The cylinder geom isn't part of the original ODE package, but an external contribution to ODE. That's why the cylinder functions are listed separately under 'External ODE User Library Functions' in the JV-ODE Function Reference. At the moment cylinder to TriMesh collision isn't supported by the core of the library.
The workaround for achieving cylinder to TriMesh collision is to 'sphere-wrap' the cylinders, have a look at the SphereWrapCylinder car demo. The only drawback is that it will only work with cylinders which are at least 2x the radius in length. The demo uses fixed joints to attach the spheres, but geom transforms would probably work better. I need to look at that :)
The workaround for achieving cylinder to TriMesh collision is to 'sphere-wrap' the cylinders, have a look at the SphereWrapCylinder car demo. The only drawback is that it will only work with cylinders which are at least 2x the radius in length. The demo uses fixed joints to attach the spheres, but geom transforms would probably work better. I need to look at that :)