Cannot install from CD-ROM with broken DMA

[Michal Suchanek]

I tried installing on an old Pentium (I) system but the installer won't work.
It booted, detected hardware, went through language and keyboard selection. And then produced a kernel panic.

The panic was in something like cdrom_start_read. The cd-rom is an old Mitsumi 8x drive that never worked well with DMA. It usually either locked up or crashed the system when dma was enabled.

I was able to finish the installation by manually turning off dma in the second terminal.

However, the installed system is not of much use. It enables dma automatically, and hdparm is not installed to turn dma off.

Note that I was able to install Hoary (and quite a few other earlier distros) using this exact cdrom drive.

[Colin Watson (cjwatson)]

Kernel panics are kernel bugs, so I'll send this there.

As a workaround, booting with the 'cdrom-detect/cdrom_hdparm=-d0' parameter should help.

[Matthew Garrett (mjg59)]

Could you attach the output of

sudo hdparm -h /dev/cdrom

so that the drive can be blacklisted by default? Thanks!

[Michal Suchanek (hramrach)]

I tried to connect the cdrom to a different computer to get the info but it worked there. I also had a problem with a Sony cdrom connected to an i440BX mainboard. The system would lock up when trying to read the cd, and it required me to wait for a while, press a key(!), and then the kernel woud reset the interface and disable dma. It also worked when I tried to connect the drive to a different board.

So I would suggest disabling cdrom dma on i4x0 chipsets by default. It works sometimes but not always.

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

Beginning with the Hardy Heron 8.04 development cycle, all open Ubuntu kernel bugs need to be reported against the "linux" kernel package. We are automatically migrating this linux-source-2.6.15 kernel bug to the new "linux" package. We appreciate your patience and understanding as we make this transition. Also, if you would be interested in testing the upcoming Intrepid Ibex 8.10 release, it is available at http://www.ubuntu.com/testing . Please let us know your results. Thanks!

[Leann Ogasawara (leannogasawara)]

Hi Michal,

If you can please confirm this issue with the latest Alpha release for Intrepid that would be great - http://www.ubuntu.com/testing . Thanks.

[Leann Ogasawara (leannogasawara)]

The Ubuntu Kernel Team is planning to move to the 2.6.27 kernel for the upcoming Intrepid Ibex 8.10 release. As a result, the kernel team would appreciate it if you could please test this newer 2.6.27 Ubuntu kernel. There are one of two ways you should be able to test:

1) If you are comfortable installing packages on your own, the linux-image-2.6.27-* package is currently available for you to install and test.

--or--

2) The upcoming Alpha5 for Intrepid Ibex 8.10 will contain this newer 2.6.27 Ubuntu kernel. Alpha5 is set to be released Thursday Sept 4. Please watch http://www.ubuntu.com/testing for Alpha5 to be announced. You should then be able to test via a LiveCD.

Please let us know immediately if this newer 2.6.27 kernel resolves the bug reported here or if the issue remains. More importantly, please open a new bug report for each new bug/regression introduced by the 2.6.27 kernel and tag the bug report with 'linux-2.6.27'. Also, please specifically note if the issue does or does not appear in the 2.6.26 kernel. Thanks again, we really appreicate your help and feedback.

[Ralph Janke (txwikinger)]

Unfortunately this bug report is being closed because we received no response to the last inquiry for information. However, the Intrepid Ibex 8.10 Beta release was most recently announced - http://www.ubuntu.com/testing/intrepid/beta . If you are able to confirm this is still an issue with this most recent release please feel free to reopen this report. To reopen the bug report you can click on the current status, under the Status column, and change the Status back to "New". Thanks.

[Michal Suchanek (hramrach)]

This seem to be no longer a problem with Ubuntu 2009.04

The kernel reads from the CD and does not panic.