I used to be able to run either commands successfully on my Fedora 14 Thinkpad T410 laptop:$ wodim --scanbus$ wodim --devicesHowever since upgrading to Fedora 19 this no longer seems to work and I'm not sure why. Are there any alternative methods for getting the drives capabilities from wodim?
Getting capabilities of my CD/DVD drive when wodim --devices doesn't work
linux;hardware;data cd
I wasn't able to confirm this is truly a bug or not but this Ubuntu bug would seem to lead credence to this assumption, titled: wodim doesn't find my DVD writer.This thread listed a workaround by including the dev= to wodim. This works so long as you know your CD/DVD devices handle.--scanbus$ wodim dev=/dev/sr0 --scanbusscsibus1:    1,0,0   100) 'Optiarc ' 'DVD RW AD-7930H ' '1.D1' Removable CD-ROM    1,1,0   101) *    1,2,0   102) *    1,3,0   103) *    1,4,0   104) *    1,5,0   105) *    1,6,0   106) *    1,7,0   107) *--devices$ wodim dev=/dev/sr0 --devices wodim: Overview of accessible drives (1 found) :------------------------------------------------------------------------- 0  dev='/dev/sr0'  rwrw-- : 'Optiarc' 'DVD RW AD-7930H'-------------------------------------------------------------------------An alternative?As an alternative you can also list the devices in wodim without having to know the device ahead of time by using the -prcap switch.$ wodim -prcapwodim: Operation not permitted. Warning: Cannot raise RLIMIT_MEMLOCK limits.Device was not specified. Trying to find an appropriate drive...Detected CD-R drive: /dev/sr0Using /dev/cdrom of unknown capabilitiesDevice type    : Removable CD-ROMVersion        : 5Response Format: 2Capabilities   : Vendor_info    : 'Optiarc 'Identification : 'DVD RW AD-7930H 'Revision       : '1.D1'Device seems to be: Generic mmc2 DVD-R/DVD-RW.Drive capabilities, per MMC-3 page 2A:  Does read CD-R media  Does write CD-R media  Does read CD-RW media  Does write CD-RW media  Does read DVD-ROM media  Does read DVD-R media  Does write DVD-R media  Does read DVD-RAM media  Does write DVD-RAM media  Does support test writing  ...This 3rd method would seem to be the best option.