Bug 25150

Created attachment 11199 [details]
Brasero fills up power calibration area and stops.

Strange.
Now i tried Brasero instead.  Different error:  It fills up power calibration area on the disc and stops.  Attaching its log.  Wasted two DVD+R on this.

I've seen this occasionally.  It usually has to do with either defective media or with a failing laser in your burner.  

If you're using blank media from a spindle pack, try selecting one from several disks down in the stack.  If the error persists, try swapping out the burner for a new one (currently about USD24).

Alternatively, you can try xfburn rather than k3b.  I have also seen scenarios in the past (I usually run cauldron, so your error may be present in MGA6), where xfburn works and k3b gets this error.  The only downside is that xfburn doesn't have a VERIFY function, so you have to use "cmp -l /dev/sr0 xxxx.iso" to manually verify.

Well If so this ends up issuing bugs for misleading error messages instead...  "Invalid argument" ??

Will try to open the drive and remove dust, and trying other media; CD and DVD+R (i was wrong above, it was DVD-R i burned)

If it helps, failing lasers tend to produce this error far more frequently with double-sided (DL) disks than single-sided.  I doubt that +-R is significant (I've always used +R).  I also suspect that burning CDs will work fine.

CC: (none) => ftg

@Morgan
Tell me:
- what ISO you are trying to burn (you say just 'live')
- confirm that it is a *DVD* you are trying to burn (a CD would be too small)
- under what desktop
I have all desktops & the main CD/DVD burners, so may be able to try to reproduce your faults.
I always used DVD-RW to be able to re-use them.
------
@Frank
> use "cmp -l /dev/sr0 xxxx.iso" to manually verify
This is a marvelous ruse; can you really cite the optical device as one of the filenames to compare? I once documented how to read back an ISO DVD to disc in order to checksum it, but cmp would be much easier.

CC: (none) => lewyssmith

7.1 Live xfce x86_64. And it works perfectly to put and use on USB.

Yes a DVD+R disc, TDK brand, 16x, 4,7GB, blue colour, round, flat... and now i actually see the ones left in the package also say "RW" in a styled manner i did not bother do decode last time i read... (now digging up the ones i tossed... thanks for asking! ;) )  I will try to blow dust out of the burner, and get other type disc.  And maybe also set it to low speed manually.

Running Plasma. I also have gnome, xfce, cinnemon installed for curiosity but not used for long...

Mageia 6 fully updated (incl testing repos...) running on my old workstation, with Intel i7.

The burner spun for something between ten seconds and half a minute before the programs told (different) error.  Neither program ever begun counting percentage.

Currently i believe the burner is aged and something goes wrong during speed/power calibration, but especially K3b fail to forward that message properly to the user, and *that* should be the bug.

Summary: K3b + growisofs = Invalid argument => K3b say "Invalid argument" when power calibration fail (?)

(In reply to Lewis Smith from comment #5)
> ------
> @Frank
> > use "cmp -l /dev/sr0 xxxx.iso" to manually verify
> This is a marvelous ruse; can you really cite the optical device as one of
> the filenames to compare? I once documented how to read back an ISO DVD to
> disc in order to checksum it, but cmp would be much easier.

Yes, everything in Unix is a file.  It's not perfect; you may get a message that one or the other hit EOF before its partner, but that can be ignored.  As long as you don't get comparison errors or I/O errors, you're good.

@Frank : thanks for this useful tip.

@Morgan : Thank you for the information you gave. I will re-run your case, although a ropey DVD drive is almost certainly the root of your woes.
BTW It is never recommended to write DVDs at maximum speed, but 4x. My own experience of k3b 'automatic' write speed is that is what it chooses.
> K3b fail to forward that message properly to the user, and *that* should be
> the bug.
And for Brasero and Xfburn? I have my doubts, because in spite of all the error messages, misleading or not, the final
> :-( write failed: Invalid argument
"write failed" is clear enough to make any user question his hardware if errors are repeated.

"Write failed" user already see ;) and want to know why.
"Invalid argument" is then definitely misleading.

(if we in this bug have guessed the cause correctly)

Morgan
I have just tried under M6/Plasma k3b, Brasero & Xfburn with a DVD-RW on the M7 Live 64-bit Xfce ISO, all with no problems.
We must beg to differ about this.
> "Write failed" user already see ;) and want to know why.
> "Invalid argument" is then definitely misleading.
Presumably k3b is seeing & reporting this from the flakey DVD drive. It, and the other burner programs, may see & report something different.
There is no dispute that your drive is faulty; it is not then fair to raise bugs that the various burner programs report strange errors.
So please excuse the closure. You can re-open it, but I doubt that that would go anywhere.

Status: NEW => RESOLVED
Resolution: (none) => INVALID

Thank you for the investigation!
Even when I complain about the error message presented by the program, it is not Mageias fault anyway :)