A bug in the K3b program
 

I am running open SuSE 11.0 and it works fine.

It has K3b program for burning CDs and DVDs.

I have used the K3b program for about 10 years.

It works fine.

They have shipped the latest version of K3b program with open SuSE 11.0

I want to know from our friends whether it has some bugs.

Yesterday I downloaded the latest Mandriva 2009 and used the K3b program to burn it onto a CD.

1. Downloading from the Mandriva site was fine.

2. Burning to the CD using K3b was fine except a last minute problem.

3. I marked the button 'Verify written data'

4. It didn't match the written data and elicited the message 'failed'
at the end of the process.

5. I wasted 4 CDs for burning again and again.

6. Then I removed the downloaded file and
re-downloaded from a mirror in the USA. The original file was downloaded from a Swedish site.

7. I faced the same problem again when burning.

8. I suspect a bug in the latest K3b program.

Your thoughts are welcome.

If there is bug than it is Verify writen data , never used it , beside that it works fine.
Can not see the benefit of using it , the data is all ready wrong , that is why perform a media check before installing is in my opinion more use full

What is version number?

1) k3b has debug logs. What is output? It can't just "fail", normally it tells at what sector it failed at and/or why.
2) If your cd-recorder is old, it might be dying from old age and slowly getting picky about CD type/vendor.
3) Are you sure you aren't doing something like trying to burn 800mb iso onto 700mb CD-R?
4) I'm using k3b 1.0.4 and don't have this problem.
5) If you suspect it is a bug, you can try reporting it on k3b homepage.

I've had it fail as well but the CD burn was fine. You probably got 4 good Mandriva CD's now. Don't always trust the verify data from the K3b program without testing the CD by other means as well.

And if you really think it's a bug, you should submit your findings to the K3b team, not LQ.

I have a separate computer for trial installations of software. I inserted the CD and rebooted the computer. It recognized the CD and I got a beautiful message about installation of Mandriva. Afterwards it stopped. So the CDs are not fine.

Our friend ErV wants to know the version number.
The version number is 'k3b 1.0.4 ( Using KDE 3.5.9 “release 49.1 open SUSE 11.0).
It seems ErV uses the same program like me.

ErV wrote the following:
k3b has debug logs. What is output? It can't just "fail", normally it tells at what sector it failed at and/or why.

It told me the failed sector. It was the first sector.

Of course the CD recorder is old. However, it works fine. I think the computer is about 4 years old. Nothing wrong with it. Almost two weeks ago I removed '2 X 512 RAM' modules and inserted '3 X 1024' modules . Now the computer works fast and I open about 20 pages at the same time.

Almost 2 months ago I threw away the old processor and inserted AMD 4200++ processor. The old processor was, if my memory serves well, AMD 3000++.


The program (Mandriva 2009) has 702.4MB of data. So an ordinary CD should work. I have been working with K3b program for about 10 years. So I know the way to burn programs using K3b program. I bought those CDs almost 7 years ago. They works fine. When you buy 500 CDs, it is cheaper. I bought 500 CDs almost 7 years ago.

http://www.mandriva.com/en/download

I urge our friends to download and burn the program to see whether it works smoothly. I downloaded from a Swedish mirror and a US mirror.

You could select the speeds of burning. Usually the slow speeds are better. I selected 'Auto'. I thought it was the best option when it comes to speed of burning.

Both of the downloading works smoothly. I got the same error message in the burning process. The error message appears at the end of the burning. I saw the word 'Failed' in big letters.

I checked the md5sum of the downloaded file and it was fine.
.............................................
ni@linux-j5q7:/media> md5sum mandriva-linux-one-2009-KDE4-int-cdrom-i586.iso
94a0fd467bdcde4e04d5497920e64b72 mandriva-linux-one-2009-KDE4-int-cdrom-i586.iso
ni@linux-j5q7:/media>
............................................


Our friend trickyid suggested asking K3b forum. I looked at their website. They just run some email archives. I couldn't get a clue from those archives.

I tried in vain to install using the 4 CDs.

I didn't suggest the K3b forums. I said, contact the developers and supply them the necessary information if you think it's a bug.

But if this is a bug, then why is it only affecting you? If this was a widespread bug, then K3b would be utterly useless for everyone using it. I have the same version as you do and don't seem to have this problem.

Never rule out hardware. Have you even attempted to burn from another burner or machine? Could it be perhaps an option you are selecting during the burn? There are many factors to consider as I doubt it's an actual bug but related to hardware and even the downloaded ISO.

I would imagine using CDR's that are 7 years old could be the culprit. Some might have deteriorated before the others, I've seen much stranger things.

Get yourself a new CDR and test just to rule it out though.

Thanks trickykid for taking time again to provide me an excellent reply.

Though the CDs are old they work fine. I use those CDs almost every week to burn files. Generally the hardware and the K3b program are fine.

I am not going to rule out your opinion on this. They may be deteriorating slowly.

It is easy to borrow some CDs from friends and try. I will not buy them at any cost. I have hundreds of CDs at home. Why should I buy more!

I must try to use some other computer at some other place to download and burn. All those computers are Windows. People say I am a maverick to use open source. I hope I will find time to do this.

Time is my biggest enemy. I train 3 times a week at a gym. I came home nearly an hour ago from the gym. Training, stretching,sauna, travelling to gym take between 4 to 5 hours. It takes about 2 hours and 15 minutes to up and down travelling to the gym.

Downloaded file is fine; because I checked the 'md5sum'.

Do you have any doubts about the corruption of the file?

I trust the 'md5sum' checking of files.

You may have experienced some strange things.

Did you attempt to download and burn the same file using K3b?


I have successfully downloaded and burnt the open SuSE 11.0, Fedora9, etc in the past using K3b. It was the previous version of K3b. This is for the first time I attempted to do the same thing using open SuSE 11.0.

This is affecting Ubuntu 8.04 as well, at least on my system (can't think of any reason why this would be specific to mine alone, though).
As I have found, it is just the verification that fails, the disks should be perfectly fine. What I have come to do in this case is check the md5sum manually. Just run md5sum on your cd/dvd.

Old CD-recorders (DVD recorders, actually) sometimes develop a bad habit of not recognizing CD/DVD at first attempt, or not mounting it at first attempt, because of failed read. I think you might have this problem, but I'm not completely sure.

if CD-recorder is that old, I'm surprised it isn't dead already. My DVD-burners tend to die within 1 year (well, they don' actually die, but develop a huge amount of bad habits which makes them unusable).

Honestly, I'd recommend to try new recorder with new blank CD and see if it works or not, before saying that it is a bug. If you don't want to buy recorder, just try new blank CD. Or you could probably borrow a recorder from friend.

I cannot confirm your bug with CDs, because I wasn't burning CDs for two years, only DVDs. And for dvds "verify written data" works, at least with normal burn when you start the project and add files. Unsure about dvd *.iso, because wasn't burning them for quite some time. My software is nearly identical but on another distribution - k3b 1.0.4 using kde 3.5.9, but on Slackware 12.1.

My connection is 384 kbps. And I'm out of blank CDs. SO for testing "download and burn", you'll have to wait someone else, sorry. I can only give you some thoughts about situation.

And one important thing. www.k3b.org says about new release, 1.0.5. Among fixed bugs this is mentioned:
Also try to contact k3b developers or users through their mailing lists.

This is for the first time I hear from people that CD/DVD recorder gets old.

I haven't heard similar things.

I guess some compatiblity problems may exist with the state of the art software.

My burner and open SuSE 11.0 belong to different generations.

It works fine. I can just burn files using my CDs.

That is why I say hardware and K3b program work fine.

I do believe this is a bug in K3B; I also am experiencing it in Mandriva 2008.1 with a new Lite-On DVD burner.

However, the CDs burned this way work find; the verification pass is failing but this failure is not occurring until after the session has been closed. The resulting CD is OK.

By "gets old" I mean it "wears out from frequent use", which makes perfect sense, because it has a lot of moving parts and a laser that isn't eternal. Of course if you won't use CD-recorder for many years, it won't just "die of old age", but after N hours of usage, some problems will start appearing. This is based on personal experience with burners. Anyway, I don't have anything else to add in this thread, so I'll just leave. Good luck with solving your problem.

The lifetime of CD or DVD burner is measured in burning hours.
How more it is used how sooner it will die.
A other is dust if there is dust inside the or CD or DVD is can also
make mistakes will burning or reading
My DVD burner is brand new so burning at the maximum is no problem at all.
And of course the quality of the burner is also a point

This problem exists.

You will glean it if you read the comments made by our friends jay73 and jiml8.