CD-ROM Hell

CD-ROM Hell

[Bryan Simmons]

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I have two terrible CD-ROMs and a lot of shady CDs.  Sometimes I'll put
one in the drive and Linux will fail to read it properly.  Sometimes
this means I just can't read the disk.  Other times it means that the
damn drive light stays on and the disk stays mounted and "busy" until I
reboot the frickin PC.

Does anyone know how to remedy such a situation without a reboot?

-- 
Regards,

Bryan Simmons 
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= 
 "Sometimes I wonder whether the world is being 
  run by smart people who are putting us on or 
  by imbeciles who really mean it". 
    ---Mark Twain 
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= 

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Re: CD-ROM Hell

[James Miller]

On 30 Sep 2002, Bryan Simmons wrote:

> I have two terrible CD-ROMs and a lot of shady CDs.  Sometimes I'll put
> one in the drive and Linux will fail to read it properly.  Sometimes
> this means I just can't read the disk.  Other times it means that the
> damn drive light stays on and the disk stays mounted and "busy" until I
> reboot the frickin PC.
> 
> Does anyone know how to remedy such a situation without a reboot?
> 
Maybe by killing the process? Like, using top or ps axu to find a process 
ID and then doing "kill <pid>" from the command line (as superuser, most 
likely)? Don't know fer sure of that works since I'm pretty much a newbie 
myself, but I'd start off trying something like that. 

James

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Re: CD-ROM Hell

[Jude DaShiell]

Unless you've already done it and it failed, you could try umount
/mnt/cdrom.




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Re: CD-ROM Hell

[Ray Olszewski]

At 11:35 PM 9/30/02 -0400, Bryan Simmons wrote:
>I have two terrible CD-ROMs and a lot of shady CDs.  Sometimes I'll put
>one in the drive and Linux will fail to read it properly.  Sometimes
>this means I just can't read the disk.  Other times it means that the
>damn drive light stays on and the disk stays mounted and "busy" until I
>reboot the frickin PC.
>
>Does anyone know how to remedy such a situation without a reboot?

Not until you explain what you are doing a bit more clearly.

The mere act of putting a CD in a drive shouldn't cause Linux to try to 
read the CD. You normally have to execute a "mount" command for the device 
(or mount point, if it is in /etc/fstab). You should be able to kill the 
process running the mount command to halt attempts to access the CD. If 
that option isn't available to you, you'll need to tell us how you have the 
system set up to mount CDs.

BTW, I assume we are talking about iso9660 CDs here, not music CDs. If I'm 
mistaken in that assumption, please tell us what app you are using to rip 
the music CD (and you should probably tell us the basics of which Linux 
distro and version you are using). Here too, you should be able to get free 
by killing the process, whatever it might be.


--
-------------------------------------------"Never tell me the odds!"--------
Ray Olszewski					-- Han Solo
Palo Alto, California, USA			  ray@comarre.com
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

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Re: CD-ROM Hell

[Ralph Gesler]

Ray Olszewski wrote:
<snip> 
> The mere act of putting a CD in a drive shouldn't cause Linux to try to
> read the CD. You normally have to execute a "mount" command for the device
> (or mount point, if it is in /etc/fstab). You should be able to kill the
> process running the mount command to halt attempts to access the CD. If
> that option isn't available to you, you'll need to tell us how you have the
> system set up to mount CDs.
> 
> BTW, I assume we are talking about iso9660 CDs here, not music CDs. If I'm
> mistaken in that assumption, please tell us what app you are using to rip
> the music CD (and you should probably tell us the basics of which Linux
> distro and version you are using). Here too, you should be able to get free
> by killing the process, whatever it might be.
> 
A little bit late to this thread, but some symptoms that I have recently
seen that may point to Bryan's problem ( assuming it is not a bad CDROM
drive )which may point to a misconfiguration, e.g. driver, device
linkage. Experimenting with the CD dump program cdda2wav I find that if
I carelessly misstep or omit a command line device parameter, the
process hangs and can not be killed with SIGKILL ,i.e.. -9, even by the
super user. I am making a wild guess that this condition is caused by
some kernel io process, as yet unidentified: it does time-out and the
calling process, cdda2wav, dies. 

I make this assumption because of the large amount of cpu usage used by
system at this time as shown by top. So far I have only observed this
with a music cd in the drive, but I have no reason to believe that the
same problem would not occur with a data, iso9660, cd. It may be
possible that a misconfiguration could cause the same symptoms.

kernel 2.4.4, Pentium 133

Ralph Gesler
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Re: CD-ROM Hell

[Wladimir Foo]

> I have two terrible CD-ROMs and a lot of shady CDs.  Sometimes I'll put
> one in the drive and Linux will fail to read it properly.  Sometimes
> this means I just can't read the disk.  Other times it means that the
> damn drive light stays on and the disk stays mounted and "busy" until I
> reboot the frickin PC.
>

As Ray mentioned earlier, it would be easier to come up with a possible remedy 
if we knew what you were doing. But, here's a something else that might help. 
Try using lsof:

lsof | grep /mnt/cdrom .

lsof will output the program(s) that is(are) using resources on /mnt/cdrom. 
Now simply quit (or kill those programs) and you should be able to unmount 
the cdrom drive.

-- 
http://www.linuxvoodoo.com     
perl -le '$_="75>42833<33.=3?,13406577073890:;90833<330690<3!!";tr[0-?][ 
YXOUIWLVETHDCNM];print'

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Re: CD-ROM Hell

[Bryan Simmons]

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For some reason, the command "lsof | grep /mnt/cdrom ." didn't produce
any results.  No error, nothing.  I looked at the man page for lsof but
it didn't seem to have anything to say about locating run-away
processes.  I also took a look at my running processes and couldn't find
anything suspicious. 

The damn CD-ROM is still going.  I was able to successfully run umount
/mnt/cdrom.  But, of course, I can't remount it because "the device is
busy".
I'd really like to find out why this happens and how to recover from it
without a reboot.  It happens quite often with old or burned CDs, and
it's a problem I've had with 4 different CD-ROMs on 4 different distros
of Linux.

On Tue, 2002-10-01 at 02:38, Wladimir Foo wrote:
> > I have two terrible CD-ROMs and a lot of shady CDs.  Sometimes I'll put
> > one in the drive and Linux will fail to read it properly.  Sometimes
> > this means I just can't read the disk.  Other times it means that the
> > damn drive light stays on and the disk stays mounted and "busy" until I
> > reboot the frickin PC.
> >
> 
> As Ray mentioned earlier, it would be easier to come up with a possible remedy 
> if we knew what you were doing. But, here's a something else that might help. 
> Try using lsof:
> 
> lsof | grep /mnt/cdrom .
> 
> lsof will output the program(s) that is(are) using resources on /mnt/cdrom. 
> Now simply quit (or kill those programs) and you should be able to unmount 
> the cdrom drive.
> 
> -- 
> http://www.linuxvoodoo.com     
> perl -le '$_="75>42833<33.=3?,13406577073890:;90833<330690<3!!";tr[0-?][ 
> YXOUIWLVETHDCNM];print'
> 
> -
> To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-newbie" in
> the body of a message to majordomo@vger.kernel.org
> More majordomo info at  http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html
> Please read the FAQ at http://www.linux-learn.org/faqs
-- 
Regards,

Bryan Simmons 
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= 
 "Sometimes I wonder whether the world is being 
  run by smart people who are putting us on or 
  by imbeciles who really mean it". 
    ---Mark Twain 
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= 

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Re: CD-ROM Hell

[Chuck Gelm]

I don't have lsof on my system.
Perhaps you do not either.
HTH, Chuck

Bryan Simmons wrote:
> 
> For some reason, the command "lsof | grep /mnt/cdrom ." didn't produce
> any results.  No error, nothing.  I looked at the man page for lsof but
> it didn't seem to have anything to say about locating run-away
> processes.  I also took a look at my running processes and couldn't find
> anything suspicious.
> 
> The damn CD-ROM is still going.  I was able to successfully run umount
> /mnt/cdrom.  But, of course, I can't remount it because "the device is
> busy".
> I'd really like to find out why this happens and how to recover from it
> without a reboot.  It happens quite often with old or burned CDs, and
> it's a problem I've had with 4 different CD-ROMs on 4 different distros
> of Linux.
> 
> On Tue, 2002-10-01 at 02:38, Wladimir Foo wrote:
> > > I have two terrible CD-ROMs and a lot of shady CDs.  Sometimes I'll put
> > > one in the drive and Linux will fail to read it properly.  Sometimes
> > > this means I just can't read the disk.  Other times it means that the
> > > damn drive light stays on and the disk stays mounted and "busy" until I
> > > reboot the frickin PC.
> > >
> >
> > As Ray mentioned earlier, it would be easier to come up with a possible remedy
> > if we knew what you were doing. But, here's a something else that might help.
> > Try using lsof:
> >
> > lsof | grep /mnt/cdrom .
> >
> > lsof will output the program(s) that is(are) using resources on /mnt/cdrom.
> > Now simply quit (or kill those programs) and you should be able to unmount
> > the cdrom drive.
> >
> > --
> > http://www.linuxvoodoo.com
> > perl -le '$_="75>42833<33.=3?,13406577073890:;90833<330690<3!!";tr[0-?][
> > YXOUIWLVETHDCNM];print'
> >
> > -
> > To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-newbie" in
> > the body of a message to majordomo@vger.kernel.org
> > More majordomo info at  http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html
> > Please read the FAQ at http://www.linux-learn.org/faqs
> --
> Regards,
> 
> Bryan Simmons
> =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
>  "Sometimes I wonder whether the world is being
>   run by smart people who are putting us on or
>   by imbeciles who really mean it".
>     ---Mark Twain
> =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
> 
>   ------------------------------------------------------------------------
>                        Name: signature.asc
>    signature.asc       Type: application/pgp-signature
>                 Description: This is a digitally signed message part
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Re: CD-ROM Hell

[Ray Olszewski]

 From your latest message, Bryan, I don't think we are going to come up 
with anything by playing guessing games about the nature of the problem. 
Please post another message, this time giving the sorts of technical 
details needed to troubleshoot.

First, as I interpret what you wrote below, the CD drive is having problems 
both with data disks (which you call "CD-ROMs" and which I presume contain 
iso9660 filesystems) and with music disks (which you call "CDs", and which 
are either regular music CDs, copies of regular music CDs, or disks of MP3s 
... or perhaps some mix of the three). If this interpretation is wrong, 
please correct it next time around and tell us EXACTLY what sorts of disks 
are associated with the problem.

Second, is this an ATAPI (IDE) or a SCSI drive? What Linux modules access 
it? What deviceis it (the entry in /dev/, I mean)? (And BTW, what Linux 
distro is involved, what version, and what kernel version? Stock or custom 
kernel?)

Third, when you say "I was able to successfully run umount /mnt/cdrom" ... 
after you run it, does "df" no longer show anything mounted on /dev/cdrom? 
If it does show something there, please explain what you mean by 
"successfully". If it does not show something there, please post the EXACT 
command you then enter, and the EXACT response you then get, that you are 
characterizing as "the device is busy". If "df" itself returns an error, 
please tell us EXACTLY what it says.

Fourth, when you are trying and failing to read a music CD, what 
application are you using? Does it ever fail with an error? Can you kill 
(or kill -9) that app? If you do kill (or kill -9) it, can you then access 
the CD drive (say to mount a known-good iso9660 CD)? If not, then at this 
point, what does ""lsof | grep cdrom" report (make sure that you have the 
command installed, though, by first running it successfully without the 
pipe to grep)?

Fifth and last, does your /etc/fstab file have any entry for the CD drive? 
If so, please report the exact, complete contents of that entry.

At 08:26 PM 10/1/02 -0400, Bryan Simmons wrote:
>For some reason, the command "lsof | grep /mnt/cdrom ." didn't produce
>any results.  No error, nothing.  I looked at the man page for lsof but
>it didn't seem to have anything to say about locating run-away
>processes.  I also took a look at my running processes and couldn't find
>anything suspicious.
>
>The damn CD-ROM is still going.  I was able to successfully run umount
>/mnt/cdrom.  But, of course, I can't remount it because "the device is
>busy".
>I'd really like to find out why this happens and how to recover from it
>without a reboot.  It happens quite often with old or burned CDs, and
>it's a problem I've had with 4 different CD-ROMs on 4 different distros
>of Linux.
[old stuff deleted]


--
-------------------------------------------"Never tell me the odds!"--------
Ray Olszewski					-- Han Solo
Palo Alto, California, USA			  ray@comarre.com
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

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Re: CD-ROM Hell

[David Jones]

Sounds to me like a marginal CD drive.

On 1 Oct 02, at 20:26, Bryan Simmons wrote:

> The damn CD-ROM is still going.  I was able to
> successfully run umount /mnt/cdrom.  But, of course, I
> can't remount it because "the device is busy". I'd really
> like to find out why this happens and how to recover from
> it without a reboot.  It happens quite often with old or
> burned CDs, and it's a problem I've had with 4 different
> CD-ROMs on 4 different distros of Linux.
> 
> On Tue, 2002-10-01 at 02:38, Wladimir Foo wrote:
> > > I have two terrible CD-ROMs and a lot of shady CDs. 
> > > Sometimes I'll put one in the drive and Linux will
> > > fail to read it properly.  Sometimes this means I just
> > > can't read the disk.  Other times it means that the
> > > damn drive light stays on and the disk stays mounted
> > > and "busy" until I reboot the frickin PC.
> > 
> > As Ray mentioned earlier, it would be easier to come up
> > with a possible remedy if we knew what you were doing.
> > But, here's a something else that might help. Try using
> > lsof:
> > 
> > lsof | grep /mnt/cdrom .
> > 
> > lsof will output the program(s) that is(are) using
> > resources on /mnt/cdrom. Now simply quit (or kill those
> > programs) and you should be able to unmount the cdrom
> > drive.
> > 
> > -- 
> > http://www.linuxvoodoo.com     
> > perl -le
> > '$_="75>42833<33.=3?,13406577073890:;90833<330690<3!!";t
> > r[0-?][ YXOUIWLVETHDCNM];print'
> > 
> > -
> > To unsubscribe from this list: send the line
> > "unsubscribe linux-newbie" in the body of a message to
> > majordomo@vger.kernel.org More majordomo info at 
> > http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html Please read
> > the FAQ at http://www.linux-learn.org/faqs
> -- 
> Regards,
> 
> Bryan Simmons 
> =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= 
>  "Sometimes I wonder whether the world is being 
>   run by smart people who are putting us on or 
>   by imbeciles who really mean it". 
>     ---Mark Twain 
> =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= 
> 



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Re: CD-ROM Hell

[Calin Szonyi]

----- Original Message -----
From: Ralph Gesler <rgesler@pacificnet.net>
Date: 	Wed, 02 Oct 2002 14:35:57 -0700
To: Ray Olszewski <ray@comarre.com>
Subject: Re: CD-ROM Hell
> 
> kernel 2.4.4, Pentium 133
> 

Your kernel is too old and buggy.
Upgrading your kernel to a newer version may stop
your cd-rom problem

> Ralph Gesler

Calin

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Re: CD-ROM Hell

[Ralph Gesler]

Calin Szonyi wrote:
> 
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: Ralph Gesler <rgesler@pacificnet.net>
> Date:   Wed, 02 Oct 2002 14:35:57 -0700
> To: Ray Olszewski <ray@comarre.com>
> Subject: Re: CD-ROM Hell
> >
> > kernel 2.4.4, Pentium 133
> >
> 
> Your kernel is too old and buggy.
> Upgrading your kernel to a newer version may stop
> your cd-rom problem
> 
> > Ralph Gesler
> 
> Calin

You misundrstood my first post. I was not implying that I have a
problem  or a potential kernel bug. As I said, that due to my own
carlessness in entering certain command line parameters related to the
CD drive interface, I could generate a condition that may be related to
the trouble experienced by the origional poster, Bryan Simmons, of this
thread. 

Unless the kernel developers have incorporated a psychic into the latest
release to read the users mind and correct for blunders at the API, I
soubt that the newest version, or any future version would or will catch
such errors. 

Ralph
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