Problem with cdrom

English Hardware
1

Hi,

I’ve got a problem with cdrom device on my opensuse 11.1.
It’s the most typical IDE samsung writemaster DVD-RW device.
It worked fine - I’d installed the opensuse system from this device and then used it dozen times to burn cd/dvd with K3B program.
Now, some time ago, it just disappeared from the system. Maybe it happened after downloading one of the suse system updates - but I’m not sure exactly.

Right now there is no /dev/sr0 device, which I suppose should point to the cdrom.
When I put cdrom or dvd disk into the drive nothing happens.
The command /usr/sbin/hwinfo --cdrom returns nothing.
Most applications which use cdrom (like k3b) displays warnings that there is no /dev/cdrom device or something like that.

The device itselfs works fine in the winxp which I have also installed in another partition and can boot from suse grub bootloader. I can boot from this device. I can even put opensuse 11.1 installation disk to reinstall…

my karnel is:
Linux 2.6.27.37-0.1-pae #1 SMP 2009-10-15 14:56:58 +0200

Is there a way for my opensuse 11.1 to rediscover the cdrom?
Please help.

2

The cdrom device is alone on the Secondary IDE controller, configured as master.

3

The lack of output with ‘hwinfo --cdrom’ doesn’t sound promising. Anyway, What is the output of

/sbin/lspci -k |grep IDE -A 2

I get

00:1f.2 IDE interface: Intel Corporation 82801FBM (ICH6M) SATA Controller (rev 03)
Kernel driver in use: ata_piix
Kernel modules: ata_piix, ahci

and my cd/dvd device is supported by the ata_piix driver.

4

For

/sbin/lspci -k|grep IDE -A 2

the output is:

00:07.1 IDE interface: VIA Technologies, Inc. VT82C586A/B/VT82C686/A/B/VT823x/A/C PIPC Bus Master IDE (rev 06)
Kernel driver in use: pata_via
Kernel modules: via82cxxx, pata_via

There are no problem with hard disk (also IDE)…

5

Either your CDROM died, it’s cable got defective/disconnected or (more improbable) you disabled/changed the mode of the IDE controller in BIOS.

6

then why it works on xp or any other live cd system (even the suse installation disk boots fine)?..

I thought that maybe this is a karnel & driver problem and there is a magic command which reinstall suse drivers…
I’m going to check different cdrom device on the same cable and ide controller.

7

I guess you could try using ‘lsmod’ to compare loaded modules between a live CD and installed version. If you have openSUSE live CD available, then ‘hwinfo --cdrom’ comparison may be helpful. There may be a boot option which can then bee added to load a particular module to provide support for your device.

8

It was a power supply problem. I changed the power cable and the cdrom drive was found without any problems.

Anyway thanks for help.

9

Thanks for the update. It was your statements about how it worked in other OS’s that threw me off the scent. Usually its the first place to look, if its not being detected at all, hence brunomcl’s post. :slight_smile:

10

then why it works on xp or any other live cd system (even the suse installation disk boots fine)?..

If the user didn’t inadvertently broke something, then most of the time this CDROM-not-here-anymore problem is hardware-related. I recall windows would circumvent some failings on drives (like DMA suddenly not available) that would be transparent to the user, except for slower/erratic performance.

In this case, a loose cable, it’s interesting how it “worked” in windows but not in OS. This happened to me a couple times, and sent me in the wrong direction until I noticed that it didn’t “work” everytime, but only immediately after a reboot, or while the machine is still cold, or when the power demand is low (CPU idle), or whatever…

What throws the user (and us) on the wrong track is that the user usually only try it once, and if it works it’s assumed to be perfect. While this is true in many cases, there’s many more where it isn’t.

I’m thinking about a tagline, something like this:
“If it’s not a permissions problem, it’s the hardware, stoopid” :smiley: