I have installed k3b and in fact the issue happens with brasero as well so while it isn't necessarily k3b related directly, the issue may lie with KDE but I'm unsure to be honest and other forum solutions have been null in terms of resolution.

I try to burn a disk with k3b, an iso image. the process begins, states the device doesn't support 16X, it is moving up to 17x, then fails with the error that there is no permission to open the device. Now my original presumption is that this is related to read/write permissions in /dev/dvdrom but I don't believe it to be the underlying issue and as the disk isn't rw I don't believe it is a format issue, the discs are -R DVD's single layer. Can anyone suggest some advice? Thanks!

I am either having a version of your problem, or I got past it to another problem where I end up with a simple "write error" in the final cache
flush which I have opened a thread on.

But you might check this out: I went into k3bsetup for permissions, and k3b wanted to point at the "burning" group. But reported when I tried to exit that there was no group called "burning" so I changed it to "cdrom". Also, before I enabled the "cdrom" burning group, I enabled the dvdroms in the device window and the three software applications in the software window of the k3bsetup, then I enabled the "cdrom" burning group and clicked on OK. The strange thing is, it never asked for my password. But when I burned my next dvd I no longer got the group permission error or an error saying there was no permission to open the device either.

So, you might check that. Let me know what happens!

while your solution is definitely one that linux users hope to have to initiate, and that it not be more serious, mine is a bit more complex. You see pointing the the device and mounting it are one thing, but on a mount command I don't have any mounted devices which appear to be the dvd drive! Instead I have remote procedure call, my hard disk partitions, and other modules. I am unsure as to how the drive works at all, for instance despite it not being referenced as mounted, i can issue an eject command, play files (although it takes time for them to start); etc. Do I have it twisted? Does the DVD drive not have to be mounted?

I have this same problem too. I even did a firmware update on my dvd burner to see if that would help. K3b 1.04 or 1.05 never had this problem.
One user says it's cdrecord (the forked version) that's causing this problem. I've tried to install the original cdrecord and I still have this problem. It seems like this is only occuring with kde 4.x.

https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=236672

https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=236814

Writing DVD-r in incremental mode
Using wodim 1.1.10
Starting incremential sequential writing at 16x
Medium or burner does not support 16x
Switching burning speed up to 17x
Performing optimum power calibration
Sending cue sheet
Starting disc write
cdrecord has no permission to open the device
You may use k3bsetup to solve this problem


I'm using Kubuntu 10.04. I even get the same error with Suse 11.2.

Your log shows that you still use the broken wodim instead of cdrecord.

Note that there is a Suse binary package that installs the original cdretools.

BTW: You are correct that messages that claim no permission to open a device (if printed by wodim) are one of the ~ 100 well known bugs in the fork.