[Tfug] fail to read cdrom in ubuntu

[Bexley Hall]

Hi Jeremy,

> > My first thought was that somehow the drive must have
> broken, probably due to
> > lonliness because nobody uses it at work.  Still, the
> tray works and the light
> > stays on shortly once the disc is in.
> 
> Ya, it acts as if it is having trouble reading the TOC or
> something
> and then times out. If you have lshw installed, it will
> report that
> the drive has nodisc.

Is there a way (either on the drive or in a configuration
file or in the kernel itself) for you to force the drive
to run in 1X mode?  DVDs and CDs use different wavelengths
(complicated optical stuff... like rainbows and leprechauns)
and, perhaps, you're just not getting enough "signal" for
the drive to report that it really *is* seeing "something".

> I spent way too long pouring through bug reports on Friday
> and saw
> quite a few reports of similar symptoms, but they usually
> ended in the
> conclusion that there was a hardware failure. I find that

<frown>  Sounds like a cop-out.  Software guys blaming the
hardware guys -- until the hardware guys can *prove* the
hardware works (before the software guys will bother to
look for THE bug in their code  :< )

> extremely
> unlikely since I have two machines (1 AMD and 1 Intel, same
> cdrom)
> that failed in the exact same way at the same time, i.e.
> after upgrade.

Agreed.