tux99

Great post Adam, very interesting, I have been using Mandriva (Mandrake) since the early days, but after Mandrake 9.2 (bought as Powerpack DVD) I stopped upgrading until 2008.1.

I tried every single release after 9.2 (on a separate test partition) but always found more issues than benefits, so I simply continued using 9.2 (doing occasional manual upgrades from source of stuff important to me) until 2008.1 came out.

IMHO 2008.1 has been the best release since 9.2 and probably even better than 9.2 (even though 9.2 served me well for 4 years as my primary desktop OS!)

I just want to say thanks to the Mandriva developers for making such a great desktop alternative to Windows and I will likely buy products from you again to support you (was a club member for a while too).

I have now submitted a bug report with Mandriva for this:

https://qa.mandriva.com/show_bug.cgi?id=44136

Thanks, I would exclude that it's a bad/cheap/dirty media issue as the sames CDs I tried don't give any errors in Mandrake 9.2.

I'm convinced something has changed in the 2.6 kernel that breaks reading the /dev/hdx device of a CD-R directly, the apps like Brasero (which you tried) or K3b (I tried this one with 2008.1, it reads the CDs that dd/cat don't like, without errors) must use a different technique to read CDs, that's why they don't have problems.

Well, I removed the extender, and it's now throwing the USB error anymore, but it's still locking up. Has twice now, with the following errors:

 

Aug 18 11:33:39 localhost kernel: crashreporter[4818]: segfault at b707eda0 eip b707eda0 esp bf92523c error 14

Aug 20 02:39:19 localhost kernel: pulseaudio[6543]: segfault at 00003348 eip b7ece5f8 esp b75e2de4 error 4

 

Just noticing however, they all seem to occur shortly after Mandriva checks for updates. I'll try disabling that and see what happens.

I don't know if you still have this problem, but if yes. I would recommend you to run memtest, download the following ISO image, burn it to CD and then boot from it and let the memtest run for at least 24 hours:

http://www.memtest86.com/memtest86-3.4a.iso.zip

Random segfaults and lockup like you are seeing are often caused by memory errors (could then be either defective memory or wrong bios timing/voltage settings).

If memtest finds errors then run it again with just a single DIMM inserted (if you have more than one) in turns, until you find the defective one (if they all give errors then the problem is more likely bios settings or even cpu or mobo problems).

Thanks, actually I just tested it under MDV 2008.1 with a manufactured (not CD-R) CD-ROM (a Logitech driver CD) and I did not get any errors!

The CD-Rs I tried before are all single session and finalised (and they can be dd'ed or cat'ed fine under Mandrake 9.2) so this still doesn't change that there is something not working as it should.

Thanks this confirms my suspicion that this appears to be something that has been broken/changed in the kernel somewhere between the 2.4.22 that Mandrake 9.2 uses and 2.6,24 that Mandriva 2008.1 uses.

I'm glad Brasero works, but I really don't want to have to start using GUI tools for this, the command line is much quicker and more flexible.

Where do you think I can report this?

As you have several different distros installed, could you test if you see this with Gentoo and Centos 5 too, so we know the problem not Mandriva specific?

Thanks for the suggestion but the same thing happens:

[root@yampee data]# dd if=/dev/hdd of=mynewcd.iso

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

1331168+0 records in

1331168+0 records out

681558016 bytes (682 MB) copied, 162.807 s, 4.2 MB/s

And also the same errors as above in /var/log/messages, I have tried this with several CDs and it works fine for all of them under Mandrake 9.2 but always gives these erros under Mandriva 2008.1.

What could be causing this? Has anyone else seen this?

I have always in the past made copies of data cds by doing: cat /dev/hdd > cd.iso where /dev/hdd is my CD/DVD drive.

Since I started using Mandriva 2008.1 this doesn't seem to work anymore, the cd.iso file is always a few bytes short and I get the following error at the end:

Sep 22 14:29:37 yampee kernel: hdd: command error: status=0x51 { DriveReady SeekComplete Error }
Sep 22 14:29:37 yampee kernel: hdd: command error: error=0x54 { AbortedCommand LastFailedSense=0x05 }
Sep 22 14:29:37 yampee kernel: ide: failed opcode was: unknown
Sep 22 14:29:37 yampee kernel: ATAPI device hdd:
Sep 22 14:29:37 yampee kernel:   Error: Illegal request -- (Sense key=0x05)
Sep 22 14:29:37 yampee kernel:   Illegal mode for this track or incompatible medium -- (asc=0x64, ascq=0x00)
Sep 22 14:29:37 yampee kernel:   The failed "Read 10" packet command was:
Sep 22 14:29:37 yampee kernel:   "28 00 00 05 13 f8 00 00 3a 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 "
Sep 22 14:29:37 yampee kernel: end_request: I/O error, dev hdd, sector 1331168
Sep 22 14:29:37 yampee kernel: Buffer I/O error on device hdd, logical block 166396
Sep 22 14:29:37 yampee kernel: Buffer I/O error on device hdd, logical block 166397
Sep 22 14:29:37 yampee kernel: Buffer I/O error on device hdd, logical block 166398
Sep 22 14:29:37 yampee kernel: Buffer I/O error on device hdd, logical block 166399
Sep 22 14:29:37 yampee kernel: Buffer I/O error on device hdd, logical block 166400
Sep 22 14:29:37 yampee kernel: Buffer I/O error on device hdd, logical block 166401
Sep 22 14:29:37 yampee kernel: Buffer I/O error on device hdd, logical block 166402
Sep 22 14:29:37 yampee kernel: Buffer I/O error on device hdd, logical block 166403
Sep 22 14:29:37 yampee kernel: Buffer I/O error on device hdd, logical block 166404
Sep 22 14:29:37 yampee kernel: Buffer I/O error on device hdd, logical block 166405

If I do the same command on the same physical machine with Mandrake 9.2 (old install on a different partition still bootable with dual boot) it works fine.

also md5sum /dev/hdd to verify freshly burned CDs gives the same error while it works fine under Mandrake 9.2 (md5sum matches the downloaded source image).

As I'm testing this on the same identical PC with the same CDs, the only difference is Mandrake 9.2 instead of Mandriva 2008.1 there must be something that has changed in the kernel breaking this.

Does anyone know a solution to this?

[moved from Software by spinynorman]