When empty, cannot open cd/dvd door with button or command line.
 

I have two internal DVD drives, one a DVD/CDRW and the other a DVDRW, plus an external USB DVDRW.

The external DVDRW works perfectly. The two internal DVDs will not open by button, or using the eject command if there isn't something already in them. The both burn disks just fine and read disks just fine. I haven't tried playing an audio cd, but would assume that should work too.

The computer is:
DakTech Discovery 6
Intel D946GZ - Dual core 3.4ghz
4gb Ram - 330gb sata dasd

DVD 0 /dev/sr0
Lite-On DVD C LH52C1P

DVD 1 /dev/sr1
Lite-On DVDRW LH-20A1H

DVD 2 /dev/sr2
Sony DVD RW DRU-820A

DVD 0 and 1 are hooked up to a single IDE cable.

I'm running openSuse 11.0 with current updates. Desktop is KDE 3.5.?. K3B burns disks on all three drives with no problems. When K3B is done burning a disk, it can open the drives OK.

(DVD 0 and DVD 1)
If I use a paperclip, open the drives, and put a disk in there, I can umount and/or eject just fine, as long as a disk is in there. Remove the disk and close the door then cannot open the drives.

(DVD 2)
The external drive works perfectly with or without a disk.

I've tailed the /var/log/messages file and don't see any errors. Dmesg doesn't show any errors.

sudo as root:
dhcppc1: # eject -rv /dev/sr1
eject: device name is `/dev/sr1'
eject: expanded name is `/dev/sr1'
eject: `/dev/sr1' is not mounted
eject: `/dev/sr1' is not a mount point
eject: `/dev/sr1' is not a multipartition device
eject: trying to eject `/dev/sr1' using CD-ROM eject command
eject: CD-ROM eject command failed
eject: unable to eject, last error: Input/output error

I get the same thing for both DVD 0 and DVD 1. The command works on DVD 2 with or without a disk present.

A Google search hasn't turned up any real help on this so far.

Any suggestions where to look next would be helpful.

thanks

Possibly something is "using" it. clean up with:

fuser -k -i /dev/sr1

eject -rv /dev/sr1

Did you try with sudo?

Nothing is using it. Have done the fuser step.

That is the eject command that I've been using, as sudo, and as root.

I've also tried this after a fresh boot of the computer, logging in as root, and trying to eject before running anything else except konsole.

I've noticed that hald is set to check the drives every two seconds. I've tried restarting hald, but that didn't make any difference.

The real oddity to me is that if there's a disk in the drive, the button on the front works without haveing to do a manual umount, it automaticly does the umount and eject. If no disk in the drive, the light flashes a couple of times, but the drive does not open.

what do the logs say after you try to eject?

I'm not at home to double check right now, but from the origional post, I don't see anything in /var/log/messages or from dmesg. I've also cleared dmesg and tried again, with the same "nothing there" results.

Is there another place I should be looking?

I've also tried useing /dev/cdrom, /dev/dvd, /var/dvdrw, etc all with the same results as using the /dev/sr0 or /dev/sr1.

I'm going to try removing one drive tonight and see if it's an issue with two drives on the same IDE cable. I've already made sure that one is set to master and one to slave.

thank you for your quick responses. Any help is greatly appreciated. Been fighting this for quite some time. I'm beginnig to think I've skipped something very simple and obvious, so the second set of eyes on the problem is really helpfull.

Hi

May I ask a really innocent question ?

You wrote "DVD 0 and 1 are hooked up to a single IDE cable"

I take it that they are both connected to the SECONDARY IDE channel
with the drives configured as master and slave ?

Have you checked the configuration in the systems BIOS menus to see that the configuration looks exactly as expected ?

Can you identify and post the make and model of the motherboard.

Interesting problem.

Chris

Hi

I've just had a couple of thoughts about this.

Can I suggest that you:

(a) Try booting the system with a live Distro (Ubuntu, etc) and see if the problem is repeatable.

(b) Replace the slave CDRW drive with a CDROM and see if the problem persists.
Surfing the www with google has turned up an number of references to people having problems with two CDRW devices (master and slave) on the same IDE channel, which was eliminated by changing the secondary to a CDROM. Sounds like a CDRW compatibility problem though I'm scratching my head as to why that should be the case since the devices are addressed by the system independently as master and slave on the IDE channel.

Still might be worth a whirl.

Most interested to hear how you get on.

Regards

Chris

I have seen this when the drives are setup as cable select, rather than master and slave.

Thanks for all the responses. I didn't get the chance to mess with it last night, played with the grand kiddos instead. (Funny how those little farts tend to out rank nearly everything)

There is only one IDE port on the computer so only one cable possible. They are set master and slave. The hard drives are SATA.

I intend to remove the DVD 0 device and go with just the DVD 1 device as it does more thant the other one does. I don't duplicate disks, just that the computer came with the first drive and I wanted the second one.

I'll re-post on here what I find out.

Lazlow

Cool. I never set up devices with cable select, always choosing to set them as master and slave.
I hope that doesn't reveal anything sinister about my subconscious personality - Roars with laughter and promptly falls off his chair !

As a matter of interest, Lazlow, when you observed this type of fault were the drives LG or made by the same manufacturer ?

Regards

Chris

It seems to be more of a motherboard chipset issue rather than a drive issue. Off hand I do not remember what motherboards that had the issue. Probably it would have been late PIII early P4 days.

I remove the first drive (DVD 0) and switched the DVD 1 drive to master. DVD 0 is not plugged in or powered.

Same issue. With no disk in the drive, the front button does not work and cannot eject using the eject command.

Tried booting the computer with a Knoppix disk and had the exact same problem.

Answer to questions above:

This is in the primary IDE slot, as this computer only has one.

The motherboard is Intel with I believe an 810 chipset. Couldn't find that out for sure. (54 year old eyes can't quite make out the print on there)

The bios looks right to me. It sees the DVD as Master and as the correct one.


I am beginning to suspect the hardware. I'm going to see if I can borrow an IDE cable from the techs at work tomorrow.

This is a bit frustrating. I maintain 31 servers at work, and here I can't get my personal computer to work @ 100%. Haha If I have to use a paper clip from now on, it's not the end of the world, but I'd really like it to work correctly.

And again, thank you for all the responses.

Reboot, push the tray button just as the system powers on. Does it open then? If so you have confirmed that the drive(s) will open when the tray is empty.

Well, I tried a different IDE cable, and as expected, it made no difference.

I tried opening the drives during power up, and they did not open, with or with out a disk present.

Earlier when asked about the chipset I said that I thought it was a 810 chipset, that's wrong, it's 946GX chipset.

Went to Intel's site, and haven't had much luck finding anything for this that isn't Windows specific except graphics drivers.

Well, back to google seaching.

If it will not open during boot up, it is not an OS issue.

lazlow, I agree.

I have tried replaceing the IDE cable, but no change. Also re-flashed the bios. Was at version 67, now up to version 87. Also didn't make a difference.

Thank you everyone that has made suggestions, I do appreciate all the responses and it has been helpful. The next step is to get a SATA DVDRW and just bypass the issue. Not real high on my priority list, but someday. These IDE drives would work well in an external USB enclosure or possibly a good upgrade for the CDRom in my oldest grandson's computer.

:D

I've had issues like this after getting a bad burn. A reboot normally puts the drive back into a normal state. Although there's plenty of dmesg entries I/O errors when it happens.

Try to put the drives on their own cables. Even if that means removing a drive. Make sure you have the right power connector going to it. More of an issue on older machines / cheap power supplies and the like. It SHOULD open when doing the initial boot process. CMOS / BIOS screen and probably even in GRUB. If not, then it's NOT a linux issue, but likely a hardware issue. It sounds like it's working for you to some degree, so probably good hardware (to a limited extent). Have you tried just eject -r (no other parms). Which drive does it assume for the default one?

More tests for DVD drives:

1 Press and hold down tray button for several seconds just after system powers on. If tray opens repeat step to see if problem is fixed. If tray(s) fails to open try step 2.

2 Press tray button repeatedly just as the system powers on. If tray opens repeat step to see if problem is fixed but press button only once. If tray(s) fails to open try step 3.

3 Disconnect IDE cable to DVD drive(s). Push tray button just after system powers on. If tray fails to open move drive to another PC and test again. If trays still won’t open drive(s) may be defective. If tray opens then try a new power supply in problem PC with IDE cable disconnected and test again. Connect IDE cable and test again. If tray(s) won’t open then BIOS is incompatible with DVD drives.

You took the words right out of my mouth.

I once had a *newer* CD burner that I installed in a PII system running Win98 that acted the same. Holding the button until the tray opened was the only way to open it when it was empty, whether or not the OS was booted. After upgrading and installing the same drive in a PIII with the same OS, it worked normal.

Having the IDE cables disconnected is the perfect test if step 1 or 2 doesn't work.

Cheers

Hi

Reviewing the problem:
intel D946GZ motherboard - single ATA channel

Tried alternate OS - Knoppix - same problem - check
Verified drives are set as master and slave - check
Replaced ATA cable (ensuring it is high density type) - check
Checked both drives are correctly identified by BIOS - check
Cannot eject either drive tray by pressing drive eject buttons on system power up - Hmmm - indicates possible hardware problem
Tried single DVD configured as master - check - Didn't work

Hmmm
Tried a single CDROM as master on IDE as suggested ?

More information requested:
(a) Is your mother board a D946GZIS, D946GZTS, or D946GZAB ?
(according to the intel www site there are three(3) in the D946GZ series)
(b) Would you please post the BIOS version number here.

Questions:
(a) Is it possible that the IDE interface has been explicitly disabled at the BIOS level ?
(b) Is it possible that the IDE interface has been implicitly disabled when you have selected to enable another feature on the motherboard ?
(c) Have you tried installing a single CRDOM as master on the IDE channel to see if it is the DVD that is an issue ?
(d) Have you tried attaching power to the DVD drive, without a data cable connected, and then tested the response to pressing the eject button ? (this will verify that the drive itself is ok)
(e) Have you ever flashed the BIOS on this motherboard ?
(perhaps the BIOS copy is flawed or the wrong version for your motherboard)
(f) Have you tried installing a single IDE PATA HDD on the IDE channel as a test ? (if a IDE PATA hard disk works, but the DVD doesn't that give us some more information to work with).
(g) Do you have both power supply cables (24pin & 4pin)connected to the motherboard ? In particular the 4 pin cable. This should make no difference but it is worth checking any way.
(h) With one DVD installed, and nominated as a boot device) does the drive front LED flash on system boot indicating that the drive is being accessed ?
(i) If you have a multimeter available check that the voltages are present on the power supply fly lead that you are connecting to the DVD drives. Perhaps your power supply is not generating the correct voltages (or is unable to supply sufficient current) to allow the DVD drives to operate. (ie. 5V or 12V lines are marginal, etc).
Also check that you are using a P4 (Or better) power supply (ie with a 4 pin (yellow and black) motherboard supply lead coming directly out of the power supply case; as opposed to using a lower rated power supply with a drive power connector to 4 pin motherboard power adapter cable).

Comment:
I'm sorry to repeat things, but like you I am suspicious that there may be a simple explanation to this problem. It sounds more like a hardware problem than a software problem.

Best regards

Chris

To cgtueno:

yes, have tried single CDROM (DVD in this case) set as master on the IDE cable. Have tried both drives that way, and tried with a different cable.

Information requested:
The motherboard is D946GZIS. I'm not at home so can't get the whole BIOS version number, but it was a level 67, and I reflashed it to level 87, which was the latest and greatest about a week ago.

I don't think the IDE is disabled, at least the bios sees them and recognizes both drives correctly. If there is a boot disk in either drive, the system can boot from them. I'm not sure if it can from the external USB drive as I don't think I've ever tried that, but would assume that it can. On boot the system does strobe both internal drives. I can borrow an IDE hdd from the techs, but haven't tried that yet.

The power supply is correctly hooked up, but I haven't actually checked the voltage. When I purchased this computer, I had them upgrade the power supply when it was built.

More things I'm going to try:

I just purchased a very similar DVDRW to the one that I have, but it's SATA instead of IDE. Also picked up a USB to IDE/SATA adapter cable and am going to try the drives on that.

With school coming to an end here (I support the core computers in a medium sized school district) I haven't had much time to mess with this lately so it may take a couple of days before I can try any more of the suggestions.

I will post what I find out because even if I don't resolve this, maybe someday one of the suggestions here might help someone else resolve a similar issue.

Thank you again to everyone for your hints, comments, and suggestions. This site always amazes me with how helpful everyone is.

Have you tryied mounting the drive first? I think the issue here is with HAL, unless it is mounted you can't really do anything. This perticular issue seems to pop up too often.

Mounted or not, if there's a disk in the drive, it works like normal. The failure is only when there isn't a disk in the drive. Most of the time I leave the drives with a non-bootable disk in them and they work like you would expect from either the command line or by pushing the button on the front. When it fails is when I forget to leave a disk in the drive. Then I have to use a paperclip to open the drive. From that point on, they work fine. In fact, it's rare that either of these drives make a coaster when I'm burning CDs or DVDs.

Home now and have added a SATA DVDRW (LITE-ON iHAS324 A). Works perfectly.

Plugged the DVD/CDRW (DVD 0) into a USB to IDE converter cable and tried to eject and it failed. Still works for everything else, but still will not eject empty. Tried plugging into a different computer, and still won't eject empty. Un-plugged from the computer with just power plugged in to it, and it still will not eject.

I haven't tried the other IDE DVD drive yet, but I bet it'll act the same way. I think these drives both have issues. The two IDE drives are different, but they are approximately the same age.

Hi

Hmmm now that narrows it down a bit.
Same fault in a different machine.

I'm loathed to suggest it, but you could consider updating the firmware on the DVD drives themselves. That requires a loader application, and a copy of the updated firmware.

For example:
LH-20A1H
http://us.liteonit.com/us/index.php?...=204&Itemid=67

The reason I am loathed to suggest it, lies with the fact that the drives should operate normally with their original factory flashed firmware. You generally don't re-flash the firmware unless there is a bug or a feature enhancement (ie. new media types supported,etc).
A failure in the flash process can convert a usable drive to a useless brick if it goes wrong.

Have these drives suffered heavy wear and tear ?
Perhaps they are mechanically defective.
Have you carefully removed the front plastic bezel on each drive and pressed the eject button directly ? Is it possible that the bezel's plastic button is no longer making contact with the actual PCB drive eject button, or the buttons are damaged, or the wrong bezel has been fitted to the front of the drive ? (bezel = plastic front face plate).

When you test the eject button, make sure that you are testing it with the power connected only (not the data), then you are testing the drive stand alone, the eject button should work in this case.

Don't laugh but I have been given DVD drives in the past as scrap, that had the wrong bezels installed, and therefore the eject buttons didn't work. (Because the plastic bezel button was nowhere near the actual button on the PCB).

Not sure what to suggest after that.
Perhaps the drives are due for retirement to Silicon Heaven ?

Hope that helps

Chris

Hi

Just re-read the above again.
Strike that about the front bezels, since you state that the drives eject normally if there is media in the drive.

Hmmm

Chris

Perhaps there's something funny with your dbus + hal + udev setup.

See if the contents of /dev/ changes when going from the non-media non-working setup to the media and working setup.

$ ls -l /dev/* | tee ls_of_dev_bad.log
$ ls -l /dev/* | tee ls_of_dev_good.log

$ diff ls_of_dev_bad.log ls_of_dev_good.log

It might hint towards what's different / changing between setups. And therefor how to manage a possible solution. Not that it will, but it might. It could still be just firmware, or any number of combinations of things.

That's entirely possible. At least we have eliminated any possibility of a software problem so that’s progress.

Did you try any of the suggestions I made in post #18? If so what were the results?

To win_to_lin_migrant:

Yes, did try those things. None of them worked. Even tried holding the button on the drive and then plugging in the power cable that came with the USB to IDE converter cable - drive not even in a computer - no data connected at all.

To cgtueno:

I haven't done it yet, but I think I'll try flashing the firmware on one of them. I'll have to do it at work so it may not be right away.

To Shadow_7:

I have the very same problem when the drive is outside of the computer with only power connected - no data cable.


These drives have had moderate usage. I burn CDs and/or DVDs of pictures we take at the grandsons football games for each of the players on the teams. Between the two drives we probably have burned a few hundred disks.

I am thinking the problem is with the drives. The second computer that I tried this in is same brand, but much older - 500mhz ancient junk. And with it also having the issue with the external power supply kind of eliminates the computer / OS from the equation. The next step is to reflash the firmware. Just wish they had a linux or dos version of the flash program - I don't have a windows computer to put this in myself.

Thanks again everyone.

What I am about to suggest shouldn't work -- I, too, think it's a h/w problem in the optical drives.

But what about trying eject w/ the "-n", "-p", "-m", "-r", "-T", "-s", & even "-t" options?

I'd be especially interested to see the optical device is still being found by the OS when it is unresponsive, as well as if using /proc/mounts instead /etc/mtab makes any difference:

In some BIOS you need to tell it its a optical-drive (eg. CDROM)
These BIOS don't accept the interrupt ejecting the drive if it thinks it a HD

Check the bios setting if is seen as an optical drive, some of them block the interrupt to "open the gate"

This IS a most puzzling and interesting thread..

I have a suggestion I don't think has been proposed yet: try the `sdparm` utility, for both EJECT and also for maybe any other settings that may help the drive respond better to your commands :)

`sdparm` is the SCSI twin of `hdparm` which is the tool for sending commands to hard disks (IDE PATA drives typically.) and may use (I stress **may**) a/different IOCTL for communicating with the drive.

For example, I can open my SATA DVD-RW drive (/dev/sr0) or my IDE CD-RW (/dev/hdc) drive like this:

`sdparm -C eject /dev/hdc`

and to close it:

`sdparm -C load /dev/hdc`

Both hdparm and sdparm offer a plethora of commands and inquiries you can do to drives; I have found them both EXTREMELY handy, especially when a drive goes out to lunch, the -w option to reset the drive works great.

Hope this helps!

Possible Fix
 

I have some information that may be helpful. This bug report...
https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=550353
... describes a problem that I also had when using Grip cd ripping software (under Fedora 11, in case it matters).

For me, every time I inserted a disc (after the first one), Grip complained that the "location is already mounted" (but the software continued to work correctly anyway as long as I inserted another disc when Grip opened the drive door.

However, if I closed the drive WITH NO DISC IN IT - an empty drive - I could not get it to eject through any combination of "eject" commands, pushing a paper clip in the manual eject hole, etc.

However, at a command prompt...
$> lsof |grep gvfsd-cdd

I bet you will see /dev/sr0 (or whatever device your cd/dvd rom is).

Apparently a library that Grip uses (and probably other software as well) doesn't properly release the drive, even if you close Grip.

At a command prompt...
$> ps aux |grep gvfsd-cdd

If you are certain that the drive is empty and that it isn't doing anything useful, kill that process.

The eject button will again work.

Has anyone considered that this could be a hardware-direct issue?

- when you press eject, do you hear the motor cycle at all? same with system-os controls.. will it cause anything inside to cycle?

I ask this, because I have 5 DVD burners in 3 different computers, and they will turn on, will read, write, burn discs, and they WILL EJECT, ONLY IF a DISC is inside the drive... but if the drive is empty and the door is closed, the only way to open the door is to activate the cycling of the drive by pressing the eject and then pressing the emergency release lock mechnism [the small hole] to the point where the drive releases the door. There was one burner that if i pressed the eject numerous times, it would suddenly release correctly..

i'm thinking it's the humidity in the area, as all these drives are different (Lite-on, Samsung, NEC) and all started to fail AFTER i brought them home...