k3b is supposed to handle rewritables!

Tux-O-Matic · 11-21-2006, 06:37 PM

I recently installed k3b and bought a rewritable cd. However, when I popped it into the cd drive and opened the icon on my desktop that said "CD-RW", I got a message that said "Malformed URL".

I've gotten this message before with CD-RW's, and the solution, supposedly, was to isntall k3b. I'm confused.

I also decided to burn the files I need onto the CD. It burned it, but only once. I was not able to erase the disk or append to it, even though k3b said that the cd was re-recordable and appendable. I heard from someone that it was just the hardware. My CD drive can read, and it can write, but it seems not to be able to rewrite. Is it possibly the hardware?

If it helps any, my computer is an IBM Thinkpad 600E.

I'm finding more and more problems with Linux than I've found in Windows. I'm beginning to think I should switch back...

Brian1 · 11-21-2006, 06:51 PM

Is the CD being mounted or automounted when inserted first. If so it needs to be unmounted before writing to it.

Brian

bigrigdriver · 11-21-2006, 08:45 PM

I haven't tried to re-write a cd yet, but I seem to reading that a re-writable cd must be b lanked before you can write to it again (this applies to erasing before writing again; not appending).

tredegar · 11-22-2006, 12:15 PM

Tux-O-Matic,
You usually need to blank a CD before you can write to it again.
k3b -> Tools -> Erase CD
There's also an icon titled "Open CD Blanking Dialogue" if you want more options.

HTH

Tux-O-Matic · 11-22-2006, 03:59 PM

I've done it all correctly...I've mounted the CD, attempted to erase the disk (I got an error message saying something about the CD being part DVD), but I just don't get it.

Electro · 11-22-2006, 06:29 PM

Like what tredegar have said, you will need to blank the rewritable disc in order to use it. You can use cdrecord or growisofs to blank them. Another way which only works for me is using dd.

To use dd on a rewritable optical disc and assuming hdc is the drive, use the following command.
dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/hdc bs=2048 count=4096

The above command should write about 8 MB and it should not give you any problems.

Optical discs can have either ISO-9660 or UDF. You can ignore the error message. If you blank the disc to use UDF, you can use packet writing which means you can use it as another writable drive. Though your drive needs to support packet writing and you need to have packet writing enabled (set as module) in the kernel order to use this method of writing.