mkudffs-created dvd-ram auto mounted failed
 

This is a strange problem. I bought a couple of Panasonic DVD-RAM for the multi-burner of my ThinkPad Z60m under Fedora Core 5. The dvd disks came with pre-formated UDF file system and can be recognized and mounted automatically by GNOME desktop when inserted into the computer. The label of mounted disk is MEI_UDF. Then I used mkfs.vfat to reformat the disk but the it complains it could not determine the geometry of my disk and it used the default value 255/something to format the disk. Predictably the disk cannot be mounted correctly as VFAT as the error message says wrong number of blocks. Then I used mkudffs to reformat the disk using the command:

mkudffs --udfrev=1.5 --media-type=dvdram /dev/dvd
(Other UDF revisions have been tried: 2.00, 2.01)

Output messages indicated everything is fine. Then I ejected and inserted the disk into the computer, and now GNOME complained "The volume cannot be mounted". The command dmesg showed that GNOME tried to mount the disk as a VFAT disk, so it failed. Then I used the command line:

mount /dev/dvd /mnt/dvd

An error message said: can't read superblock. Then I specified the type of file system explicitly by:

mount -t udf /dev/dvd /mnt/dvd

This time the disk was mounted successfully.

From above diagnosis, it's clear that the dvd-ram disk still holds some VFAT information after it was reformatted to UDF by mkudffs, such that the file system of the disk cannot be automatically detected correctly and therefore GNOME failed to mount the disk. However the disk with preformatted UDF can be detected without any problems. I also reformated the disk to FAT32 in Wndows XP and the disk can be automatically mounted as a VFAT disk in GNOME of FC5.

So I am wondering if mkudffs has some bugs in it and how to make a "perfect" UDF dvd disk in FC5 by mkudffs or other tools? Any suggestions are appreciated!