Hi,

I have rather old SONY DVD-RW and recently appeared many problems. The device doesn't read optical disks, no matter CD or DVD.

After issuing the command 'dvd+rw-mediainfo' I get message 'input/output error'.

I was aware that device is damaged but it works fine under windows.

Now I am running ubuntu 10.04 (upgrade from 9.10) and slackware 13.0 < v < 13.1 and BOTH these distros fail
to make ma dvd works. However the system recognize dvd properly: the drive is listed in the output of 'lsscsi'
command.

On earlier version of kernels 2.6.27 (-29 ) the dvd was ok. But then the optical drives were ide devices or sata devices (/dev/hd or /dev/sd) now it seems to be a quite new category /dev/sr.

Perhaps I may be able to fix this myself but I don't know
at what point to begin.

Ofcourse I always may downgrade the system but ...

Help, help, help ....

Try using legacy ide driver (named ATA/ATAPI/MFM/RLL support in the kernel configuration IIRC).
Also, since it's a regression, file a bug report before it's too late to find its reason.
Use ubuntu-bug command:

Do you mind to set a particular boot kernel option or recompile kernel using the legacy ide driver?
I don't well understand what do you mean by 'using'.

May be related to https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+s...ux/+bug/228624

Yes, it seems to be exactly my problem with the exception that it is not only ubuntu distro related - I mean slackware also has a problem with my dvd.