CD Writer Very Slow

[Dave Whiteley <d.l.whiteley@ee.leeds.ac.uk>]

Hello,

I am running a (mostly) Sarge system, with a 2.4.22 kernel. I used to
be able to happily record CDs using gcombust.  It is now PAINFILLY
slow.

Recording the CD does work, however it takes 250 minutes or more.

Googling for this problem has indicated that there is a switch of
cdrecord executable between kernel 2.2 and 2.4, and that I should
perhaps not be using scsi emulation

I have removed the 
      append="hdc=ide-scsi hdd=ide-scsi"
from my lilo.conf,  but then cdrecord cannot find the drive.

I have also seen stuff about DMA problems being a possible cause.

The CDwriter is an OptoRite 52x24x52x, and it claims that its
Interface is "Ultra DMA".

Is this a known problem?  If so could someone point me at documentation.

If not, then could someone suggest methods for diagnosis.


####################################################
cdrecord -version gives:-
Cdrecord-Clone 2.01a19 (i686-pc-linux-gnu) Copyright (C) 1995-2003 Jörg Schilling
####################################################
cdrecord -scandisk gives:-

Cdrecord-Clone 2.01a19 (i686-pc-linux-gnu) Copyright (C) 1995-2003 Jörg Schilling
Linux sg driver version: 3.1.25
Using libscg version 'schily-0.7'
scsibus0:
        0,0,0     0) 'OPTORITE' 'CD-RW CW5205    ' '180E' Removable CD-ROM
cdrecord.mmap: Warning: controller returns wrong size for CD capabilities page.
        0,1,0     1) 'LG      ' 'CD-ROM CRD-8521B' '1.02' Removable CD-ROM
        0,2,0     2) *
        0,3,0     3) *
        0,4,0     4) *
        0,5,0     5) *
        0,6,0     6) *
        0,7,0     7) *
##############################################
and /var/log/messages contains many messages like:-

Jan 8 14:34:08 eenlnx4 kernel: scsi : aborting command due to timeout
: pid 3814, scsi0, channel 0, id 0, lun 0 Write (10) 00 00 03 5b a2 00
00 1f 00

Jan 8 14:34:48 eenlnx4 kernel: scsi : aborting command due to timeout
: pid 3875, scsi0, channel 0, id 0, lun 0 Write (10) 00 00 03 5e a9 00
00 1f 00

Jan 8 14:34:48 eenlnx4 kernel: scsi : aborting command due to timeout
: pid 3876, scsi0, channel 0, id 1, lun 0 Mode Sense (10) 00 2a 00 00
00 00 00 1c 00
################################################


Thanks.

Dave


-- 

Dave Whiteley
d.l.whiteley@ee.leeds.ac.uk
Phone +44 (0)113 343 2059
School of Electronic and Electrical Engineering
The University of Leeds. Leeds, LS2 9JT,  UK