Broken DVD disc leaves system unusable

[Carlos F.]

This is not (AFAIK) just an Ubuntu problem, but I had to blame somebody! ;)

A few minutes ago I tried to copy a file from a DVD to the hard disk (nautilus drag-n-drop). The DVD was kind of scratched, so the transfer seemed to fail. The problem is, no message appeared, the DVD started to sound the typical noise when it's scratched (we all know it) and the remaining time for the copy began to raise.

The system began to become unusable. I waited some minutes, but no luck. The DVD was spinning and making funny noises. Then I tried to eject by pressing the button, but no luck. After that, I pressed the "cancel" button, but it didn't cancel! It was just as if I hadn't clicked the button. Then nautilus kind of died, and I were unable to right-click on the desktop icon for the DVD, there were no icons at all.

So with an unsable system, tried ctrl-alt-backspace to restart the X, but the keyboard didn't respond. Sysrq didn't work anyway. So the last resort was to press the reset button.

Honestly I think that this shouldn't happen in a XXI century operating system. I had suffered from this since I remember (kernel 2.2 and very old redhats, problem with broken CDs), but apparently nobody fixed it.

Sorry if this has nothing to do with Ubuntu, but I'm using ubuntu after all and I had to fill the bug report somewhere...

[ranespa (felici-alex)]

I can confirm! Usually I use pkt-writing to store my data, so when a scratched disk is in, I am very bored by this behavior. Cancel button doesn't seem to work. Please find a solution!

[kko (kko)]

Confirming based on ranespa's and my own experiences. See also bug #75074.

The I/O related to CD/DVD-drives in Linux seems to be a complicated issue, and hard to tackle... (I am not sure but I'm guessing that this is a kernel level issue, or at least related to the interface through which the different programs access the I/O devices.)

[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.