Hi,

I wanted to share a cd/dvd drive over my network but couldn't pull the trick off by enabling the share option in its properties dialog, I then started digging a little deeper and as I couldn't easily find a solution, I decided to give back to the community what I learned

First of you need your cd/dvd to be mounted on a fixed location:

edit /etc/fstab

Code:
sudo gedit /etc/fstab
and add the following line (at the bottom) in order to mount the drive automatically to /media/dvd

Code:
/dev/dvd  /media/dvd  auto  user,noauto,exec,utf8  0  0
Next you have to make sure that the folder you are mounting the drive to exists and therefore create it

Code:
sudo mkdir /media/dvd
This does the trick, now cds/dvds will be mounted always be mounted to the same location, they will still show up on your desktop and there it will still carry its volume name.

Sharing the drive over the network:

Now the drive has it own folder, it can be treated as one. So you share it like you'd share any other folder of which you aren't the owner. (For new people: your user account only owns the folders in your home folder, you don't (normally) have the rights to share folders you don't own)

GUI

If you don't have this program already, install it. It is a handy program for configuring samba.

Code:
sudo apt-get install system-config-samba
I found a good tutorial on the program HERE, it even has pictures , it'd be foolish not to refer you to it.

Command line

Add this to /etc/samba/smb.conf (you can see an example which looks pretty much like this at the end and it looks pretty much like what I've been saying here)

Code:
[cdrom]
   comment = Samba server's CD-ROM
   read only = yes
   locking = no
   path = /media/dvd
   guest ok = yes
That's it! Enjoy