Litter In The Logs If DVD In The Drive
I'd just like to do a quick poll as to whether anyone else here sees this :
On this vanilla Sarge box /dev/hdc is my DVD-ROM drive, and it works fine,
both with Linux, and with Win2K which is also on the machine, reading both
CDROMs (data and music) and DVDs, which play fine with Kaffeine.
HOWEVER: all the time I have a DVD in the drive (even if I'm not using the
DVD) , the following "rubbish" litters the logs (kern.log, syslog, and
messages) at a furious rate :
Jan 12 00:08:00 localhost kernel: hdc: packet command error: error=0x50
Jan 12 00:08:01 localhost kernel: hdc: packet command error: status=0x51
{ DriveReady SeekComplete Error }
Jan 12 00:08:01 localhost kernel: hdc: packet command error: error=0x50
Jan 12 00:08:02 localhost kernel: hdc: packet command error: status=0x51
{ DriveReady SeekComplete Error }
Jan 12 00:08:02 localhost kernel: hdc: packet command error: error=0x50
Jan 12 00:08:03 localhost kernel: hdc: packet command error: status=0x51
{ DriveReady SeekComplete Error }
Jan 12 00:08:03 localhost kernel: hdc: packet command error: error=0x50
Jan 12 00:08:04 localhost kernel: hdc: packet command error: status=0x51
{ DriveReady SeekComplete Error }
Jan 12 00:08:04 localhost kernel: hdc: packet command error: error=0x50
Jan 12 00:08:05 localhost kernel: hdc: packet command error: status=0x51
{ DriveReady SeekComplete Error }
Jan 12 00:08:05 localhost kernel: hdc: packet command error: error=0x50
Jan 12 00:08:06 localhost kernel: hdc: packet command error: status=0x51
{ DriveReady SeekComplete Error }
Jan 12 00:08:06 localhost kernel: hdc: packet command error: error=0x50
Jan 12 00:08:07 localhost kernel: hdc: packet command error: status=0x51
{ DriveReady SeekComplete Error }
As you can see, the error message pair is logged once per second (imagine the
size of the log files). BTW, this happens with unencrypted DVDs, so it's not
a libdvdcss thing.
I wouldn't bother this list except that my searches turned up this LKML thread
as seeming most relevant :
http://uwsg.iu.edu/hypermail/linux/kernel/0103.0/0723.html
It's quite a long thread, with various Linux kernel luminaries stating the
problem is that both KDE & Gnome have a stupid process running which
frequently polls optical drives to see what media (if any) is present - and
if a disc has been inserted then the process causes an auto-insert
notification of some kind. The stupid error messages apparently occur when
the poll process looks for a CDROM disc when a DVD is present.
Alan Cox says "this isnt a kernel problem, its a _very_ stupid app"
and "You have something continually trying to open your cdrom and see if there
is media in it".
Jens Axboe says "Yep, it's a stupid app if it does CDROMSUBCHNL regardless of
the media type".
There is a suggestion that famd may be the culprit, but I don't have that
daemon running.
An assertion is made that the solution requires a proper kernel facility for
querying the current contents of an exchangeable drive (or for receiving
asynchronous notifications of media status changes).
Elsewhere on the web there are posts saying this happens if libdvdcss isn't
installed, or the kernel doesn't have UDF support, neither of which apply to
me.
The thing is, the above thread is dated 2001 - I'm astonished is this madness
has been going on for so long.
So .. is it just me, or does everyone else using KDE/Sarge see the same
stuff ?
And is it any better with Etch ?
NB: I've verified that if I shutdown KDE the messages stop getting logged -
and furthermore they don't resume when I restart KDE *until* I login
again ....
If this is a widespread current problem, what should we do about it ?
Maybe this is better taken to debian-user ...
Cheers,
Nick Boyce
--
Will no one rid me of this troublesome chair ?
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