F8 k3b problem or just random glitch?

Gene Heskett gene.heskett at verizon.net
Thu Jun 19 11:17:20 UTC 2008


On Thursday 19 June 2008, Michael Schwendt wrote:
>On Wed, 18 Jun 2008 17:44:39 -0400, Gene Heskett wrote:
>> The drive itself must read the equ of LSN0 from the disk, deduce the file
>> system and configure itself, all the while poking at the disk to see what
>> it really is.  This process, on any drive I've ever owned, can take
>> upwards of 75 seconds, and rarely less that 55.
>
>55 seconds? Wow! No drive I know (multiple vendors) has ever before taken
>so much time to load and recognise an inserted CD/DVD. Unless it was cheap
>media burnt with a somewhat incompatible different writer, resulting in
>many problems to read it. It wouldn't keep trying for a full minute, though,
>but give up long before that.
>
I must have been thinking of the last dvd I burnt.  I just inserted a 
ubuntu-8.04 LTS cd I burnt in that drive, and it was about 14 seconds till the 
led went out the last time and a what do we do with this new disk requester had 
popped up.  That brought up good old konqui, in the single tree view mode.

That brings up another question.  I hear folks praising konquerer for its file 
manager abilities, but to me a file manager is a 2 pane operation ala mc.  I 
always fall back to mc cuz it Just Works(TM), it can do lots of things krusader 
can't even think about doing.  What the heck good is konquerer when an attempt 
to change directories in the left window throws away the right window?  I fail 
to see how that can possibly be useful.  I have not found a config option to 
make it a true, 2 pane file manager.  So why do they call it that?

unmounting that cd, and inserting an F7 install dvd, the recognition phase took 
about 20-21 seconds, but whatever pops up the what shall I do with this 
selector still hasn't 2 minutes later, so I mounted it by hand, and that took 
circa 10 seconds.  So if, before k3b can verify the disk, it has to wait for 
that about 30 seconds to gain access to the file structure, or 20 seconds just 
for dd to be able to access the unmounted disk.  The error/failure pops up 
about 2, maybe 3 seconds after it has pulled the disk back in, apparently 
unwilling to wait until the drive has accepted this 'new' media.

All this BTW with kernel 2.6.26-rc6 doing the chores.

Despite all the reports otherwise, I haven't been able to tie this non-working 
situation to a given kernel release.  The last time I tried one of the fedora 
kernels to test something that someone was fussing about, I could not duplicate 
their problem.

Normally, when yum installs a new kernel, it also does a very poor job of 
editing my grub.conf, over-writing my default choice, and messing with the 
numbering system I use there.  So when I see yum put in a new kernel, the first 
thing I do is go fix my grub.conf again.  Sort of a fetish I guess. :)

>> Generally, if during the time that the drive led is still on after the
>> disk has been pulled back in, then k3b, or anything else that wants to
>> read it can sit by silently, or take a dump and abort the operation.  k3b,
>> or whatever util is doing this latter, and really does need to learn to
>> wait.
>
>And why does it work with kernel 2.6.23.15-137.fc8?

No idea as I don't have a kernel that old on this system.  My historical kernels 
start with 2.6.24.4, and the oldest fedora is vmlinuz-2.6.24.5-85.fc8.  If that 
2.6.23.15-137.fc8 is the kernel you are running, that would have to date to the 
original spin of the F8 release, and to not have upgraded since just to stay 
ahead of security concerns alone seems very careless to me.

>Why is the drive 
>ready to read with that kernel, but not with the newer ones? I think, I
>once read that k3b waits for the tray to be closed. Maybe that really is
>not enough, but the author(s) should know better as this must be
>documented in the specs somewhere.

These things are mechanical servo's, and there will be variations.  As for 
specs, I don't have the money to purchase a copy of either the red book or the 
orange book.  If it works, fine, if it doesn't, well I needed to go to town 
anyway didn't I?

>--
>Fedora release 8 (Werewolf) - Linux 2.6.23.15-137.fc8
>loadavg: 1.11 1.21 0.94



-- 
Cheers, Gene
"There are four boxes to be used in defense of liberty:
 soap, ballot, jury, and ammo. Please use in that order."
-Ed Howdershelt (Author)
In order to dial out, it is necessary to broaden one's dimension.




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