war story: puzzled by DVD writing

[ted leslie]

i got to feed up in years past with issues on bluray. so went to nero for
Linux.  you can try the 30 day trial if for no other reason then to
compare.
.tl
On Jul 7, 2013 12:15 PM, "D. Hugh Redelmeier" <hugh-pmF8o41NoarQT0dZR+AlfA at public.gmane.org> wrote:

> CD / DVD / Blu-Ray writing is such a complicated and arcane area that
> I try to avoid trying to understand it.  I just want to use one or two
> tools and have them work.  But they fail in complicated, obscure, and
> finger-pointy ways.
>
> Case study: backing up files from an external hard disk onto a DVD+R.
>
> - Ubuntu 12.04 + updates
> - k3b (seems like to best GUI; I'm open to suggestions)
> - modestly old notebook
> - internal DVD burner, also USB 2.0 external burner
> - USB 2.0 hard drive, NTFS filesystem
> - simple burn (no multi-session, no rewriteable, ...)
>
> Most burns work OK.  On either burner.
>
> Some burns fail.
>
> Seems to be repeatable for the same dataset (i.e. collection of files
> being burnt).  Thank goodness!  Therefor probably not bad burn medium.
>
> A failure seems to be repeatable on external burner if internal burner
> fails.  (We haven't systematically tried to see if external fails on more
> datasets than the internal.)  Therefor probably not a burner hardware
> problem.
>
> Upon failure, k3b reports: "cdrecord has no permission to open the
> device", "You may use K3bsetup to solve this problem"".
>
> This report is nonsense, and lead me to waste a lot of time and DVDs
> playing with permissions.  If it were true, no similar burn should work
>
> The actual failure shows up in the middle of "debugging information".
> Not easy to find: lines 3823-3856 of 7720.  And those lines are quite
> unclear to me (and, apparently, K3b).  I will quote those at the end
> of the message.
>
> After much experimentation, I have come to the conclusion that the
> root cause of the problem is that K3b (or, more accurately, wodim, on
> behalf of K3b) was not able to pass data to the burner drive fast
> enough and a burner underrun resulted:
>
> Evidence:
>
> - [weak] a newer notebook, with the same software, and the same
>   external hard drive and external burner, could burn the same project
>   with no problem.  This supports the idea that the CPU is the weak
>   link (seems counter-intuitive to me) or perhaps the I/O subsystems
>   (excluding the drives themselves).
>
> - if I turn down the burning speed (to 2.5x from "auto") burns that
>   failed now work
>
> - if I tick the K3b burning option "create image", burning works.
>   This option causes K3b to create an image on the internal hard drive
>   before starting to burn the disk.  The advantage is that the
>   external USB drive and the NTFS filesystem no longer can cause a
>   delay in the middle of the actual burn.  The disadvantage is that
>   you need almost 5G of free space (and the whole process takes a bit
>   longer).
>
> Counter-evidence:
>
> - the K3b error message (but I'm sure it is wrong)
>
> - the wodim error message (which says nothing explicit about buffer
>   underrun)
>
> - the log claims that "burnfree" (buffer underrun recovery) is
>   enabled.  Nothing in the log shows that this fired.  In a sensible
>   world, underruns, even ones recovered from, should be reported.
>
> - amazing amount of noise/information on the web from the author of
>   cdrecord claiming lots of bugs in wodim (an "unauthorized" fork).
>
> I welcome advice and war stories from others about these issues.
>
> What's your take on the cdrecord wars?
>
> What burning software do you use?  Why?
>
> Here's a relevant thread on the K3b support forum.  I didn't start it but
> I've revived it:
>   <http://forum.kde.org/viewtopic.php?f=153&t=108537>
>
> Finally, here is the relevant part of the K3b debugging output:
>
> Track 01: 3745 of 4351 MB written (fifo 100%) [buf  99%]   6.3x.
> Errno: 5 (Input/output error), write_g1 scsi sendcmd: no error
> CDB:  2A 00 00 1D 42 DC 00 00 1F 00
> status: 0x2 (CHECK CONDITION)
> Sense Bytes: 72 0B 00 00 00 00 00 0E 09 0C 00 00 00 02 00 00
> Sense Key: 0x0 No Additional Sense, Segment 11
> Sense Code: 0x00 Qual 0x02 (end-of-partition/medium detected) Fru 0x0
> Sense flags: Blk 0 (not valid)
> cmd finished after 229.558s timeout 200s
> /usr/bin/wodim: A write error occured.
> /usr/bin/wodim: Please properly read the error message above.
> Errno: 5 (Input/output error), test unit ready scsi sendcmd: no error
> CDB:  00 00 00 00 00 00
> status: 0x2 (CHECK CONDITION)
> Sense Bytes: 71 00 03 00 00 00 00 0A 00 00 00 00 0C 00 00 00
> Sense Key: 0x3 Medium Error, deferred error, Segment 0
> Sense Code: 0x0C Qual 0x00 (write error) Fru 0x0
> Sense flags: Blk 0 (not valid)
> cmd finished after 0.001s timeout 200s
> write track data: error after 3927367680 bytes
> Writing  time:  934.099s
> Average write speed   3.6x.
> Min drive buffer fill was 31%
> Fixating...
> Errno: 5 (Input/output error), close track/session scsi sendcmd: no error
> CDB:  5B 00 02 00 00 00 00 00 00 00
> status: 0x2 (CHECK CONDITION)
> Sense Bytes: 70 00 05 00 00 00 00 0A 00 00 00 00 72 04 00 00
> Sense Key: 0x5 Illegal Request, Segment 0
> Sense Code: 0x72 Qual 0x04 (empty or partially written reserved track) Fru
> 0x0
> Sense flags: Blk 0 (not valid)
> cmd finished after 0.004s timeout 1000s
> Fixating time:    0.007s
> /usr/bin/wodim: fifo had 62051 puts and 61861 gets.
> /usr/bin/wodim: fifo was 0 times empty and 25505 times full, min fill was
> 92%.
>
> cdrecord command:
> -----------------------
> /usr/bin/wodim -v gracetime=2 dev=/dev/sr0 speed=8 -sao
> driveropts=burnfree -data -tsize=2227813s -
> --
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