CD Drive Problems

Roy-Svork · 01-20-2003, 02:38 PM

I recently installed Mandrake 9.0, and all was fine, but after reinstalling to sort some issues out, my CD-Rom drives are now very tempremental. I use bookmarks that I created and copied to the desktop to access them, but sometimes the system will process something for a good 2-3 minutes, then report that I do not have access rights to dev/cdrom or dev/cdrom2, regardless of whether there is a CD in the drive or not. Both my drives are using IDE-SCSI emulation so they will work with x-cd-roast, but other than that I can't see what is causing the problem.

A.H.M.A

amulheirn · 03-21-2003, 08:16 AM

Yup - I have the same problem.

Had various issues with a previous install of Mandrake 9 so when I got a new motherboard I decided to re-install from scratch at the same time.

I have two CD drives - /dev/hdc is a DVD ROM from Creative and /dev/scd0 is a CD-RW from LG. Both appear recognised ok. Both have "user" set in /etc/fstab so that users other than root can mount them.

I've been searching the web for information and thought that upgrading the kernel would be a solution. Apparently there was a bug in supermount (which is what mounts drives automatically when you put a disk in them) and this is fixed in 2.4.19-24 kernel (the original one was 2.4.19-16). This hasn't helped though.

When I have a cd in hdc I am getting a lot of errors in the messages log file referring to things like "hdc: drive not ready for command", "hdc: ATAPI reset complete".

hdd does list files when I put a CD in it. It regularly stalls when trying to copy files from it to the hard disk though. And I get "drive not ready" errors and "scsi: aborting due to timeout" messages instead.

Anyone got any bright ideas? I see a lot of people with this problem, but no definite answers so far.

Thanks in advance,

Andrew

amulheirn · 03-21-2003, 08:31 AM

Interestingly, although I am managing to copy files very slowly from the CD-RW (it is stopping and starting all the time and freezing the X session sometimes), the supermount thing doesn't appear to have mounted the drive:

[root@infohaus mnt]# more /proc/mounts
rootfs / rootfs rw 0 0
/dev/root / ext2 rw 0 0
none /dev devfs rw 0 0
none /proc proc rw 0 0
none /proc/bus/usb usbdevfs rw 0 0
none /dev/pts devpts rw 0 0
/dev/hda5 /home ext3 rw 0 0
none /mnt/cdrom supermount ro,nosuid,nodev,noexec 0 0
none /mnt/cdrom2 supermount ro 0 0
none /mnt/floppy supermount rw,sync 0 0

The message about not having access rights to the drive must be wrong. Below are the permissions shown - read, write and execute for everyone:

[root@infohaus mnt]# ls -la
total 12
drwxr-xr-x 6 root root 4096 Mar 21 10:54 ./
drwxr-xr-x 19 root root 4096 Mar 21 12:18 ../
drwxrwxrwx 1 root root 0 Mar 21 12:18 cdrom/
drwxrwxrwx 1 root root 0 Mar 21 12:18 cdrom2/
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 4096 Mar 21 10:54 disk/
drwxrwxrwx 1 root root 0 Mar 21 12:18 floppy/
[root@inf[root@infohaus mnt]# more /proc/mounts
rootfs / rootfs rw 0 0
/dev/root / ext2 rw 0 0
none /dev devfs rw 0 0
none /proc proc rw 0 0
none /proc/bus/usb usbdevfs rw 0 0
none /dev/pts devpts rw 0 0
/dev/hda5 /home ext3 rw 0 0
none /mnt/cdrom supermount ro,nosuid,nodev,noexec 0 0
none /mnt/cdrom2 supermount ro 0 0
none /mnt/floppy supermount rw,sync 0 0
[root@infohaus mnt]# ls -la
total 12
drwxr-xr-x 6 root root 4096 Mar 21 10:54 ./
drwxr-xr-x 19 root root 4096 Mar 21 12:18 ../
drwxrwxrwx 1 root root 0 Mar 21 12:18 cdrom/
drwxrwxrwx 1 root root 0 Mar 21 12:18 cdrom2/
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 4096 Mar 21 10:54 disk/
drwxrwxrwx 1 root root 0 Mar 21 12:18 floppy/
[root@infohaus mnt]#ohaus mnt]#

Please help! This is driving me up the wall....

Aussie · 03-21-2003, 11:28 AM

Post your fstab amulheirn.

amulheirn · 03-21-2003, 12:07 PM

Here ya go.

Code:

/dev/hda1 / ext2 defaults 1 1
none /dev/pts devpts mode=0620 0 0
/dev/hda5 /home ext3 defaults 1 2
none /mnt/cdrom2 supermount dev=/dev/scd0,fs=auto,ro,--,user,iocharset=iso8859-1
5,codepage=850,noauto,umask=0 0 0
/dev/fd0 /mnt/floppy auto codepage=850,sync,unhide,noauto,iocharset=iso8859-15,n
osuid,umask=0,user,nodev 0 0
none /proc proc defaults 0 0
/dev/hda6 swap swap defaults 0 0

Some more developments which have improved things a little bit:

- mounting drives manually gives me some access. Supermount seems very much more flaky.

- I noticed that the DVD was not coming up in the hardware list of Mandrake control center, but was being seen by the BIOS. I have had this working before, but I disconnected the DVD's cable to test.

- Now, the system boots up much much quicker (it was pausing for 30 seconds at "Finding module dependencies"

- Additionally I can copy files off the CDRW at high speed without it "stalling".

- Also, the scsi timeout errors previously seen in the logs are gone.

Some progress at last! All I need to do now is work out what the incompatibility is. I'll try reversing master and slave first. I could put the DVD on the same channel as the hard disk, but I don't really want to do that as the hard disk is UDMA100 and the CD is UDMA66 I think which will affect performance (I believe the IDE bus runs at the speed of the slowest device on it - is that right?).

Any other suggestions would be welcome.

Andrew

Aussie · 03-21-2003, 12:31 PM

This is what my fstab looks like,

Code:

/dev/hda7        swap             swap        defaults                  0   0
/dev/hda2        /                reiserfs    defaults                  1   1
/dev/hda3        /home            reiserfs    defaults                  1   2
/dev/hda5        /home/media      reiserfs    auto,users,rw             1   2
/dev/hda6        /mnt/slack-c     reiserfs    auto,users,rw             1   2
/dev/hda1        /mnt/win98       vfat        auto,users,rw,umask=000   0   0
aptiva:/home     /mnt/aptiva      nfs         users,rw                  0   0
/dev/cdrom       /mnt/cdrom       iso9660     noauto,users,ro           0   0
/dev/cdrw        /mnt/cdrw        iso9660     noauto,users,ro           0   0
/dev/fd0         /mnt/floppy      vfat        noauto,users,rw,umask=000 0   0
none             /dev/pts         devpts      gid=5,mode=620            0   0
none             /proc            proc        defaults                  0   0

The [code] tag retains the format of files like fstab, making it easier to read the file when you post it, and is only one of many vB Codes that can be used at LQ.
Look here for instructions on how to use vB Code.

amulheirn · 03-22-2003, 01:34 PM

latest on this one - the DVD (a Creative PC-DVD Blaster 12x) doesn't want to play with the LG CD-RW that I have on the same channel, either as master or slave.

I've even swapped the connectors around to see if it perfers to be at the end or in the middle of the IDE cable. No luck.

I think I'll try and borrow a CD drive from someone else to replace it and see if that works.

Regards,
A.

ArchNGEL · 05-19-2003, 06:40 PM

i am also MDK9.0 and I have a /dev/hdc DVD and a /dev/scd0 LG CDRW

in the beginning there was no problem at all, however my friend complained me about his cd-rom not reading files normally. he used mdk90 too. i was kinda "it's must be your drive" until i got the same error.

it's like i put in the cd, supermount does its work, begin to copy files and after an uncertain amount of data it says the "file is not there" and no other files are. as time passed i figured out that from one kind of cd i can read 30MBytes, from others 400Mbytes, but i cannot - for example - create a complete ISO. then i booted up my XP which could handle every cd correctly.

now i am hestiant about getting any other distro [i dont think it's a drive fault any more], coz i dont feel that i could deal with debians difficultiness (however it's reaaaaly tempting), in short MDK is just for my newbie ego. BUT If true that MDK9.1 has no problems like this (only others) i'M pleased to download its isos in no time.

What do YOU think about it?

Aussie · 05-19-2003, 06:57 PM

Have a look on mandrakes user forums for people with the same problem, and see if there are any bug reports about it.

ArchNGEL · 05-19-2003, 07:17 PM

... okay
however i am all ears

ArchNGEL · 05-19-2003, 07:32 PM

btw

my /var/log/messages says (after a successful not-finding-files-anymore)

May 20 01:27:37 HAL-9000 kernel: udf: registering filesystem
May 20 01:27:37 HAL-9000 kernel: udf: bad mount option "codepage=852"

i dont really know what it means. i hope someone does.

Aussie · 05-19-2003, 07:41 PM

Post your fstab.

michaelk · 05-19-2003, 08:38 PM

I suggest disabling supermount.
supermount disable

man pages supermount

supermount does not work well when trying to copy an entire CD.

Of course you will not have to manually mount / umount your CDs.

ArchNGEL · 05-19-2003, 08:43 PM

i guess the problem is SUPERMOUNT
(after checking the 60th page of mandrake forum i found that info)

now it seems to work. not that i mount manually

anyways, thanks for your cooperation!!!

ps: whatt is beyond my comprehension; how cum it wasn't a problem for the first two months ?

/dev/hdb2 / ext3 defaults 1 1
/dev/hdb1 /home ext3 defaults 1 1
/dev/scd0 /mount/cdrom iso9660 ro,user,noauto,unhide
none /dev/pts devpts mode=0620 0 0
none /mnt/cdrom2 supermount dev=/dev/hdd,fs=auto,ro,--,iocharset=iso8859-2,codepage=852,umask=0 0 0
none /mnt/floppy supermount dev=/dev/fd0,fs=auto,--,iocharset=iso8859-2,sync,codepage=852,umask=0 0 0
/dev/hda1 /mnt/nt ntfs noauto,iocharset=iso8859-2,ro,umask=0 0 0
none /proc proc defaults 0 0

ArchNGEL · 05-19-2003, 08:55 PM

michaelk

thanks!! your post wasnt there when i started that msg.

its still funny. i did cdcopies with supermounted cds in the past

Thanks anyways guys.