CD-ROM not spinning down

[Fridtjof Busse]

On Ubuntu 9.10 x86_64 I have a problem with the CD/DVD drive.
If I put a disc in, and even if I unmount it, the drive doesn't spin down. It keeps running at full speed, which is quite noisy. I spins down every couple of seconds for a second, but then goes back to full speed.
dmesg shows no errors.

ata3: SATA link up 1.5 Gbps (SStatus 113 SControl 300)
ata3.00: ATAPI: Optiarc DVD RW AD-7243S, 1.02, max UDMA/100, ATAPI AN
ata3.00: configured for UDMA/100
scsi 2:0:0:0: CD-ROM Optiarc DVD RW AD-7243S 1.02 PQ: 0 ANSI: 5
sr0: scsi3-mmc drive: 48x/48x writer dvd-ram cd/rw xa/form2 cdda tray
Uniform CD-ROM driver Revision: 3.20
sr 2:0:0:0: Attached scsi CD-ROM sr0
sr 2:0:0:0: Attached scsi generic sg2 type 5

[Daryl Tester (dt-launchpad)]

"Me too" (DVD is a SATA Pioneer DVR-218L, also Ubuntu 9.10 "server" x86_64). I'll add that I'm a Unix veteran, but a udev newbie, so I'm not sure which I'm seeing here is cause or effect.

Running "udevadm monitor" as root shows a "continual burst" of change events of the form:

KERNEL[1262122476.998785] change /devices/pci0000:00/0000:00:1c.3/0000:03:00.0/host6/target6:0:0/6:0:0:0 (scsi)
KERNEL[1262122476.999378] change /devices/pci0000:00/0000:00:1c.3/0000:03:00.0/host6/target6:0:0/6:0:0:0/block/sr0 (block)
UDEV [1262122476.999401] change /devices/pci0000:00/0000:00:1c.3/0000:03:00.0/host6/target6:0:0/6:0:0:0 (scsi)
UDEV [1262122478.268607] change /devices/pci0000:00/0000:00:1c.3/0000:03:00.0/host6/target6:0:0/6:0:0:0/block/sr0 (block)
KERNEL[1262122478.280167] change /devices/pci0000:00/0000:00:1c.3/0000:03:00.0/host6/target6:0:0/6:0:0:0 (scsi)
KERNEL[1262122478.280328] change /devices/pci0000:00/0000:00:1c.3/0000:03:00.0/host6/target6:0:0/6:0:0:0/block/sr0 (block)
UDEV [1262122478.280350] change /devices/pci0000:00/0000:00:1c.3/0000:03:00.0/host6/target6:0:0/6:0:0:0 (scsi)
UDEV [1262122478.502319] change /devices/pci0000:00/0000:00:1c.3/0000:03:00.0/host6/target6:0:0/6:0:0:0/block/sr0 (block)

This then appears to quiesce until the drive spins down, at which point another burst of events will occur.

(The following is conjecture from newbieness).

Editing /lib/udev/rules.d/60-cdrom_id.rules and modifying the action from "add|change" to "add" (plus appropriate restart) stops the spinup, but also nobbles the creation of /dev/cdrom and friends (of course, as that's its purpose in life). I guess the issue here is should we be seeing continual change events from/for the DVD, or should cdrom_id be running on every change event?

This issue doesn't seem to have garnered much interest. :-(

[Aleksey Vorona (voronaam)]

I do see this problem too. It seems to be a very old problem, bug #254369 describes it too, has no solution, recent comments and is open for 1.5y now

Checked with udevadm monitor - exactly same behavior.