Reading DVDs on a Mac mini

Reading DVDs on a Mac mini

[Tom Parker]

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I recently bought a Mac mini to try out a few things, but have been 
having some problems trying to get it to read DVDs. I was using the 
2.6.10 kernel (the Ubuntu linux-image-2.6.10-5-powerpc package) and I 
get the same results with 2.6.12-rc4 (kernel config for that is 
attached). Whenever I try to read a DVD-ROM (my test app is lsdvd, but 
same results with mplayer) I get the following error message:

libdvdread: Invalid title IFO (VTS_02_0.IFO).
Can't open ifo 2!

Varying the DVD sometimes gets ifo 3/VTS_03_0.IFO, but the result is the 
same. Looking at dmesg shows the following:

hdb: command error: status=0x51 { DriveReady SeekComplete Error }
hdb: command error: error=0x54 { AbortedCommand LastFailedSense=0x05 }
ide: failed opcode was: unknown
end_request: I/O error, dev hdb, sector 42872

Repeat lots and lots of times with values of sector jumping by 8 each 
time. I'm not sure where it starts, because my entire dmesg output is 
filled with these messages. Trying to play/copy stuff from burnt off 
DVD-Rs works fine, but store bought DVDs don't like the drive (region 2 
discs, the mini was bought in the Netherlands, a region 2 country). I 
have occasionally *rarely* managed to persuade some discs to 
occasionally read, but repeating the attempt then generally fails. 
Failure always happens within two or 3 reads.

The version of libdvdread in use is 0.9.4 (the Debian 0.9.4-5 
libdvdread3 package).

hdparm settings for /dev/hdb (the DVD/CD-ROM drive):

  IO_support   =  0 (default 16-bit)
  unmaskirq    =  1 (on)
  using_dma    =  0 (off)
  keepsettings =  0 (off)
  readonly     =  0 (off)
  readahead    = 256 (on)
  HDIO_GETGEO failed: Invalid argument

hdparm -i says the drive is a "MATSHITACD-RW CW-8124".

Any ideas? Because I'm all out of ideas, and I hope someone on here can 
help.

Thanks,

Tom Parker

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Re: Reading DVDs on a Mac mini

[Benjamin Herrenschmidt]

On Mon, 2005-05-23 at 22:07 +0200, Tom Parker wrote:

> 
> The version of libdvdread in use is 0.9.4 (the Debian 0.9.4-5 
> libdvdread3 package).
> 
> hdparm settings for /dev/hdb (the DVD/CD-ROM drive):
> 
>   IO_support   =  0 (default 16-bit)
>   unmaskirq    =  1 (on)
>   using_dma    =  0 (off)
>   keepsettings =  0 (off)
>   readonly     =  0 (off)
>   readahead    = 256 (on)
>   HDIO_GETGEO failed: Invalid argument
> 
> hdparm -i says the drive is a "MATSHITACD-RW CW-8124".
> 
> Any ideas? Because I'm all out of ideas, and I hope someone on here can 
> help.

Does the debian package of libdvdread contains the CSS stuff ? Also, the
lack of "using_dma" is annoying... It looks like our CD/DVD kernel
driver is still dumb and still switches DMA off on any stupid error...

Have you tried booting OS X and playing the DVD once ? Maybe the drive
wants a zone to be set at least once, which MacOS does the first time
you play a DVD

Ben.

Re: Reading DVDs on a Mac mini

[Tom Parker]

Benjamin Herrenschmidt wrote:
> On Mon, 2005-05-23 at 22:07 +0200, Tom Parker wrote:
>>The version of libdvdread in use is 0.9.4 (the Debian 0.9.4-5 
>>libdvdread3 package).

> Does the debian package of libdvdread contains the CSS stuff ?

No it doesn't, but it does include a shell script to download it if 
you're living somewhere where libdvdcss is ok, and libdvdread will 
dynamically load libdvdcss if it exists. I'm using libdvdcss 1.2.8 (latest).

> Have you tried booting OS X and playing the DVD once ? Maybe the drive
> wants a zone to be set at least once, which MacOS does the first time
> you play a DVD

Had to reinstall OS X to test this, and yup, it wants a zone to be set. 
Returning back to Linux, some fiddling with regionset and some region 1 
and 2 DVDs lets me come to the following conclusions:

1) It's an RPC-2 DVD drive (i.e. evil, CSS-in-hardware drive), with the 
whole "5 changes and then it locks" policy.
2) It appears to be a really evil variant of RPC-2, in that if you've 
got a CSS-locked DVD in the drive, and you're set on a different region 
to the disk, you can't even get at the encrypted contents. The 
aforementioned read errors keep turning up, making libdvdcss useless. 
Or, this may just be an ide-cd bug with this drive...
3) If drive region == disc region, it plays DVDs fine.

 >>hdparm -i says the drive is a "MATSHITACD-RW CW-8124".

If anyone happens to have an RPC-1 firmware for this drive, or fixes to 
ide-cd, I'd be most grateful! Some googling for the former is currently 
unhelpful.

Thanks,

Tom Parker

Re: Reading DVDs on a Mac mini

[Benjamin Herrenschmidt]

On Thu, 2005-05-26 at 02:27 +0200, Tom Parker wrote:
> Benjamin Herrenschmidt wrote:
> > On Mon, 2005-05-23 at 22:07 +0200, Tom Parker wrote:
> >>The version of libdvdread in use is 0.9.4 (the Debian 0.9.4-5 
> >>libdvdread3 package).
> 
> > Does the debian package of libdvdread contains the CSS stuff ?
> 
> No it doesn't, but it does include a shell script to download it if 
> you're living somewhere where libdvdcss is ok, and libdvdread will 
> dynamically load libdvdcss if it exists. I'm using libdvdcss 1.2.8 (latest).
> 
> > Have you tried booting OS X and playing the DVD once ? Maybe the drive
> > wants a zone to be set at least once, which MacOS does the first time
> > you play a DVD
> 
> Had to reinstall OS X to test this, and yup, it wants a zone to be set. 
> Returning back to Linux, some fiddling with regionset and some region 1 
> and 2 DVDs lets me come to the following conclusions:
> 
> 1) It's an RPC-2 DVD drive (i.e. evil, CSS-in-hardware drive), with the 
> whole "5 changes and then it locks" policy.
> 2) It appears to be a really evil variant of RPC-2, in that if you've 
> got a CSS-locked DVD in the drive, and you're set on a different region 
> to the disk, you can't even get at the encrypted contents. The 
> aforementioned read errors keep turning up, making libdvdcss useless. 
> Or, this may just be an ide-cd bug with this drive...
> 3) If drive region == disc region, it plays DVDs fine.
> 
>  >>hdparm -i says the drive is a "MATSHITACD-RW CW-8124".
> 
> If anyone happens to have an RPC-1 firmware for this drive, or fixes to 
> ide-cd, I'd be most grateful! Some googling for the former is currently 
> unhelpful.

Yah, I googled too and ended up with the same conclusion =P

Ben.