[TriLUG] Vexing CD Burning Problem

[Paul D. Boyle]

Hi All,

I am relatvie newbie at burning data CD's.  I have been using the
CD-Writing-HOWTO from http://linuxdoc.org as a guide.  I recently
encountered a problem  and in trying to debug that, I encounted
another problem.

First here is some specifics:

Here are the commands I have used to make my CD's:

mkisofs -r -o <cd_image.iso>  <my_data_dir/>

The integrity of the .iso image was tested by mounting it on a loopback
device (/dev/loop0), and doing a couple of 'ls -l' commands and looking
at a file or two with vi.

cdrecord -v speed=4 dev=0,4,0 -data <cd_image.iso>

I have 5 CD-ROM or CD-RW drives available to me.  Here is the inventory:

(a) SCSI CD-RW: Plextor 12/10/32 drive.  I used this drive to burn the CD's.
(b) ATAPI-IDE CD-ROM: the drive I have in my box at home.  It is an old drive
    from circa 1996.
(c) ATAPI-IDE CD-ROM: circa 1997-98.
(d) Two ATAPI-IDE CD-RW drives (Yamaha CRW4416E-NB) from about 1999.

Problem #1:  I recently built a computer for my home.  I installed an
old CD-ROM (drive (b)) for it's CD reader.  I burned a CD at work (on
drive (a)) and brought it home.  When I tried to mount this the error was
'no medium found'.  This CD-ROM drive works because I can mount other
(e.g. the SuSE CD's) with it without a problem.  The particular CD I
burned, I had blanked the disk using cdrecord's blank=fast command line
options.  I assumed the CD-RW disk was bad.  Today, however, I brought
that disk into work and was able to mount the disk on drive (a) and (c)
but on neither of the (d) type drives.

Problem #2:  I can't understand why drives of type (d) can't read these
CD's.  I have tried data I have burned on a blanked CD-RW, a virgin
CD-RW and a CD-R.  The CD-RW disks were 4x-10x disks while the CD-R was
a 1x-8x Kodak Ultima disk.  Drive (d) can mount and read a disk which
was burned by a a software vendor.  When the failure does occur with my
home burned disks, I get a scsi time out error from the ide-scsi module
and I basically have to hit the 'reset' button to get the errors to stop
scrolling on the console.

The common thread here is that CD's I burn can't be read on all drives,
but they don't fail in every drive.  The drives which do fail, can read
CD's which have been burned by professionals (i.e. install disks for
software I have).

So, if anyone could point out what I am doing wrong, or any other
debugging suggestions, I would be grateful.  Thanks.

Paul

-- 
Paul D. Boyle			    |	boyle at laue.chem.ncsu.edu
Director, X-ray Structural Facility |	phone: (919) 515-7362
Department of Chemistry - Box 8204  |	FAX:   (919) 515-5079
North Carolina State University     | 
Raleigh, NC, 27695-8204
http://laue.chem.ncsu.edu/web/xray.welcome.html