I want to find out if there is a CD drive on a remote server running Red Hat Linux release 7.3 (Valhalla).
Based on what I can see in fstab, /proc/devices, /proc/ide/ide0/ it seems like there is a CD drive, but is there any way I can verify it?
# lshw -C disk
Should give you what you want.
Edit: Already here : How can I find out what hard disks are attached to a linux box
The best way would probably be to run dmesg
and see what devices were enumerated by the kernel.
Check what can tell you /var/log/dmesg for IDE devices.
Try to use "eject" command and see what will tell you.