Hello out there

My problem is that I cannot burn dvds with my dvd burner. Before reinstalling Slackware 11.0 this past weekend my burner worked fine, in fact I had burned and tested a few dvds last week.

As I said I am using Slackware 11.0, with the bare.i 2.4 kernel. I have enabled scsi emulation (e.g. in lilo.conf, append="hdc=ide-scsi"). I have added a symlink from /dev/scd0 -> /dev/dvd, and the filesystem I am using is ext3.

I mention my filesystem because Andy Polyakov (the guy behind dvd+rw tools) in this thread: http://permalink.gmane.org/gmane.com...cd-record/6538 says that ext3 causes problems with burning dvds. So I have also installed (via a self compiled and built slackware-styled package) dvd+rw-tools-7.0 (Slackware currently ships with 6.1). Having said that I should note, even though it might be irrelevant, that I was previously using reiserfs.

Running rescan-scsi-bus gives this output:

Host adapter 0 (ide-scsi) found.
Scanning hosts 0 channels 0 for
SCSI target IDs 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 , LUNs 0
Scanning for device 0 0 0 0 ...
OLD: Host: scsi0 Channel: 00 Id: 00 Lun: 00
Vendor: PLEXTOR Model: DVDR PX-716A Rev: 1.02
Type: CD-ROM ANSI SCSI revision: 02
0 new device(s) found.
0 device(s) removed.

I have been able to burn an initial session with growisofs but the program always runs into some sort of error, here is an example:

growisofs -dvd-compat -overburn -Z /dev/scd0 dvd.iso
WARNING: /dev/scd0 already carries isofs!
About to execute 'mkisofs dvd.iso | builtin_dd of=/dev/scd0 obs=32k seek=0'
mkisofs: Value too large for defined data type. File dvd.iso is too large - ignoring
Total translation table size: 0
Total rockridge attributes bytes: 0
Total directory bytes: 0
Path table size(bytes): 10
Max brk space used 21124
174 extents written (0 MB)
/dev/scd0: "Current Write Speed" is 16.4x1385KBps.
:-[ WRITE@LBA=0h failed with SK=5h/ASC=27h/ACQ=00h]: Input/output error
:-( write failed: Input/output error

I have tried to set the recommended settings with hdparm (such as those mentioned at http://linux.togaware.com/survivor/CD_DVD_Drives.html) but it did not seem to help. The exact command I issued was:

# hdparm -d1 -a8 -u1 /dev/hdc

/dev/hdc:
setting fs readahead to 8
BLKRASET failed: Invalid argument
setting unmaskirq to 1 (on)
setting using_dma to 1 (on)
unmaskirq = 1 (on)
using_dma = 1 (on)
BLKRAGET failed: Invalid argument

/dev/hdc is the actual location of my dvd-burner (which is also at /dev/scd0). However after running that, I also get this:

# hdparm -v /dev/dvd

/dev/dvd:
readonly = 0 (off)
readahead = 8 (on)
HDIO_GETGEO failed: Invalid argument

I do not know if this is related to my burner problem. I know the burner works, because today (as you can see above) it has burned initial sessions to dvd+rs (the same ones I've always used - which have always worked). But, there is some hardware configuration problem or something. And yes, I even tried the slackware k3b package - but as it's using growisofs and so on, it of course had the same trouble. (I was just hoping for a lazy miracle )

I have another cd-rom device (a cd-burner at /dev/hdd), and I am able to read from both it and the dvd drive in question.

Any help, pointers, or advice would be highly appreciated! I have searched linuxquestions, and newsgroups, and other forums for help, but nothing has worked so far. I really would love to have my burner up and working again and it's driving me crazy not being able to figure out a solution and use it

Thanks in advance,
haruki

Hmmmm ... any way you could try it with reiserfs ?

I was thinking the same thing But nope, no way to do it at the moment.

If necessary I plan on reformatting with reiserfs (i.e., if I can't find a solution within the next few days ).

Seems like there would be another answer. I mean somebody else must use ext3 and burn dvds. I mean, if that is the real issue.

Thank you for you question/suggestion.

Well I was using ext3 for a while and maybe that was why my DVD burner never burned anything right ? Not sure about the reason, but I wouldn't exclude it.

In the mean time try removing that 'append="hdc=ide-scsi"'.

Very interesting. I am definitely leaning towards reformating with reiserfs asap.

What do you think removing that line from lilo.conf will do? I am thinking that will put me back at square one. But no harm in trying it, what should I report back?

"growisofs -dvd-compat -overburn -Z /dev/scd0 dvd.iso"

You need to use -Z /dev/scd0=dvd.iso. Tho this might've nothing to do with the I/O error

Yes, thank you I did know that and tried that - should have mentioned that in my original post. I recall reading the command both ways on the dvd+rw tools homepage (or maybe one was from the mkisofs man). And yes, both did begin to work once but then failed. Weird, and well, lame!

if i remember correctly from 2.4.31(or 29) onwards, we dont need scsi emulation for 2.4 kernels!!
i was also curious about your simlink

hi anyway it got worked .. happy slacking

Thanks for your replies. I eventually ended up trying the 2.6 kernel in /extra and was able to burn dvd+r's but at > 1x. So I compiled my own 2.6.19.2 kernel, and that worked about the same, but with other major slowdown issues as well (which was odd since I went out of my way to tailor it to my system, and everything looked great in the logs). I tried to configure my drive with hdparm but that didn't seem to help.

Long story short, since I had already chased down every path I could think of, my answer seemed to be that there was some problem with the implementation I had of ext3, my hardware, and possibly growisofs and linux - and that there was not going to be a solution with my current system any time soon.

As I had everything working just a week before with bare.i, and no real tweaking, I decided that my answer layed there.

Yep, I reformatted with reiserfs and did a vanilla Slackware 11 install. And in my first post-install boot I was able to burn a dvd iso in under five minutes as opposed to two hours.

So yeah, seems I'm not the only one who had this problem - strange as it is - with ext3. Not that have anything against that filesystem, in fact I wanted to use it because of reiserfs's rebuild tree.

But reformatting with reiserfs was my solution and it absolutely removed the problem. Hope it helps someone else out there who is dragging their head through clouds like I was last week.

As a poster on a.o.l.slackware told me, sometimes the magic works - sometimes it doesn't. And now, the magic works

Well, this is both very interesting and very important. It was ext3 after all ! I personally use JFS (cuz I deal with large files on regular basis ... XFS would work too, but JFS has less CPU usage), and it works fine. Not so with ext3 ... except I never found out ext3 was the cause until now !

Great to know tho.

Haruki

I had a problem very similar to yours, I could on very, very rare occassions burn completely but 99.99% of the time the burn would fail. I was using an NEC DVD burner which worked perfectly using Windows XP (I dual booted) but failed to burn a DVD almost all the time under PCLinuxOS. I could burn a CD though no problem. I trolled through the web for an answer but it just wasn't out there.

Eventually I added another DVD Burner, this time an LG and bingo it has worked perfectly every time since. The moral of this tale seems to be that all burners are just not quite the same. It may be worth your while (as they are so cheap now) to buy an LG and try it. It worked for me.

Regards

Grungefuttock

I bought a Lite-on DVD burner last year, and I couldn't get it to burn DVDs under Slackware 10.2 with a 2.4 kernel. I could burn CDs just fine with k3b, but with DVDs it would start the burn, ruin the disk, and exit with an error. I hadn't needed a 2.6 kernel on that machine up to that point, but I went ahead and compiled and installed one. I was using reiserfs, so I don't know about any ext3 issues. Upgrading the kernel to 2.6 solved my problem, but I was never sure if it was just due to newer software or something different in how I configured my 2.4 kernel versus 2.6.