Re: solaris cdrecord BH08LS20 drive BD-R problems
When it comes to accuracy of information meant for general public, it's
difference between implying things and spelling them in manner that
can't be interpreted differently by different people.
>> 1. According to 'man ata' DMA is enabled by default on Solaris 10. To my
>> experience with Sun W1100z it holds true.
>
> Whis this is true for Solaris 10 x86 and hard disks, it is definitely not true
> for the other.
Original statement was "Solaris 10 in general does not by default enable
DMA." Any sane person not intimately familiar with subject would
interpret that Solaris 10 never uses DMA by default.
If it was "Solaris 10 x86 does not by default enable DMA for *optical
units*," then it wouldn't have been a problem. Extra point if it was
complemented with "this unfortunately is not properly documented in
Solaris 10 manual pages" and reference to more descriptive on-line
resource (for example Solaris 11 manual page for ata(7d)).
>> 2. 'man eeprom' does not provide any information about DMA settings.
>
> Make a bug report against the man page...
Original statement was "see eeprom(1)" in context of "Solaris 10 in
general does not by default enable DMA." Any sane person not intimately
familiar with subject would expect to find additional information in
eeprom manual page. She would find nothing there.
If statement was "eeprom(1) command can be used to examine and modify
atapi-cd-dma-enabled variable," then it wouldn't have been a problem
(except for questionable relevance, because original question was about
SPARC Solaris). Extra point for mentioning that the value might be
missing and allowable values of 0 and 1.
>> 3. SPARC Solaris *is* capable of DMA on ATA. To my experience it holds
>> true on Solaris 8 with Pioneer DVR-106: CPU load and performance was
>> adequate in my DVD recording tests and I never had any problems engaging
>> buffer underrun protection. Negotiated settings for every device can be
>> verified with 'prtconf -v'.
>
> Solaris 8 definitely does not set up DMA, but Solaris 8 is 10 years old and
> I do no longer have a machine
Original statement was "Solaris sparc *still* does not support DMA on
ATA interfaces." Any sane person not intimately familiar with subject
would interpret "still" as "*whatever* installed on SPARC next to me."
Can *you* confirm the statement on *any* SPARC machine with 'prtconf -v'?
> to check whether I could enable DMA by patching
> the drivers. The READMEs mentioned above contain instructions on how to patch
> the ata driver for Solaris 9 (x86), but this unfortunately only works for the
> original release and will no longer help if you installed an ATA patch.
What does it have to do with SPARC Solaris?
> As mentioned before: Due to the fact that many DVD drives do not allow to set
> burnproof in case DMA is not enabled, this is a major problem on Solaris/sparc.
Is it the only criteria to judge? As mentioned I had no problem [with
growisofs] enabling burnproof on Pioneer DVR-106 on SPARC Solaris 8.
What do you make of it? If it's not the only criteria, what are others?
> As a result, I did get a lot of negative feedback from users that have been
> unable to write DVDs. The only workaround is to use slow DVD-RW media that
> allows to write slow enough to work without DMA.
What units did these users have? What were target?-dcd-options in
'prtconv -v'? If burnproof is the only criteria, is it really
appropriate to generalize these experiences to the extent of "SPARC
Solaris *still* does not support DMA on *ATA* interfaces"?
As for "Solaris DMA related READMEs" up-to-date-ness. They contain
information exclusively about Solaris 9 x86. I can't verify its
accuracy, but I can confirm that atapi-cd-dma-enabled parameter is
effective on Solaris >=10 x86[!], i.e. no binary code patching is
required. They don't contain a word about SPARC Solaris and are not
applicable to SPARC Solaris. A.
Reply to: