5.3-BETA "burncd blank" hangs in 50% of cases

[John Hay]

> > >>
> > >>I've noticed that burncd blank command hangs in 50% of cases (at least 
> > >>with CD-RWs). Every time symptoms are the same: progress goes to 29% 
> > >>and then just hangs indefinitely. ^C allows to close burncd. However, 
> > >>the disk appears to be blanked just fine, since the following burncd 
> > >>data starts writing from LBA 0 as expected.
> > >>
> > >>In remaining 50% of cases, the progress indicator goes slowly to 
> > >>20-something%, then quickly jumps to 90-something% and then burncd 
> > >>exits correctly.
> > >>
> > >>As I said the problem is easily reproducible so that I am ready to 
> > >>provide any necessary debugging information.
> > >>
> > >>My CD-RW runs in UDMA33 mode, but the problem persists in PIO mode as 
> > >>well. Other than that, it burns and reads CD-RWs without any problems.
> > >>
> > >>It would be nice to have this fixed before 5.3 goes out.
> > >>
> > >>-Maxim
> > 
> > 
> > Sorry, I assumed that others would have jumped in by now.  I see similar 
> > issues myself, and sometimes even fixating a CD will 'hang'.  Since it's
> > not fatal, just annoying, I don't consider it a show-stopper.  Of course
> > it will be nice to fix it at some point.  My guess is that either the 
> > driver and burncd aren't using the correct command to get status from
> > the drives, or the drives are just generally marginal and refuse to give
> > accurate status.  We can investigate it further at a later time, I guess.
> >
> 
> Well I'll throw in my two cents here. I haven't  yet had an issue with my
> burner and burncd. I burned 32 audio cds in one night for a co-worker (a whole
> spindle!) Anyway, I blanked a cdrw last night, and it went perfect as i hoped.
> Just to make sure I'll blank another cdrw right now.
> 
> --snip--
> ryan at ryan:~% burncd -f /dev/acd0 blank
> blanking CD - 99 % done     
> ryan at ryan:~%
> --snip--
> 
> Well seems to be in order still, I'll be sure to post results if I ever see
> anything otherwise. FWIW, I have a 40x12x48 Liteon burner, (burnproof, never
> ever had a buffer underrun) and I've never had ANY problem with it making 
> coasters in the 3 years I've had it. Used it in linux, windowsxp and freebsd.
> The only coasters are the ones I force upon myself when I over do it trying
> to stuff stuff onto a cdr (720mb on a 700mb cdr anyone?)
> 
> - ryan
> 
> By the way, this is on FreeBSD 5.3-RC1. No DMA settings have been disabled,
> and its an asus nforce2 motherboard.

I think it depends on the type of cd writer. Maybe they don't report
blanking operations in the same way? I have two that never return
from a blank command. The one in my Dell at work:

acd1: CDRW <_NEC CD-RW NR-7900A/1.08> at ata1-slave UDMA33

and a brand new one at home:

acd0: CDRW <HL-DT-ST GCE-8526B/1.03> at ata1-master UDMA33

The NEC one in my Dell computer did use to return from blank operations
a long time ago. Long being 1.5+ years ago. At the moment the way I use
them is to start the blank command and then watch the disk LED. When it
goes inactive, I do a ^C.

John
-- 
John Hay -- John.Hay at icomtek.csir.co.za / jhay at FreeBSD.org