[SOLVED] Solaris 10 x86 DVD-RW Funky Behavior on Writes

MrPatRyan · 06-23-2009, 08:55 PM

I'm experiencing general weirdness trying to burn CD / DVD's to a Sony NEC AD 7220 A CD / DVD RW drive on a Solaris 10 x86 AMD system.

I've done a lot of searching and haven't found any threads with people having the same symptoms as me.

I have a Sony Optiarc AD 7220 A CD-RW on a x86 AMD Athalon 1.6 ghz based server with 2 GB RAM.

The DVD-RW drive gets detected by BIOS (Phoenix TrustedCore 2.3) and reads disks fine. I installed Solaris 10.08 from a DVD using this drive.

However, trying to write to new blank media does not work properly, or at all.

1. Inside the Solaris 10 GUI (Gnome, a.k.a. Java Desktop), when I put in a blank CD-R, a dialog box "Format Media...?" pops up. If I click "Ok" it formats the blank CD and closes the session, CD ruined.

2. I open a terminal window, as root, and put in a blank CD. "mkisofs –r /home/foo 2>/dev/null | cdrw –i –p 1" will write a directory tree OK, but if I go back into gnome GUI and open and close the CD tray, again, up pops the "Format Media..." dialog box instead of the CD appearing on the desktop. If I restart vold (svcadm restart volfs) then open and close the CD tray, voila, the contents appear on desktop as CD icon.

3. When I try to write to a DVD-R: "cdrw -i /local/iso_image" It always fails with: Write Track 1....Failed. after a few minutes. It did in fact write part of the .iso but bails out with a failure.

MrPatRyan · 10-05-2009, 05:21 PM

OK - I fixed this problem.

I neglected to mention that part of the hardware configuration involves a IDE to SCSI bridge adapter that sticks onto the back of the DVD ROM. If I connect the Optiarc 7220 onto the IDE port rather than SCSI (adapter) it works fine, writes to DVD's of all flavors all day long.

What's weird is other brands of DVD RW drives DO work on the IDE to SCSI adapter, in particular Memorex MRX-530L. I guess their are subtle differences in the IDE codes that not all will work on the SCSI converter.

So, I just switched the make and model of the DVD RW drive and now it works fine on my Solaris 10 x86 server setup using SCSI.

06-23-2009, 08:55 PM	#1 (permalink)
MrPatRyan Registered User Join Date: Jun 2009 Posts: 2 OS: XP Pro SP2	[SOLVED] Solaris 10 x86 DVD-RW Funky Behavior on Writes I'm experiencing general weirdness trying to burn CD / DVD's to a Sony NEC AD 7220 A CD / DVD RW drive on a Solaris 10 x86 AMD system. I've done a lot of searching and haven't found any threads with people having the same symptoms as me. I have a Sony Optiarc AD 7220 A CD-RW on a x86 AMD Athalon 1.6 ghz based server with 2 GB RAM. The DVD-RW drive gets detected by BIOS (Phoenix TrustedCore 2.3) and reads disks fine. I installed Solaris 10.08 from a DVD using this drive. However, trying to write to new blank media does not work properly, or at all. 1. Inside the Solaris 10 GUI (Gnome, a.k.a. Java Desktop), when I put in a blank CD-R, a dialog box "Format Media...?" pops up. If I click "Ok" it formats the blank CD and closes the session, CD ruined. 2. I open a terminal window, as root, and put in a blank CD. "mkisofs –r /home/foo 2>/dev/null \| cdrw –i –p 1" will write a directory tree OK, but if I go back into gnome GUI and open and close the CD tray, again, up pops the "Format Media..." dialog box instead of the CD appearing on the desktop. If I restart vold (svcadm restart volfs) then open and close the CD tray, voila, the contents appear on desktop as CD icon. 3. When I try to write to a DVD-R: "cdrw -i /local/iso_image" It always fails with: Write Track 1....Failed. after a few minutes. It did in fact write part of the .iso but bails out with a failure.

10-05-2009, 05:21 PM	#2 (permalink)
MrPatRyan Registered User Join Date: Jun 2009 Posts: 2 OS: XP Pro SP2	Re: Solaris 10 x86 DVD-RW Funky Behavior on Writes OK - I fixed this problem. I neglected to mention that part of the hardware configuration involves a IDE to SCSI bridge adapter that sticks onto the back of the DVD ROM. If I connect the Optiarc 7220 onto the IDE port rather than SCSI (adapter) it works fine, writes to DVD's of all flavors all day long. What's weird is other brands of DVD RW drives DO work on the IDE to SCSI adapter, in particular Memorex MRX-530L. I guess their are subtle differences in the IDE codes that not all will work on the SCSI converter. So, I just switched the make and model of the DVD RW drive and now it works fine on my Solaris 10 x86 server setup using SCSI.