I’ve been using linux for more than a decade at this point, but in all that time I’ve rarely had a disk drive. The fact that this command exists and is just, one of the core utils included with your distro along with su and kill and mount and more is just… so beautiful. 10 years amore with this OS and I’m still learning things that the elders in the audience are snickering at me for only learning 5 minutes ago while they were popping their disk trays open with a single command back when disk drives were a non optional component.

  • plum@lemmy.zipEnglish
    911·
    15 days ago

    This command was very useful for quickly finding a server in a row of hundreds of identical servers. No need to read the labels or look up which rack it’s in. Just log in remotely, just use ‘eject’, and then walk down the row to the server that has its tray out.

  • Björn Tantau@swg-empire.de
    73·
    15 days ago

    Ah, the good old days of sshing into a family member’s computer and trolling them by constantly opening and closing the drive.

    • Khrux@ttrpg.networkEnglish
      11·
      15 days ago

      It it to wait 30 mins then do it every 10, and pop it in startup, those were the days.

      The other was Free_Cupholder.EXE. I miss disk drives for this reason more than for actual use.

  • Courant d'air 🍃@jlai.lu
    41·
    15 days ago

    Back in networking classes we used to have entire rooms of replicated machines, all with contiguous addresses and same logins. We wrote a script to ssh into every computer of the room and eject and retract all the disk drives at the same time, it was wonderful ✨

    • Tekhne@sh.itjust.works
      5·
      13 days ago

      You could’ve made music out of ejecting/retracting those all at different times!

      Would’ve actually been fantastic distributed systems practice, synchronizing all of those to tight tolerances of music across a network connection…

  • Squiddlioni@kbin.melroy.org
    18·
    15 days ago

    Almost 20 years ago I convinced my high school library to let me install Debian on one of the computer groups. I found the “eject” command, and wrote a script that just invoked it with an argument to close the tray. I named that script “inject”. Being high schoolers, my friends and I made scripts to “eject” and “inject”, along with various beeps, and named the scripts suggestive and tawdry things. We all had a good giggle setting the systems off on their little routines and walking away.

    • flatbield@beehaw.orgEnglish
      5·
      15 days ago

      Eject is not just for CDs. You still have to eject any hot mount physical media. Sadly the eject command only works in some cases. I do not think it works for hot mount SATA dives for example.

  • HakFoo@lemmy.sdf.org
    13·
    15 days ago

    If you have a LS-120, it will eject the floppy disc like you were on dome fancy-pants Macintosh!

  • philluminati@lemmy.ml
    9·
    15 days ago

    I used to play with Linux at college back in 2002 and install the distros on the front of magazines. Eject opens the cd drive but did you know it hangs unless you umount the mount point first? Back in those days everything had to be painfully mounted and unmounted.

  • shirro@aussie.zoneEnglish
    7·
    14 days ago

    There is a whole world of obsolete stuff nobody will ever do with a linux system anymore. Terminal servers with lots of serial terminals or modems for a BBS. Making a fax server, IVR, digital answering machine for analog land lines. Using removable optical or magnetic media. Recording broadcast tv. SCSI, Firewire. It is interesting to imagine what from today will be obsolete in a few years.

  • communism@lemmy.ml
    4·
    14 days ago

    I still have a disk drive but eject doesn’t seem to affect it since for some reason I don’t have a /dev/cdrom. I just checked with the physical eject button on the drive and it is at least still physically working—the tray ejects! I don’t have any optical media to test if the drive still works to read CDs though

    • crater2150@feddit.org
      1·
      14 days ago

      Try eject /dev/sr0, that should be your disk drive if it is attached via SATA or USB. /dev/cdrom is usually just a symlink.

      • communism@lemmy.ml
        1·
        14 days ago

        Afraid I don’t have a /dev/sr0. Tbh I built this PC yonks ago, I don’t remember how I plugged in my optical drive. I assume SATA would be the sensible and most likely option.

        I’m on Artix Linux with runit if that matters at all?

        I mean, it doesn’t matter to me whether or not I can eject my optical drive with a command, but at this point I’m just curious as to where the drive is on the filesystem lol

        Edit: I tried loading sr_mod with modprobe sr_mod (which wasn’t loaded for me) but still not seeing any sr* or cdrom in /dev. Again, not too bothered about this, but I’m kinda curious.

  • Kynn@jlai.lu
    4·
    14 days ago

    Sorry, my what ? Are you talking about relics of the past ? ;D

  • data1701d (He/Him)@startrek.websiteEnglish
    2·
    12 days ago

    I have a Blu-ray drive, though my case doesn’t have 5.25” bays, so I just have the SATA cables come put the side.

    The sole reason I have it is because once a couple years back, I wanted to watch the Star Trek: TNG Spanish dub, which was only available in the US on a Bluray, which I promptly borrowed from my local library.

    I have used it a couple times after, though - once to burn a CD-R with TinyCore to boot on a Pentium II laptop, and once to backup a Bluray with a dub only available on that medium.