CD Burning woes: pulling my already sparse hair out...

[Niki Kovacs]

Hi,

I'm an ex-Slacker (100% GNU/Linux since 2001) recently converted to
Ubuntu. I like that distro, though there's one annoying (and severe) bug
in Breezy that's a real PITA: burning.

I installed Breezy in "expert" mode and gave "-d1" as disk parameter
during install. hdparm /dev/hdc gives this:

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

So I *think* dma is on, wouldn't you? But then, here's the output of
cdrecord:

# cdrecord -scanbus dev=ATAPI

Cdrecord-Clone 2.01.01a01 (i686-pc-linux-gnu) Copyright (C) 1995-2004
Joerg Schilling
NOTE: this version of cdrecord is an inofficial (modified) release of
cdrecord
      and thus may have bugs that are not present in the original
version.
      Please send bug reports and support requests to
<cdrtools at packages.debian.org>.
      The original author should not be bothered with problems of this
version.

cdrecord: Warning: Running on Linux-2.6.12-9-386
cdrecord: There are unsettled issues with Linux-2.5 and newer.
cdrecord: If you have unexpected problems, please try Linux-2.4 or
Solaris.
scsidev: 'ATAPI'
devname: 'ATAPI'
scsibus: -2 target: -2 lun: -2
Warning: Using ATA Packet interface.
Warning: The related Linux kernel interface code seems to be
unmaintained.
Warning: There is absolutely NO DMA, operations thus are slow.
Using libscg version 'ubuntu-0.8ubuntu1'.
cdrecord: Warning: using inofficial version of libscg (ubuntu-0.8ubuntu1
'@(#)scsitransp.c      1.91 04/06/17 Copyright 1988,1995,2000-2004 J.
Schilling').
scsibus0:
        0,0,0     0) 'DVDRW   ' 'DRW-1S45        ' 'GBG3' Removable
CD-ROM
        0,1,0     1) *
        0,2,0     2) *
        0,3,0     3) *
        0,4,0     4) *
        0,5,0     5) *
        0,6,0     6) *
        0,7,0     7) *

So? To -d1 or not to -d1, may I ask most Hamlet-like...

Why I tried this? Because all (!) GUI apps for burning (Gnomebaker,
Graveman, Nautilus, K3B) bug, freeze, or burn painfully slow. 

Thought this was a problem of IDE controller not being compiled into the
kernel, so I grabbed some recent 2.6.12 sources, configured them from
defconfig and hard-included only what lspci and dmesg told me to
include. Rebooted on the new minimal kernel, no way, still a whole mess
with burning.

Now I'm clueless. BTW, I migrated to Ubuntu because of the ease of
administration. Slack is somewhat hard to administer, but _everything_
works (included 40x-burning). Never a coaster with K3B... (sigh).

Suggestions _very_ welcome, because I've started to like this otherwise
perfect-looking distro. 

Niki Kovacs

PS: Ubuntu server A-OK. Easy to maintain, so this one will stay for
sure.