Re: CD/DVD diagnostic tools needed
Camaleón wrote:
On Sun, 01 Jul 2012 09:30:21 -0500, Richard Owlett wrote:
I'm having various random problems installing from Live CD's. The
problems are weird, inconsistent, and intermittent. The first thing is
to determine whether or not I have faulty hardware, be it the target box
or the box that burns the CD.
Optical media is more and more becoming a complete headache.
Why? The usual trend is for products to improve as they mature.
Is it media related? I only use write once media as I've had
no interest in adding to &/or modifying what is already on a
CD {self defeating for my usage style ;}
Is it application related? My *APPARENT & NOTICEABLE*
symptoms have Debian 6.x related. I've a collection of
LiveCD's and standalone diagnostic CD's that I use without
problems. I'm about to do another Ubuntu 10.10 test install.
If that goes well, I'll burn a copy of the ISO to a DVD of
the same production batch used for my Debian install.
I'm a slow typist - test install completed without apparent
symptoms.
Hmmm - now that I stop and think about it.
I believe all observed symptoms revolve around root password
not being recognized.
And Ubuntu forcibly prohibits root passwords.
Further musings - I believe all working installs have been
to sda1 - i.e. a physical partition. All others have been to
a partition under sda2 - an extended partition.
I see a set of diagnostic installs in my future - same
distro to physical partition and to a partition under an
extended partition. [I hesitated to say LVM until I double
check definitions.]
Have you considered installing from USB stick instead?
Yes. But by personality I'm the type that will the "WHY?" of
a failure before looking for a workaround. Besides I've the
time to do the grunt work of repetitive testing for the
underpinnings of a decent bug report even if I don't have
the skills to fix it.
Anyway, for inconsistent errors (now works, now doesn't), sometimes is
better to replace the DVD drive for a new one (specially when is "old"
for today standards which means 4/5 years), and given their current
prices (~25€) that's something affordable.
Cost of a replacement drive is not an issue. As I prefer
brick-n-mortar it would be 8 hour round trip to get one. I'm
in *VERY* RURAL south west Missouri (livestock much more
common than people ;)
I've already run memtest86 and Seagate disk diagnostics demonstrating
that problems from that area is unlikely.
I need two diagnostics:
1. verify what's on the CD matches the ISO from which it
was generated.
[already have verified that the downloaded MD5SUM
matches repository]
http://www.debian.org/CD/faq/index.en.html#verify
debian.org reminds me of the original CPM-80 manual, info
there but dense in all possible connotations of the word
Perhaps I should have specified I was looking for end user
friendly tool.
2. verify target system reads CD/DVD correctly.
(...)
Is your CD/DVD reader capable of booting from it?
yes
Greetings,
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