Having recently bought a new box (HP Pavilion) I discovered that it is using sata HD and CD/DVD. As there are no specific switches to use when installing to sata drives, I assume that Debian Squeeze is configured to work with sata drives "out of the box", which, in my case, it is failing to do.

For the sake of completeness, these are the issues I am encountering, in no order of priority:

* DVD/CD-RW can read data CDs
* Can write to DVD and CD using K3B
* Can play DVDs that I've burnt
* Typing "eject" (no quotes) on the command line will open the drive

But:
* Cannot play audio CDs - Rhythmbox is the only application that can. Amarok does, but then doesn't update track lists when a new CD is inserted and I must quit Amarok and restart it for it to pick up the new track lists. KsCD can identify the tracks but does not play an audio CD (even when the config file is changed to point to the drive). Goobox claims "invalid device" even though when using it on the command line I set the "--device==/dev/sr0" (no quotes) to point to the device. When I press the eject button, Goobox seg faults. I have tried a number of other applications, including cdplay, workman, cdcd, and a couple of others the names of which I now forget, some GUI and some command line. None of these have been able to play the audio CD, and many have claimed drive does not exist at all, again, even when manually pointed to it.
* Cannot play pre-recorded (i.e. commercial) DVDs, irrespective of the application used. To make DVDs work, I must go into the folder and double click the correct VIDEO-TS file (*.vob)

These are the specs, taken from dmesg:

ata2: SATA link up 1.5 Gbps (SStatus 113 SControl 300)
[ 2.025513] ata2.00: ATAPI: TSSTcorp CDDVDW TS-H653Z, 4403, max UDMA/33
[ 2.041505] ata2.00: configured for UDMA/33
[ 2.049392] scsi 0:0:0:0: Direct-Access ATA WDC WD3200AAJS-6 01.0 PQ: 0 ANSI: 5
[ 2.049891] scsi 1:0:0:0: CD-ROM TSSTcorp CDDVDW TS-H653Z 4403 PQ: 0 ANSI: 5

[ 5.232678] Driver 'sr' needs updating - please use bus_type methods
[ 5.241216] sr0: scsi3-mmc drive: 40x/40x writer dvd-ram cd/rw xa/form2 cdda tray
[ 5.241216] Uniform CD-ROM driver Revision: 3.20
[ 5.241216] sr 1:0:0:0: Attached scsi CD-ROM sr0
[ 5.279572] sd 0:0:0:0: Attached scsi generic sg0 type 0
[ 5.279572] sr 1:0:0:0: Attached scsi generic sg1 type 5

This is confirmed by hardinfo and uses a scsi1 controller

The kernel I am using is kernel 2.6.26-2-686 on an AMD Sempron Dual Core 2300 and I am running Squeeze with no other OS.

I have reached the end of my limited knowledge and Google searches are now simply returning emails sent to the debian-users list, so that is no good either. I have searched under the proprietary name of TSSTcorp as well as TS-H653Z and nothing relevant shows up.

If there is further info required, please ask and I'll provide it.

Can anyone here help me? Is this an issue with GNU/Linux generally or with Debian specifically? Interesting, but one Google search showed that Fedora didn't have such a problem but when the user switched to Debian he found a similar issue. Unfortunately, I can't find a follow up to that thread.

I don't think that the drive itself is broken and nor do I think that changing the drive for something else will work, because I'd still have to use the sata connections.

Please help!

Many thanks

I'm probably being ignorant but this is the ?same kernel as used by the previous distribution isn't it? How about trying a more up to date one. Had problems with the DVD drive myself, they got better, although still not completely fixed, with more modern kernels. Use make oldconfig or whatever.