Geek pop quiz.

[theweaselking]

Fedora Core 4 machine stops detecting media in CD drive. Tried with blank DVD and previously working data DVD. Only HW change was removal of SCSI card, DVDRW drive is not SCSI anyway. Only SW change was a reboot while SCSI card removed. WTF? Where do you even START on this one?

For people who don't care about the pop quiz, or whose eyes glazed over at the acronyms:

"Lip locks only, kids: To demonstrate their love, hundreds of couples hang padlocks on lampposts on Roma's Ponte Milvio and throw the keys into the Tiber. Unfortunately the weight of the locks was causing the posts to collapse, so firemen had to saw off many."
bellacrow reads sfgate and filters their photos.

Comments

[chaosrah.livejournal.com]

"or whose eyes glazed over at the acronyms"

That was me, all over, lol.

[drjon.livejournal.com]

I wish I had more experience with Fedora.

If you're still stuck tomorrow, I'll poke a mate?

Hrm.

[mhoye.livejournal.com]

Do fedora machines have lshw? If not, I'd start by replacing the board-to-drive cable, reboot and take a good hard look at dmesg and kudzu, if it's around.

Re: Hrm.

[theweaselking.livejournal.com]

It still detects the drive itself quite nicely, and reports on the model details and the like. It just doesn't seem to read what's *in* the drive, at any point.

Re: Hrm.

[mhoye.livejournal.com]

Ok, what does hdparm -I say?

Re: Hrm.

[theweaselking.livejournal.com]

"command not found".

Not the most useful response, I grant you.

Re: Hrm.

[mhoye.livejournal.com]

I'd look into that; hdparm is a rarely-used must-have. Other than that, put in known-good media and try forcing it to mount (mkdir /mnt/test, sudo mount -t iso9660 /dev/hdc /mnt/test, I think) and see if it's only the autodetection that's problematic, or the drive itself.

Re: Hrm.

[theweaselking.livejournal.com]

Manually mounting known good *DVD* media didn't work. I didn't try CDs at 6PM yesterday and I'm in the wrong building today, but I'll check that out.

(And this machine is missing *all kinds* of standard "should damn well be in there" stuff. I didn't set it up, and I unfortunately can't take it down to rebuild it from scratch using a REAL operating system until I hit a real absolute show-stopper.)

Re: Hrm.

[theweaselking.livejournal.com]

There we go - I got bright and remembered that /sbin/ falls out of the goddamn path for no particular reason half the time. /sbin/hdparm works.

/dev/hdc:

Model=HL-DT-ST DVDRAM GSA-H10N, FwRev=JL10, SerialNo=5FFC20EEB053
Config={ Fixed Removeable DTR<=5Mbs DTR>10Mbs nonMagnetic }
RawCHS=0/0/0, TrkSize=0, SectSize=0, ECCbytes=0
BuffType=unknown, BuffSize=0kB, MaxMultSect=0
(maybe): CurCHS=0/0/0, CurSects=0, LBA=yes, LBAsects=0
IORDY=on/off, tPIO={min:120,w/IORDY:120}, tDMA={min:120,rec:120}
PIO modes: pio0 pio3 pio4
DMA modes: mdma0 mdma1 mdma2
UDMA modes: udma0 udma1 *udma2
AdvancedPM=no
Drive conforms to: device does not report version:

* signifies the current active mode

Re: Hrm.

[theweaselking.livejournal.com]

And with a CAPITAL I, I get:


/dev/hdc:

ATAPI CD-ROM, with removable media
Model Number: HL-DT-ST DVDRAM GSA-H10N
Serial Number: 5FFC20EEB053
Firmware Revision: JL10
Standards:
Likely used CD-ROM ATAPI-1
Configuration:
DRQ response: 50us.
Packet size: 12 bytes
Capabilities:
LBA, IORDY(can be disabled)
DMA: mdma0 mdma1 mdma2 udma0 udma1 *udma2
Cycle time: min=120ns recommended=120ns
PIO: pio0 pio1 pio2 pio3 pio4
Cycle time: no flow control=120ns IORDY flow control=120ns
HW reset results:
CBLID- above Vih
Device num = 0

Re: Hrm.

[mhoye.livejournal.com]

All of those results seem reasonable, and if it's making the correct spin-up/spin-down noises when you put the drive in, I'm guessing that some part of your drive's lasery bits have given out. Get a new drive is all you can do.

Re: Hrm.

[quotation.livejournal.com]

Important note: There's no such thing as an IDE writeable optical drive, especially on older fedorae.

An IDE optical drive is *really* a SCSI writeable optical drive that is handled through SCSI-over-IDE emulation.

Load order of SCSI modules plays an important role in this case.
insmod scsi-core
insmod ide-scsi
insmod cdrom # or something like that order.

hdparm will properly detect the readable optical drive on the IDE bus, but you'll have to use cdrecord --scanbus to detect the writeable drive on the virtual SCSI bus.

Re: Hrm.

[theweaselking.livejournal.com]

Cdrecord-Clone 2.01-dvd (i686-pc-linux-gnu) Copyright (C) 1995-2004 Jörg Schilling
Note: This version is an unofficial (modified) version with DVD support
Note: and therefore may have bugs that are not present in the original.
Note: Please send bug reports or support requests to http://bugzilla.redhat.com/bugzilla
Note: The author of cdrecord should not be bothered with problems in this version.
scsidev: 'ATA'
devname: 'ATA'
scsibus: -2 target: -2 lun: -2
Linux sg driver version: 3.5.27
Using libscg version 'schily-0.8'.
cdrecord: Warning: using inofficial libscg transport code version (schily - Red Hat-scsi-linux-sg.c-1.83-RH '@(#)scsi-linux-sg.c 1.83 04/05/20 Copyright 1997 J. Schilling').
scsibus1:
1,0,0 100) 'HL-DT-ST' 'DVDRAM GSA-H10N ' 'JL10' Removable CD-ROM
1,1,0 101) *
1,2,0 102) *
1,3,0 103) *
1,4,0 104) *
1,5,0 105) *
1,6,0 106) *
1,7,0 107) *
=========================

So it appears that the virtual SCSI bus can see the drive nicely.

Re: Hrm.

[theweaselking.livejournal.com]

... and as soon as I ran cdrecord -scanbus, it fucking started working.

I have no idea *why*, but it's working.

This machine totally needs a wipe-and-restart-from-scratch-in-Debian. I hate Fedora.

Re: Hrm.

[quotation.livejournal.com]

It started working because you followed my advice.

I do not have this magical power over Debian, so you'd be on your own.

Re: Hrm.

[jsbowden.livejournal.com]

Have you tried mounting the device manually to make sure you can read media in it?

Re: Hrm.

[theweaselking.livejournal.com]

Yes. The drive is /dev/hdc. "mount -t auto /dev/hdc /cd" produces "mount: No medium found".

It worked Friday, because I burned a DVD on Friday. As of yesterday afternoon, it doesn't seem to be reading that there is media in the drive, at all.

Re: Hrm.

[jsbowden.livejournal.com]

I'd check the cabling, but it looks like your drive might have died on you.

Re: Hrm.

[theweaselking.livejournal.com]

That's what I was afraid of. I just wasn't sure how to confirm, and I REALLY don't want to replace hardware if it's a software problem.

Aside: I find Fedora frustrating because nothing works quite exactly the way I'd expect it to.

Re: Hrm.

[scifantasy.livejournal.com]

Drive swap test?

Re: Hrm.

[theweaselking.livejournal.com]

That's next, pretty much.

Re: Hrm.

[theweaselking.livejournal.com]

If by "drive swap test" you mean "the fucking thing totally stopped recognising CDs entirely today when I was in the fucking middle of a fucking OS reinstall so it was AFTER I'd blown away the old one and before it was bootable again, you motherfucker."

But it was under warrantee.

I HATE HARDWARE.

[elffin.livejournal.com]

Have you tried putting the SCSI card back in, to see if it works then? It's entirely possible that removing that hardware changed the nominal ground voltage, or changed the EM environment inside the case. Could be it's a Magic-More-Magic-Switch situation.

Of course ... if removing it caused overvoltage that et a diode or some silicon, you won't get any difference.

LiveCD

[linuxgarou.livejournal.com]

If you have permission to take the system offline, try booting it from a linux LiveCD (such as Knoppix or Ubuntu). If it can boot from it, and/or it's not the only drive but it *does* work fine when the liveCD environment is used, then the problem is [probably] not hardware.

Re: LiveCD

[theweaselking.livejournal.com]

Smart trick. I'll have to try that.