James Mohr wrote:
Any ideas on what I can/should do to return the system (i.e. the CD writer components, devices, etc-) to a fresh state without re-installing. This isn't Windows, ya know. ;-)
I had problems with kb3 in SuSE 9.0, and I ended up removing anything connected with burning (k3b - xcdroast - cdrecord - mkisofs ...) and reinstalling the latest versions with apt-get (Packman would do too, I guess). The usual advice would also be to make an image with mkisofs and burn it from the command line to check where the problem lies. I found multiple references to error 254 in cdrecord on a french list, it concerned backupedge, and this was the advice, roughly inserting immed after cdrecord. http://www.microlite.com/support/edgefax66.ts.html ) : Upgrade to BackupEDGE 01.02.04 or later. Then edit the file /usr/lib/edge/config/devices.def. Find the write commands that refer cdrecord. Insert the flag "-immed" in the as illustrated in the example below. The write command may look like: WRITE_CMD [3] p/cdrecord dev=0,4,0 B speed=s - Change it to : WRITE_CMD [3] p/cdrecord dev=0,4,0 -immed B speed=s - Save the change. This has been found to remedy this issue cdrecord immed on trouve ( http://dchlb.de/cdrecord/man_cdrecord.html ) : -immed Tell cdrecord to set the SCSI IMMED flag in certain commands (load/eject/blank/close_track/close_session). This can be useful on broken systems with ATAPI harddisk and CD/DVD writer on the same bus or with SCSI systems that don't use disconnect/reconnect. These systems will freeze while blanking or fixating a CD/DVD or while a DVD writer is filling up a session to the minimum amount (approx. 800 MB). Setting the -immed flag will request the command to return immediately while the operation proceeds in background, making the bus usable for the other devices and avoiding the system freeze. This is an experimental feature which may work or not, depending on the model of the CD/DVD writer. A correct solution would be to set up a correct cabling but there seem to be notebooks around that have been set up the wrong way by the manufacturer. As it is impossible to fix this problem in notebooks, the -immed option has been added. A second experimental feature of the -immed flag is to tell cdrecord to try to wait short times wile writing to the media. This is expected to free the IDE bus if the CD/DVD writer and the data source are connected to the same IDE cable. In this case, the CD/DVD writer would otherwise usually block the IDE bus for nearly all the time making it impossible to fetch data from the source drive. See also minbuf= and -v option. Use both features at your own risk. If it turns out that it would make sense to have a separate option for the the wait feature, write to the author and convince him. fx -- ______________________ Courtesy of SuSE Linux http://www.nibz.org