of Gnome deciding that they really don't want to let go of my cdrom drive, I can't exactly remember how I fixed it though, it might have got fixed in one of the random regular updates that I do ;)
You should be able to tell, fairly quickly, what's got hold of it by using fuser in a terminal as root. Handy tool to have laying about that one.
Noted, but not understood...
I'll have a look at the O'Reilly CD of the book - though last time I looked, I found I needed instructions to tell me how to use the CD...