place a cd or dvd in the player and make sure that the following is in
your /etc/fstab file
/dev/scd0 /media/cdrom0 udf,iso9660 user,noauto,exec 0 0

then make sure your /media directory has 2 sub directories
cdrom and cdrom0
then run the following line
sudo mount /dev/scd0 /media/cdrom0
you should get a cdrom icon on the desktop but sometimes you don't. In
any case you can click on cdrom0 and read the contents