> > (or, probably, anything else that would tickle the drive over the
> > bus).  At that time I get (from memory) an ata command timeout in
> > syslog, the checkdrive completes normally, and the light goes out.
>
> On my systems, if you open/close the CD-ROM "door" using the eject
> button, the IDE light goes off.  I have this problem on most of my
> NetBSD machines.
>
>   -jm
>
dd if=/dev/rcdrom_device of=/dev/null bs=512 count=1 2>/dev/null >/dev/null

in rc.local fixes the problem.