You did not say what distro or release you are running so some answers people supply may not be right for your system.  That said, see below:<br><br><div class="gmail_quote">On Fri, Dec 7, 2012 at 12:49 PM,  <span dir="ltr">&lt;<a href="mailto:joe@actionline.com" target="_blank">joe@actionline.com</a>&gt;</span> wrote:<br>
<blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex">I have an external dvd burner connected to my computer,<br>
but when I try to run K3b, the following message appears:<br>
<br>
&gt; No optical drive found.<br>
&gt; K3b did not find any optical device in your system.<br>
&gt; Solution: Make sure HAL daemon is running, it is used<br>
&gt; by K3b for finding devices.<br>
<br>
How can I determine if the HAL daemon is running?<br>
Or if it is not, what do I need to do to make sure that<br>
it always does run?<br></blockquote><div><br>On my Ubuntu 12.04 and 12.10 systems, I do not see a hal daemon running, but plugging in an external USB CD/DVD drive is visible and usable (I am not set to use k3b).  That makes me wonder if hal has been replaced.<br>
<br>Are you plugging in the external burner BEFORE starting k3b?  Sometimes a program queries for available devices only on program start.  If you start k3b first, exit and only start it AFTER plugging in the device.  Also, try having some media in the drive before starting k3b.<br>
<br>Is it only k3b that does not see the external drive.  If the who system does not see it, the problem is more likely the external drive or not having a valid driver for it.  You might try an lsusb to see if it is even visible to Linux.  I get &quot;Bus 002 Device 004: ID 0411:01dc BUFFALO INC. (formerly MelCo., Inc.)&quot;.<br>
<br>You could also do an lshw -short before plugging it in and another after to see if another line was listed such as &quot;/2             scsi7   storage&quot;.<br><br>If you don&#39;t, try some other external USB device as a test.<br>
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