CD-ROM Hell

DISCUSSION Bryan Simmons 8 participants 10 messages Oct 1, 2002 – Oct 2, 2002

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Bryan Simmons

author

2002-10-01 03:35 UTC #0 lore raw

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?

Signature · 9 lines

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 
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=

James Miller

2002-10-01 04:20 UTC #1 lore raw

Quoted 8 lines · Bryan Simmons

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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Jude DaShiell

2002-10-01 21:24 UTC #2 lore raw

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

Ray Olszewski

2002-10-01 05:13 UTC #3 lore raw

In reply to Bryan Simmons

Quoted 7 lines · Bryan Simmons

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 [email protected]
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Ralph Gesler

2002-10-02 21:35 UTC #4 lore raw

Ray Olszewski wrote:
<snip>

Quoted 7 lines

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.

Quoted 6 lines

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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Wladimir Foo

2002-10-01 06:38 UTC #5 lore raw

In reply to Bryan Simmons

Quoted 6 lines

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.

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Bryan Simmons

author

2002-10-02 00:26 UTC #6 lore raw

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.

Quoted 27 lines · Wladimir Foo

Quoted 6 lines
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.
Signature · 9 lines
http://www.linuxvoodoo.com     
perl -le '$_="75>42833<33.=3?,13406577073890:;90833<330690<3!!";tr[0-?][ 
YXOUIWLVETHDCNM];print'

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Signature · 9 lines

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 
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=

Chuck Gelm

2002-10-02 02:30 UTC #7 lore raw

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

Quoted 54 lines · Bryan Simmons

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.
Quoted 22 lines · Wladimir Foo
Quoted 6 lines
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'
Quoted 5 lines
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--
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
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=

Quoted 4 lines

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Ray Olszewski

2002-10-02 04:01 UTC #8 lore raw

In reply to Bryan Simmons

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.

Quoted 6 lines · Bryan Simmons

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.

Quoted 7 lines

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]

David Jones

2002-10-02 04:16 UTC #9 lore raw

In reply to Bryan Simmons

Sounds to me like a marginal CD drive.

Quoted 34 lines · Bryan Simmons

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.
Quoted 25 lines · Wladimir Foo
Quoted 6 lines
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.
Signature · 4 lines
http://www.linuxvoodoo.com     
perl -le
'$_="75>42833<33.=3?,13406577073890:;90833<330690<3!!";t
r[0-?][ YXOUIWLVETHDCNM];print'

Quoted 17 lines

Quoted 6 lines
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Signature · 9 lines
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 
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= 