I decided to try out XCDRoast, and set paranoia. It really, at certain
points, bogs down my Debian 3.0 / Linux 2.4 system. A very good
argument for me to get up off my duff and see what the new kernel does.

The CD I was ripping had an extra data track that really seemed to give
the system fits. The whole freaking system froze up on me, so I finally
gave up on that extra track. (The freeze was all keys, mouse, and ssh.
The system did respond to ping, though. Basically every operation that
depended on a disk was dead. Reboot! Gotta love reiserfs!)

I tried dd, but learned that an audio CD is not a filesystem, and that
the extra track is its own file system. (Oh, and the extra track is
essentially Windows only, since it uses an EXE. There is a Flash
file and an HTML page, though.)

Anyway, time to upgrade the kernel. GNU may be perfect, but the 2.4
isn't <grin>

Chris

--
No, I won't fix your Windows computer!

Linønut wrote:

I'm running 2.4 on a linux system, right now it is Mandrake, but it was
fedora and before that RedHat, I haven't seen any performance issues.

Really? why would the track give your system problems? Do you have an
automounter running? Something sounds flaky.

You should be able to dd to dump out a track on the CD.
It is true that 2.6 aims to improve things, but I wouldn't characterize 2.4
as broken. I suspect that you may have a problem that is not kernel
related.

mlw wrote:

I've never heard of reading a bad CD causing a total lockup (maybe this
could happen if the CD is on same IDE channel as hard drive) but have known
a bad CD to hang the CD drive's firmware (and no, not the OS - in this case
the PC was open so I managed to just reset the drive by removing and
refitting it's power connector and revive it with no reboot, not really
recommended though) but only on some drives - the drive at work hangs on a
bad CD (incidentally my standalone DVD player also hangs on same CD), my
home CD-RW drive doesn't and keeps trying to re-read only until application
is cancelled.


--
Nigel Feltham - spanking trolls since 1999

Fearing a spontaneous XP reboot, mlw mumbled this incantation:

Try running grip or xcdroast on a SCSI-emulated drive and then get back
with me.

No.

Obviously. Reading that track provides some SCSI timeout problems. The
track has some deliberate crud in it, I'd guess. However, if you mount
the CD normally, the track is seen to be a small filesystem to be used
for running the extra stuff on Windoze.

That would work if the track could be seen as a file. When I do
"dd if=/dev/cdrom of=file.raw", dd quits with an error:

dd: reading `/dev/cdrom': Input/output error

Does this with other music CDs. Otherwise, I'd forget the whole rip and
burn and just use dd and burn. (Works great when backing up Microsoft
software ;->)

broken != !perfect

Partly. However, the issue is probably non-preemptive disk access.
Which out to be fixed with a patch or with 2.6.

--
No, I won't fix your Windows computer!

Linønut wrote:

I have a DVD rom and a burner in my system and I do it all the time.

How old is the CD which is trying to read the extra track? I have a
fleetwood mac CD that has this track, my DVD has some trouble with it, by
my CDRW doesn't even see it. I'm thinking it may be a level of support
issues with the CDROM device.

That sounds like a device specific issue, I'd bet the new kernel exhibits
the same problems...or, if possible, implements a workaround.

how that would have anything to do with what you're seeing.

Fearing a spontaneous XP reboot, Nigel Feltham mumbled this incantation:

Not a bad CD. A (deliberately?) munged data track.

I don't get it, either, and the hell of it is is that it is consistent
(tried 3 times) and that I can't see what's happening because I can't
ssh in.

Now, this is Debian 3.0rc1, and the update notice at debian.org mentions
that rc2 fixes a number of serious bugs.

Oops, no. This is "sid", the unstable install, and it's partly roached
anyway (long story).

--
No, I won't fix your Windows computer!

Fearing a spontaneous XP reboot, mlw mumbled this incantation:

Have you tried starting a new xterm will it is reading the CD?

Bought yesterday.

I wish I knew. Will find out soon.

Because anything that uses the disk hangs. If I'm in slrn, it still
runs. Try to start a new slrn, or a new xterm, or top, or do a ps or
ls, it hangs.

It is repeatable on my setup.

It'll be cool if I can figure this one out.

--
No, I won't fix your Windows computer!

On 2003-11-29, Linønut <linønut@bone.com> wrote:
That would probably include just about anyone that has ever ripped
a CD to mp3 or ogg on Linux in the last few years. If the problem
is really that fundemental, it should have made it self a bit more
obvious by now.

I rip and burn CDs and DVDs ALL THE TIME. I can't recall exactly,
but I've probably been at it fairly constantly since the 2.2 kernels.

[deletia]

I am pretty sure that I have even successfully ripped CDs that
had WinDOS data tracks on them as well. Wouldn't know though
since I haven't had any of these sorts of problems.


--
You have to seriously wonder when a program's own author
won't even use it anymore... |||
/ | \
I think we should follow Bill Joy's lead on this issue. '-)

Linønut wrote:

I can burn, read, whatever on my system, and yes, start an xterm.
The CDROM drive or the CD? How old is the CDROM drive?
How is the CDROM drive connected? What devices are in the system on the IDE
chains?

Datagram from Linønut incoming on netlink socket
<vaSdnUM8IeCKpVSiRVn-hA@comcast.com>. Dumping datagram.
Have you tried it in text console. That sounds like what could happen
if kernel oopses.

-Ilari
--
I finally installed emacs in UML after getting sick of @!$!%$ vi, and
I'm fairly impressed by how quick it is. -- Jeff Dike
Linux LK_Perkele_IV9 2.4.22-rc3 #2 Sun Aug 24 14:36:19 EEST 2003 i686 unknown
4:42pm up 77 days, 5:37, 12 users, load average: 0.14, 0.09, 0.09

Fearing a spontaneous XP reboot, mlw mumbled this incantation:

The drive itself is about two or three years old. Creative CDRW8432.

00:11.1 IDE interface: VIA Technologies, Inc. VT82C586/B/686A/B PIPC Bus
Master IDE (rev 06)

hda -> ide0/hda (/, /boot, /usr)
hdb -> ide0/hdb (burner)
hdc -> ide1/hdc (/home)
hdd -> ide1/hdd (/dvd)

VP_IDE: VIA vt8235 (rev 00) IDE UDMA133 controller on pci00:11.1
ide0: BM-DMA at 0xfc00-0xfc07, BIOS settings: hdaMA, hdbMA
ide1: BM-DMA at 0xfc08-0xfc0f, BIOS settings: hdcMA, hddMA

hda: QUANTUM Bigfoot TX12.0AT, ATA DISK drive
hdb: CREATIVECD-RW RW8432E, ATAPI CD/DVD-ROM drive
hdc: Maxtor 6Y120L0, ATA DISK drive
hdd: ATAPI DVD-ROM 16XMax, ATAPI CD/DVD-ROM drive

scsi0 : SCSI host adapter emulation for IDE ATAPI devices
Vendor: CREATIVE Model: CD-RW RW8432E Rev: 1.07
Type: CD-ROM ANSI SCSI revision: 02

The Bigfoot is an old 12Gb drive.

--
No, I won't fix your Windows computer!

Run, don't walk, to the nearest CompUSA or Microcenter and get a PCI IDE
card. (If you are in the boston ma area, I have one I'll give to you.)

Get the ATA CD devices OFF the same IDE chains as the hard disks. An IDE
device can completely hose a the chain, even when it is a slave.

You're "hanging" will go away when you do this:

hda -> ide0/hda (/, /boot, /usr)
hdb -> ide1/hdb (/home)
hdc -> ide0/hdc (burner)
hdd -> ide1/hdd (/dvd)

Ideally, you should do this:

hda -> ide0/hda (/, /boot, /usr)
hdb -> ide1/hdb (unused)
hdc -> ide0/hdb (burner)
hdd -> ide1/hdd (/dvd)
(PCI controller card)
hde -> ide1/hde (/home)

Fearing a spontaneous XP reboot, mlw mumbled this incantation:

I looked at the mobo manual and one of the hard-drive poop sheets, and
they back you up.

Thanks! Now I gotta figure out which made me stupid: Linux, Windows,
Mom, or Dad.

Anyway, thanks, m!

--
No, I won't fix your Windows computer!