Re: New CD/DVD reports 'Can Play Audio NO'

[D Bray <db1986@internetdog.org>]

On Sun, Oct 05, 2008 at 05:41:09PM +0800, D Bray wrote:
> 
> Tejun,
> 
> while my situation resembles that of Nick below, there seem still to
> be some unexplained observations remaining. See below.

For the record, I have to give an update for this issue which arose
for me back in September.

In brief: The application-level symptom (ie failing to play some
CDs/DVDs) has failed to reproduce! Though the issue outlined below was
at the driver level, and I have no evidence questioning its validity,
one may wish to take the new observation into account.


More details:

A while ago, I happened to boot into the "debian security update"
kernel mentioned below, and all was well! IOW, the audio/video
problems, occuring back in Sep. 2008, no longer occured on the same
box. I did not have time to carefully re-examine this, and cannot
explain the contradiction.

As, to my knowledge, no-one else has corroborated the alleged
misbehaviour on this kernel, then I have had to question my original
post of 29 Sep 2008 on debian-user. However, I see no reason to do the
same for the driver-level issue outlined below (regarding the
capabilities query between the driver and the CD/DVD device.)

Never the less, I thought that I ought to update everyone.

Regards,
DB









 
> 
> On Sun, Oct 05, 2008 at 12:09:15PM +0900, Tejun Heo wrote:
> > (cc'ing linux-ide)
> > 
> > Nick Warne wrote:
> > > Hi all,
> > > 
> > > Very strange issue.  I recently bought a new machine that came with a
> > > CD/DVD burner.  All functions normally, except I cannot play audio CD.
> > > 
> > > Information:
> > > 
> > > Slackware 12.1 running latest stable kernel 2.6.26.5
> > > 
> > > The drive is:
> > > 
> > > Vendor                      : Optiarc 
> > > Model                       : DVD RW AD-7200A 
> > > Revision                    : 1.06
> > > 
> > > Now, I have another drive (I purchased last year) that could play audio
> > > CD, so I installed that as master, and put the new drive as slave
> > > (old->hda new->hdb).  The old(er) drive can and does play audio OK.
> > > 
> > > I see this in /proc/sys/dev/cdrom/info:
> > > 
> > > drive name:             hdb     hda
> > > drive speed:            48      48
> > > drive # of slots:       1       1
> > > Can close tray:         1       1
> > > Can open tray:          1       1
> > > Can lock tray:          1       1
> > > Can change speed:       1       1
> > > Can select disk:        0       0
> > > Can read multisession:  1       1
> > > Can read MCN:           1       1
> > > Reports media changed:  1       1
> > > Can play audio:         0       1
> > > Can write CD-R:         1       1
> > > Can write CD-RW:        1       1
> > > Can read DVD:           1       1
> > > Can write DVD-R:        1       1
> > > Can write DVD-RAM:      1       1
> > > Can read MRW:           1       1
> > > Can write MRW:          1       1
> > > Can write RAM:          1       1
> > > 
> > > log/messages:
> > > Oct  4 09:27:01 sauron kernel: hda: UDMA/66 mode selected
> > > Oct  4 09:27:01 sauron kernel: hdb: UDMA/66 mode selected
> > > Oct  4 09:27:01 sauron kernel: hda: ATAPI 48X DVD-ROM DVD-R-RAM CD-R/RW
> > > drive, 2048kB Cache
> > > Oct  4 09:27:01 sauron kernel: Uniform CD-ROM
> > > driver Revision: 3.20
> > > Oct  4 09:27:01 sauron kernel: hdb: ATAPI 48X
> > > DVD-ROM DVD-R-RAM CD-R/RW drive, 2048kB Cache
> > > 
> > > /log/syslog
> > > Oct  4 09:27:01 sauron kernel: hda: TSSTcorp CDDVDW SH-S202J, ATAPI
> > > CD/DVD-ROM drive
> > > Oct  4 09:27:01 sauron kernel: hdb: Optiarc DVD RW
> > > AD-7200A, ATAPI CD/DVD-ROM drive
> > > 
> > > 
> > > I have investigated this, but can't find any information at all - there
> > > are very few hits doing a search, but relevant pages I found are:
> > > 
> > > D. Bray filled a very verbose bug report of a similar issue:
> > > http://lists.debian.org/debian-user/2008/09/msg01696.html
> 
> I'll summarise its pertinent crux here. In short, a year-old CD/DVD
> drive used to play audio CDs as well as encrypted DVDs. A small
> upgrade was performed on the box (including a kernel change), and then
> these functions failed. The rest of the drive's functionality remained
> unaffected. Subsequently, another (ie third) kernel was installed, and
> the drive's full functionality was restored. 
> Furthermore, the drive appears to report different capabilities to
> the different kernels:
> 
> 1. The debian Etch kernel (linux-image-2.6.18-5-686 2.6.18.dfsg.1-13)
> played audio CDROMs and encrypted DVDs. (I do not have its
> /proc/sys/dev/cdrom/info output.);
> 
> 2. The debian security update to this kernel
> (linux-image-2.6.18-5-686_2.6.18.dfsg.1-13etch6_i386.deb) did not play
> audio CDROMs or encrypted DVDs, and reported no-audio in
> /proc/sys/dev/cdrom/info;
> 
> 3. 2.6.26.5, built locally to match the 2.6.18-5 configuration, plays
> audio CDs & encrypted DVDs, and reports with-audio in /proc.
> 
> As my post to the debian-user list shows, numerous other possibilities
> were explored before the kernel was focused on -- and even then, it
> was focused on as a work-around, not necessarily as a culprit.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> > > A Gentoo user with the same drive reports another issue, but his CDROM
> > > info dump also reports this model cannot play audio CDs:
> > > http://bugs.gentoo.org/show_bug.cgi?id=218413
> > > 
> > > A Ubuntu user with the same drive also rpeorts audio CDs cannot be
> > > played:
> > > http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=675812
> > > 
> > > 
> > > Myself and D. Bray had a discussion on this, and we both feel this
> > > could be a kernel issue.
> 
> Nick believes his situation to have been different -- and it was
> resolved by a patch from Bodo Eggert which had the ide-cd driver
> ignore Nick's drive's misbehaviour. The latter is reported to have
> been due to its firmware's poor implementation. (I & Nick use
> different drives.)
> 
> But this leaves my situation in which the same drive appears to be
> reporting different capabilities to different kernels.
> 
> Also, another symptom in my case was that unencrypted DVDs would play
> (even with "Can read DVD: 0"), but not encrypted ones.
> 
> It seems to me that there is something going awry in the capabilities
> query between the driver and the device, whether caused by the
> device's f/w or by the driver. However, if someone has a dismissive
> explanation of the above, I'll still be happy! :-)
> 
> Thanks everyone.
> 
> regards,
> DB
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> > > 
> > > I would be able to debug this issue if required.
> > 
> > Can you try libata driver and see whether anything is different?
> > 
> > -- 
> > tejun