the Yellow Book standard for data CDs requires data tracks to end
in 150 empty blocks (300KB).
Therefore a CD writing file system is allowed to read ahead up to
150 blocks after the end of the last block with real data
and should not run into read errors there.
All very well, but then either a large range of Linux kernels were
reading more than those 300kb ahead, or (as I suspect) almost all
Redmondsoft(TM)-generated silver and other CD are defective. While it
can be argued that Redmond is 95% defective, it doesn't solve the
problem. At the end of the day, I'm basically interested in stuff which
works ;)
Good possible reason though why Linux was programmed that way in the
first place.
Padding with mkisofs btw is a good workaround intra-Linux, but doesn't
help with disks coming from elsewhere.