How to detect USB devices plugged in

[Fred47]

A quick search brought up several sites showing the commands. For example https://linuxconfig.org/howto-mount-usb-drive-in-linux

[joneall]

The automatic notifier, which signals when for instance a new USB disk has been plugged in, works very erratically for me. In particular, it does not detect CDs entered into my external USB CD drive. There is no USB device symbol shown on the system tray. Is there a way to mount a CD in a device manually, without waiting for the notifier? In which case, how do I know which device is the CD drive, with a name like /dev/sr0?

I have tried it with VLC, but either I chose the wrong drive (/dev/sr0) or something else does not work.

Alternatively, is there a way to "fix" the automatic notifier?