CD/DVD/BD/M-Disc drives not writing
 

I just built a new Slackware PC with an LG CD/DVD/BD/M-Disc writer, and a reader that reads maybe everything else but the M-Disc (and maybe not BD-DL.) I tried to write a plain OS DVD in K3B, and it says I do not have 'permission,' after it starts to write anyway and ruins the disc (though my user is in the cdrom group.) With cdrecord, it seems both 'cdrecord -scanbus,' 'crecord dev=help' give no info about devices that can be used. Do these drives even have Linux drivers yet? They just seemed like the standard new optical drive when I bought them.

Are you on the standard kernel? Sounds like a kernel packet writing problem.

If you are trying to use a common disc in this then it should work as any drive should.

Try a live usb maybe of some other OS to double check.


M-disc's are meant to be read by common drives. They should also be supported by burning.


"Almost any DVD burning software will work with the M-WRITER™ drive. In fact, current operating systems ("Windows Vista"©, "Windows 7"©, "Mac OS X"© and many Linux© distributions) come with compatible software pre-installed and will recognise the M-Writer™ drive automatically. Additionally, the M-WRITER™ drive works with most common third party software. Some older operating systems such as "Windows XP"© will require third-party software as DVD burning software is not included by Microsoft™."

yes Ok As I said, I was using a plain DVD, not anything newer than that yet.

Then we are left to choose between OS, application and hardware.
Usually when it says no permission it tends to mean that. Some user level setting has not been enabled. I don't know how slackware does that. Some others here would know.

Slackware does it with the cdrom group, which my user is in, and it starts writing anyway, ruining the disc, then stops

I would spend an hour with some of the strange options in cdrecord(now wodim?). He has information options, and tweaks to get around most buggy drives of the last millenium. This millenium, I'm not so sure. And if you do one more cd in a terminal with the verbose flag set it will tell you exactly what it meets.

Test with some other live usb installs or even put some windows on to test.

If the drive is new, it could be faulty.

Remove the drive and test on other system.

Have you tried a dmesg |grep DVD ? If your drive is detected at boot, this should tell you the corresponding
device file. You could then try to do a cdrecord -dummy /dev/sd? and look at the error messages.
I think the 'permission denied' error message that you are getting is not related with the write permissions
on the drive, but with the possibility of setting the highest priority for the cdrecord process.
If that is the case, your cdrecord process may be interrupted by the scheduler while it is writing to
the disk, leading to a premature end of the CD writing process. In practice, it means that you will
need to be root to write CDs reliably. I have no idea whether cdrecord is secure enough to be made
setuid root.

Everyone is paranoid to a different level, but I would set it setuid root without a secondś hesitation. Itś solid.

I made a DVD with a Live DVD, so this appears to be a Slackware 14.0 problem or one of its kernel. Could any admin move this to the Slackware sub-forum?

From the dmesg output, it appears that your CD-ROM drive is one of /dev/sr0 (slow one, 1x) or /dev/sr1 (fast one, 40x). The command to type is cdrecord -dummy /dev/sr0 or cdrecord -dummy /dev/sr1 (you don't have a /dev/sd device).
Concerning the writing of CDs and DVDs, cdrecord (CDs) and growisofs (DVDs) have different methods to write to
optical disk, so it is conceivable that only one of these programs is not compatible with your drive.
Can you determine the version of growisofs on the Live DVD growisofs --version and the installed one ?

Depending on what you're using, you may need
/dev/sg0 & /dev/sg1
or
/dev/pg0 & /dev/pg1

Create them as symlinks in /dev to sr0, sr1.

Then try your luck.

oops... ok.

I get this from the output.

Cannot open '/dev/pg*'. Cannot open or use SCSI driver.
try 'cdrecord -scanbus'.
try 'cdrecord dev=help'.

CD/DVD/BD/M-Disc drives not writing
 

I started a thread CD/DVD/BD/M-Disc drives not writing, but it turned out to be a specifically Slackware 14 problem (or one of the kernel it uses.)

I built a new PC a few weeks ago and two LG CD/DVD/BD-DL/M-Disc drives. I have been using Slackware since 1997 (and continuously since about 2005) and have known how to set up the basics, like adding a user in the proper groups, for years. The drive I tried to make a DVD with in k3b just starts to write something before the data, says it cannot write for some reason, ruins the disc, and stops (I may have written the exact error message in that other thread.) The commands 'cdrecord -scanbus,' 'cdrecord dev=help' show no information about my new drives. However, when I used a Live DVD of another distribution, it detected the drives and was able to complete writing a DVD with the one that Slackware could not.

I never thought I would live to see a day like this, when I could not do something in Slackware that I could on a distribution mainly for new users.

Actually, I just tried an idea someone gave me on the other thread, and it made the drives visible in cdrecord... I still have to see if they will write properly, but I will leave this here anyway, because Slackware people should be aware of it.

I was answering edorig and do not really see what jefro is saying. Since this is a Slackware problem, I made a thread in its forum: CD/DVD/BD/M-Disc drives not writing.

Maybe business_kid's idea will work. I will try that.

Business_kid's idea worked, though I am not sure it was the sg or pg that did it. I still have to see if the drives will write properly.

Hi dchmelik,

I have suffered from the exact same problem trying to burn dvds using k3b in various releases of slackware (although not all, or on all machines, for some reason). There are a few possibly relevant points in CHANGES_AND_HINTS.TXT:

and

You may have seen these already.

I found it is easiest to burn dvds using commands similar to those quoted in the isolinux/README.TXT from the command line, e.g.

at worst, as root.

I don't know if this helps, by your own description you sound like you probably know this already.

Cheers,

Michael

A current problem with cdrecord :-

Before you run cdrecord you must first "modprobe sg" as the SCSI generic module is used by cdrecord's functions but for some reason is not loading automatically anymore.

I recently got myself a blu-ray burner (~2 weeks ago) and swapped it out for my dvd burner. It's an LG WH14NS40 and has worked fantastically on my slackware 14. Once in a great while I have a problem with burning something to a dvd, but I've contributed that to the dvd's being really old (>6 years with max write speed 4x) and used an awful lot. They will do the 'can't write thing' on me but usually after I've formatted or erased them.

I see in the output of cdrecord -dummy that you have the warnings:

This indicates that you don't have the permissions to raise the priority of the cdrecord process
nor prevent it from being swapped (with the mlockall system call). Since Linux is multitasking,
in these conditions the cdrecord may get interrupted while writing to the optical disk. If the interruption is long
enough, that can ruin the CD. So if your attempts to burn CDs fail, you should try to run cdrecord as root.
In a previous thread, I mentioned that if that worked, you could make cdrecord setuid root provided there is no security risk.

Please post your thread once and in only one forum. Posting a single thread in the most relevant forum will make it easier for members to help you and will keep the discussion in one place. This thread is being closed because it is a duplicate.

I guess I marked this as solved because I got it working, but I forgot how now. I know I had quit trying to use k3b and used cdrecord or growisofs (and maybe making the device links mentioned above, though cdrecord seems to be detecting my drives now) and that worked, but lately I am trying k3b again, and even if I set it at 1x, it says that is not supported and increases it to 8x. K3b has made me four coasters today, and I do not want to try for a fifth... but if I try 2x or 4x will that work, or does this mean 8x is the slowest. It is also strange, because the discs from the package I am using all worked up to about 12x, but not 16x (as they are labelled)--I was writing them fine at 12x or maybe 8x in Slackware 13.37. What k3b says now is that there is an i/o error of code 254.

+1 to wildwizard's advice

modprobe sg

(Just had to do it today)

What does that even mean? It seems 'modprobe sg' (which I have had in rc.local since wildwizard mentioned that) helps with cdrecord, but not k3b, which was part of my original question.

k3b is not in the habit of making coasters.

But, the latest version is a pain if you don't have kde installed. There's a thread a year ago(?) where I had that problem, so you could add 'business_kid' as a search term. K3b also used automatically convert mp3 files to .wav when adding files to audio cds and I got coasters because of that.

Your original problem was drive access. That's sorted. Making duds is another one. Give us the full story on that one if you are trying for a fix on that

I quote from my original post, 'I tried to write a plain OS DVD in K3B, and it says I do not have 'permission,' after it starts to write anyway and ruins the disc (though my user is in the cdrom group.)'

Apparently 'modprobe sg' and following the instructions in CHANGES_AND_HINTS.TXT, as well as perhaps some other stuff (not officially documented), usually solves the problem every time I upgrade or reinstall (which I did several times recently, maybe in August, but now again for 14.1, and maybe had forgotten what to do)... sometimes there may be other problems, but I think I have to try what business_kid said, again. Anyway, I will mark it as solved again, because that is probably it, and I did get it working on 14.0 a couple times.