Dvd drive error messages FC4 on HP dv4182EA

[WoofDef]

Recently installed FC4 on an HP Pavilion dv4182EA laptop. I'm managing to resolve most issues.

However something keeps polling the dvd burner drive from somewhere before X starts onwards - unless a disc is in the drive, dmesg reports (over and over again):

ATAPI device hdb:
Error: Not ready -- (Sense key=0x02)
Incompatible medium installed -- (asc=0x30, ascq=0x00)
The failed "Read Cd/Dvd Capacity" packet command was:
"25 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 "

*Much*, much googling: it seems something very similar to this was reported years ago - I think it means "cdrom drive draw is closed but there's no medium for me to read" (so what!?).

A patch was developed many kernel versions ago (I'm using the current kernel and have done a full yum update) so presumably this bug should not exist.

Keeping a cd in the drive just to stop my log overflowing with an inconsequential messages is boring.

Anyone else get this? Is there something I can disable to stop these messages?

[jim]

file a bug against it

[WoofDef]

(sigh) yet *another* FC4 bug (I've filed another already). I don't think I will ever install FC again. It seems there are now much easier alternatives for laptops in particular, and for stability there's RHEL/CentOS.

But for now I'll persevere. I've already put many hours into getting FC4 to run on this laptop, and so far I'm winning.

If it's a bug per se shouldn't someone else also be getting this? There are plenty of HP dv4000-series laptops around.

[WoofDef]

FIXED!!!!
====

Eventually I stumbled on this http://www.humboldt.edu/~te8/misc/hpzd8230us.html
- same issue with another HP laptop and FC4. Dr Evans also googled like mad but he got lucky - many haven't - there are a lot of dead threads on this issue all over the net going back some years. People get told there's something wrong with the drive, some application that keeps polling the drive, the kernel etc etc.

The actual bug report is https://bugzilla.redhat.com/bugzilla....cgi?id=167542

The bug is in hald

The new FC4 kernel 2.6.15-1.1830 fixes this.

As a workaround for kernel 2.6.14 and (presumably) earlier versions, add this just before the optical drive comment line in /usr/share/hal/fdi/policy/10osvendor/10-storage-policy.fdi

<match key="storage.bus" string="ide">
        <match key="storage.model" string="TSSTcorpCD/DVDW TS-L532M">
          <match key="block.device" string="/dev/hdb">
            <merge key="storage.media_check_enabled" type="bool">false</merge>
          </match>
        </match>
      </match>

The problematic message then only appears three times during boot, then stops. This workaround stops automounting of the dvd drive but who cares. The string="TSSTcorpCD/DVDW TS-L532M" comes from examining the contents of the output from (as root)

 # lshal | less

Don't know if this is specific to Toshiba burners - my laptop has the same dvd burner as above. I can only assume that the patch which was developed for the early report I found (years old - also Red Hat) either never made it into the kernel tree or only just has with 2.6.15.

Many many thanks to Dr Evans for working out the hal policy fix and for putting this on the web.