Hi everybody,
my CD-burner again is bad behaving. It irreproducably stops
burning processes with medium errors at different parts of the CD-Rs.
Today, the first CD-R was burnt 100 % (17 audio tracks). The next was
interrupted after 65 %, the second after 64 %, the third after 80 %, the
fourth after 17 % and the last after 98 % were done. Some days ago I
encountered no problems at all, but I had this problem occuring from
time to time before, although not that bad. The burner is now about 2
years old, but has never been used extensively.
The whole thing runs under potato (kernel 2.2.19) with xcdroast 0.96e on
an AlphaPC LX164 (533 MHz). I am not sure whether the latter is
important, since the components are standard PC hardware (Symbios Logic
Controller 53c860, the burner is a Plextor CD-R PX-R412C, the read-only
CD-ROM is a Plextor PX-20TS.
These are the first outputs of xcdroast to the log-screen:
------------------------------------------------------------------
Cdrecord release 1.6.1 Copyright (C) 1995-1998 Jörg Schilling
TOC Type: 0 = CD-DA
scsidev: '0,04,00'
scsibus: 0 target: 4 lun: 0
atapi: -1
Device type : Removable CD-ROM
Version : 2
Response Format: 2
Capabilities : SYNC LINKED
Vendor_info : 'PLEXTOR '
Identifikation : 'CD-R PX-R412C '
Revision : '1.04'
Device seems to be: Generic mmc CD-R.
Using generic SCSI-3/mmc CD-R driver (mmc_cdr).
Driver flags : SWABAUDIO
--------------------------------------------------------------------
These are the last messages:
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Track 16: Total bytes read/written: 29129520/29129520 (12385 sectors).
Starting new track at sector: 192039
/usr/lib/xcdroast-0.96e/bin/cdrecord-1.6.1: Input/output error.
write_g1:
scsi sendcmd: retryable error
status: 0x2 (CHECK CONDITION)
CDB: 2A 00 00 03 1D 06 00 00 0D 00
Sense Bytes: F0 00 03 00 03 1D 9C 0A 00 00 00 00 0C 07 00 00
Sense Key: 0x3 Medium Error, Segment 0
Sense Code: 0x0C Qual 0x07 (write error - recovery needed) Fru 0x0
Sense flags: Blk 204188 (valid)
cmd finished after 0.024s timeout 40s
write track data: error after 28221648 bytes
Sense Bytes: 70 00 00 00 00 00 00 0A 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00
Writing time: 787.905s
/usr/lib/xcdroast-0.96e/bin/cdrecord-1.6.1: fifo had 15644 puts and
15517
gets.
/usr/lib/xcdroast-0.96e/bin/cdrecord-1.6.1: fifo was 0 times empty and
10342
times full, min fill was 97%.
Fixating time: 65.359s
------------------------------------------------------------------------
The last track should have been no. 17.
During the burning process and after it has been interrupted, the yellow
LED of the internal read-only CD-drive with a CD-ROM inside was
flickering all the time. Is this normal when only the CD-burner - an
external device - should be working?
I know, that my SCSI-bus is a bit too long. According to some notes I've
read, Ultra-SCSI shouldn't exceed 1,50 m, but it is actually 2,10 (1,50
m internally, 60 cm externally). I never encountered SCSI resets or
trouble with the other four devices as an indication for a cable
length problem.
The daisy chain looks like this:
HD (ID 0)-HD (ID 1)-MOD (ID 2)-CD-ROM (ID 3)-Controller-CD-burner (ID 5)
<- internal | external ->
The ends of the daisy chain are terminated, the CD-burner has an
active terminator.
I also had a look at the different log-files for potential information.
/var/log/kern.log:
Dec 30 01:14:08 alphons kernel: Device not ready. Make sure there is a
disc in the drive.
Dec 30 01:14:08 alphons kernel: VFS: Disk change detected on device
sd(8,32)
Dec 30 01:14:08 alphons kernel: sdc : READ CAPACITY failed.
Dec 30 01:14:08 alphons kernel: sdc : status = 1, message = 00, host =
0, driver = 28
Dec 30 01:14:08 alphons kernel: sdc : extended sense code = 2
Dec 30 01:14:08 alphons kernel: sdc : block size assumed to be 512
bytes, disk size 1GB.
Dec 30 01:14:08 alphons kernel: sdc:scsidisk I/O error: dev 08:20,
sector 0
Dec 30 01:14:08 alphons kernel: unable to read partition table
Dec 30 01:14:31 alphons kernel: cdrom: open failed.
Dec 30 01:14:57 alphons kernel: VFS: Disk change detected on device
sr(11,0)
/var/log/messages and /var/log/syslog say more or less the same: the
kernel tries to open /dev/sdc, which is the MOD drive. A final entry in
/var/log/syslog reports the start of a cron-job, perhaps synchronous
with the interrupt of the burning:
Dec 30 01:38:01 alphons /USR/SBIN/CRON[678]: (mail) CMD ( if [ -x
/usr/sbin/exim -a -f /etc/exim.conf ]; then /usr/sbin/exim -q >/dev/null
2>&1; fi)
I am wondering whether the burning failures are caused by hardware or
software problems. Does the kernel mistake the MOD alias /dev/sdc
for a CD-ROM drive when starting the burning process? Is this normal,
because it always tests through all exchangeable devices or may this
indicate a problem? The MOD is nowhere mentioned in the xcdroast setup,
only the paths to the image-partition and to the two Plextors are set.
Does the flickering of the CD-ROM LED indicate a problem of the
SCSI-bus, perhaps some kind of a communication problem? May the cron-job
be part of the problem? ... and if the cable length causes the problem
shouldn't it also show with SCSI resets and troubles with the internal
devices?
According to the xcdroast entries, no buffer underrun takes place and
until yet I couldn't find any correlation with stopped burns and
parallel actions I did. The burning may be interrupted no matter whether
I have been working in parallel or my computer is left alone. Different
brands of CD-Rs don't seem to have an effect, the inside of the
burner as well as the caddy show no obvious traces of dust, and this is
a non-smoker household.
Has somebody an idea how to find out what is going on there?
Thanks in advance,
a happy new year,
Kerstin
--
Dr. Kerstin Hoef-Emden Gyrhofstr. 15
Universität zu Köln 50931 Köln
Botanisches Institut Germany
