I’m running OpenSuse 11.1 with kde 4.2.
This cd/dvd worked and then this problem started awhile ago and I tried to find a solution for it without success so far. My CD/DVD is not recognizing any media so I cannot read/write to/from it.
When I run this command:
hwinfo |grep “Device”
here is the output(part of it):
Device: “DVDRAM GSA-4120B”
Device File: /dev/sr0 (/dev/sg2)
Device Files: /dev/sr0, /dev/scd0, /dev/disk/by-path/pci-0000:00:0f.1-scsi-1:0:0:0, /dev/cdrom, /dev/cdrw, /dev/dvd, /dev/dvdrw
Device Number: block 11:0 (char 21:2)
running this command(which as I understood checks the daemons that are running):
ps -ef | grep hald
105 1871 1 0 Jul20 ? 00:00:00 /usr/sbin/hald --daemon=yes
root 1937 1871 0 Jul20 ? 00:00:00 hald-runner
root 1963 1937 0 Jul20 ? 00:00:03 hald-addon-input: Listening on /dev/input/event0
root 1992 1937 0 Jul20 ? 00:01:00 hald-addon-storage: polling /dev/sr0 (every 2 sec)
root 10436 8529 0 20:55 pts/1 00:00:00 grep hald
dmesg would not show anything even tough the daemon checks every 2 seconds)
this command:
wodim --devices
wodim: Overview of accessible drives (1 found) :
Any medium(cd/dvd) empty or not I insert in is not recognized. I booted on windows(something I didn’t do in like 6-8 months) to check if something is wrong with the CDROM hardware but I was not able to read or write anything also there. I think that I need a new cd/dvd as this is almost 10 yrs old.
You could try the usual trick of waving some brochures of latest drives and muttering how good the new models are in front of the misbehaving drive in a last ditch effort to get it to shape up.
But seriously, optical drives do wear out quickly compared to the rest of the computer. 10 years is an amazing length of service.
I guess I took the easy way and went and bought a cheap HP one(<$40) which was working immediately and now i’m trying to see if it burns without errors. I paid more than $500 for the old one and it lasted me a long time so no complains about that, but I will not put that much money for any other part. For what I need now the old computer(especially with OpenSuse) does the job(until my kids will want a more competitive one, but hopefully by that time they will be so accustomed to Linux that they will want this challenge instead of the competition.
Oh well, that’s progress. I remember when I was so excited when I scored a working 2x SCSI CDROM burner for $200. At that time blanks were $2 each. Recent I bought a spindle of CD-Rs, probably my last, now that DVD±Rs are so cheap, for 18c per blank.
