Bug#998718: Brasero fails (on Testing) burning an ISO image on a CD-RW

[Thomas Schmitt]

Hi,

Mauro Sacchetto wrote:
> I don't have the option of using more than one burner.

I could try with more USB burners. But we already know that it is a
problem between Brasero or its helper software on one side and the
firmware of ASUS DRW-24D5MT on the other side.
There may be other burner firmwares with the same vulnerability.
But finding them would not bring more insight.

(Of course i will keep this possibility in mind for occasions when
other Brasero users report similar problems.)


> It is difficult to understand how we can get out of it.

I lack of a plausible theory how Brasero or its helpers can spoil
the drive when Brasero is up and waiting for a disk to appear in the
drive.

I meanwhile have ideas for more experiments:

- Does it happen only with CD but not with DVD+RW or DVD-RW ?
  I will probably test this today.

- Does it work if i manage to permanently disable udisks ?
  (I once did this on Debian 8. But memories are dim and udisks quite
  surely evolved a lot since then.)
  I will have to find out about udisks configuration.
  Simply killing its two processes does not help. I tried and they
  came back.
  Any hints are welcome.

- Does it happen when the ASUS burner is in a USB box ?
  If no: Does it depend on the maximum speed of the SATA port ?
  (See below the quote from the Manjaro thread.)
  This will mean that i have to break out my screw driver and the docs
  about the mainboard. (Me and a screw driver is a dangerous combination.)
  Update:
  The docs say that my mainboard ASUS Pro WS C246-ACE has 4 SATA 6.0 Gb/s
  ports and no slower SATA ports. So a port change looks not very
  promising.

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If Brasero had a maintainer and that maintainer has no better idea about
the particular cause of this quite catastrophic behavior, then i would
propose that Brasero shall try early to identify the drive model name,
and refrain from doing anything more with the drive if it is an ASUS
DRW-24D5MT (and maybe other types which might be found by users).

It should first try to learn the drive model name from udev, so that it
does not have to touch the drive by itself. If udev does not tell, then
it would have to issue an SCSI INQUIRY command, which will tell the drive
type.

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The software side of the problem seems old enough to have left traces in
the web. But there are not so many found by Google:

I now learn that i participated in a german thread without noticing that
Brasero is at the core of the problem:
  https://forum.ubuntuusers.de/topic/problem-mit-dvd-rw-laufwerk-sata/
The thread starter reports at some stage that he succeeded with Brasero
and CD. But we have to take such statements with a grain of salt. In the
end he bought another drive and got happy.

In
  https://forum.manjaro.org/t/solved-asus-cd-writer-installation-issues/37659
i see an interesting but riddling success report:
  "I moved the device on the MB from SATA 5 to SATA 6 and everything
   run smoothly"
I assume the poster means the numbering of the SATA ports on the board.
It is fewly plausible that Mauro Sacchetto and i both have bad SATA ports
or cables.
But what about SATA generations ? Maybe that board has ports for 3 Gbps
and for 6 Gbps which makes a difference.

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Have a nice day :)

Thomas