I've been trying to get a usb pen to work in linux without much success so I typed dmesg

looking at the sort of thing other people got from this and comparing it with what I have got me worried In addition to all the usb stuff going on I got some wierd stuff

here's the wierd stuff (usb device not plugged in, I figured this would just confuse matters):

hdd: packet command error: status=0x51 { DriveReady SeekComplete Error }
hdd: packet command error: error=0x54
ATAPI device hdd:
Error: Illegal request -- (Sense key=0x05)
Cannot read medium - incompatible format -- (asc=0x30, ascq=0x02)
The failed "Read Subchannel" packet command was:
"42 02 40 01 00 00 00 00 10 00 00 00 "
hdd: packet command error: status=0x51 { DriveReady SeekComplete Error }
hdd: packet command error: error=0x54
ATAPI device hdd:
Error: Illegal request -- (Sense key=0x05)
Cannot read medium - incompatible format -- (asc=0x30, ascq=0x02)
The failed "Read Subchannel" packet command was:
"42 02 40 01 00 00 00 00 10 00 00 00 "
hdd: packet command error: status=0x51 { DriveReady SeekComplete Error }
hdd: packet command error: error=0x54
ATAPI device hdd:
Error: Illegal request -- (Sense key=0x05)
Cannot read medium - incompatible format -- (asc=0x30, ascq=0x02)
The failed "Read Subchannel" packet command was:
"42 02 40 01 00 00 00 00 10 00 00 00 "

this goes on forever, and I can't but think something is very wrong.

I'm running SuSE 8.2 running the original kernel 2.4.20 on the following machine

Athlon 2000+XP
Maxtor 6Y060P0 60GB hard disk
GeForce 4 graphics card with nvidia driver
AsRock K7S8X motherboard
+plus other stuff that I guess is pretty irrelevant.

Any ideas?

Did you have no CD in the drive (assuming /dev/hdd is a cdrom of some sort) and an automount daemon running?

How stupid do I feel now

I took the CD and DVD out of the drives and sure enough all the messages went away

what was causing all the messages then?