HD-DVD Drive Not Found

[Zimmyzum]

Hello all.. I'm new to Linux Mint and quite a beginner on Linux in general, but hopefully we'll all become friends I'm just having a minor problem...

Well, I'm having an issue with my HD-DVD rom drive on my Acer Aspire 5920. If I put a standard DVD or CD in the drive, it will spin up, but I cannot find it in Amarok or any of the pre-installed movie players. I understand that new components are generally not very well supported, but I don't even care about the HD end of the spectrum in this instance. I just want to be able to have basic support for standard DVDs and CDs. I can watch ripped DVDs from the Vista partition on the disk, but I can't get any detection when I insert a disc into the drive. The fact that it spins up confuses me even further

Any suggestions?

[Husse]

I have seen a similar problem in the forum. I'll bump this so I'll see it later on hopefully with a solution
In the meantime please tell us what hardware you have

[Zimmyzum]

Thanks for your response.

As for my hardware, I'm not sure what you need..
The HD-DVD rom drive is made by Toshiba, I'm sure, but I don't know a model number or anything, The wifi adapter worked right away with Mint, Envy installed the driver for my nVidia GeForce 8600 GT.. only other things that don't work are my multimedia buttons (can live without), my touchpad touchzones (haven't researched it yet, not a priority), the integrated webcam (again, haven't looked into it yet, not a priority), and my optical drive.

Some specs:

1.5ghz Core 2 Duo
Mobile Intel PM965 Express Chipset (Santa Rosa)
Intel Wireless WiFi ABG
2 GB of DDR2 667 MHz memory
15.4" WXGA high-brightness (220-nit) Acer CrystalBrite TFT LCD, 1280 x 800 pixel resolution, 8 ms response time
NVIDIA GeForce 8600M GT with up to 1GB of TurboCache technology (256 MB of dedicated GDDR2 VRAM, up to 768 MB of shared system memory)
Dolby-certified surround sound system with two built-in stereo speakers and one subwoofer supporting low-frequency effects
160 GB hard disk drives
5-in-1 card reader
HD-DVD R/DVD-RW
Integrated Acer Crystal Eye webcam (0.3 megapixel)

Let me know if there's anything in particular you need to know.. I really appreciate the help. I've already recommended Linux Mint to two friends because of the outstanding out-of-the-box hardware support.. a friendly forum is just the icing on the cake

[Husse]

That's an impressive piece of laptop
I believe there are solutions to all your problems, except for the dvd one, in the forum - just search for it - or on the internet, then you search for solutions in Ubuntu which works mostly
The cd problem might have to do with the chipset but it is supported now, so.....
I can't find anything about problems with dvd and santa rosa (to many hits "off topic") and I'd need "hands on" for this...
Try to figure out exactly what drive you have and then google for that model and "santa rosa"
Don't hesitate to come back, but at the moment I don't have anything up my sleeve

[Zimmyzum]

Thanks for your help... yea, I've used Linux for a little while now, and I've always managed to solve everything by just readin forums until now, so I'll look into my other problems when I get to them.

I'm going to dig a bit deeper on the Ubuntu forums.. I'll probably boot into my Vista partition (gasp) and see if the device manager will display a model number. I'll let you know if I find anything out/hit another wall.

Thanks again.

[Husse]

There is a device manager in Mint too - in the menu > Hardware information
or type dev in the searchbox in the menu

[Zimmyzum]

Hardware information gives me a quick outline of a pop-up, and then nothing happens.


I'm running the Celena beta... would that be the problem?

[Husse]

Yes there is a bug in the device manager in Celena beta (to be resolved of course )

[Zimmyzum]

Well, the drive works perfectly in Ubuntu Feisty, Kubuntu Feisty, Mandriva, and DSL..

Are there any differences between Ubuntu Feisty and Linux Mint Celena that could cause an incompatibility?

[Husse]

There are differences and as time goes Mint drifts further away from Ubuntu. I can't think of anything except possibly the kernel

[Zimmyzum]

That's right! Isn't Mint using the same kernel as Edgy? If I can stumble my way through a Kernel upgrade, I'll let you know if it works. I know the Feisty kernel will work fine on my machine, as it did before..

Thanks for opening my eyes to the obvious, haha.

[Zimmyzum]

Well, I tried out some other distros while I waited for the final release of Mint, and they all found my DVD just fine. I went through the joys of the busybox bug installing Mint again (even though it's GNOME.. I'm a KDE fan )... all to find that my drive still does not work. I didn't see it in my hardware manager either. I don't know if this helps at all, but here's my xorg.conf:


Section "ServerLayout"
Identifier "Default Layout"
Screen "Default Screen" 0 0
InputDevice "Generic Keyboard"
InputDevice "Configured Mouse"
InputDevice "stylus" "SendCoreEvents"
InputDevice "cursor" "SendCoreEvents"
InputDevice "eraser" "SendCoreEvents"
InputDevice "Synaptics Touchpad"
EndSection

Section "Files"

# path to defoma fonts
FontPath "/usr/share/fonts/X11/misc"
FontPath "/usr/share/fonts/X11/cyrillic"
FontPath "/usr/share/fonts/X11/100dpi/:unscaled"
FontPath "/usr/share/fonts/X11/75dpi/:unscaled"
FontPath "/usr/share/fonts/X11/Type1"
FontPath "/usr/share/fonts/X11/100dpi"
FontPath "/usr/share/fonts/X11/75dpi"
FontPath "/var/lib/defoma/x-ttcidfont-conf.d/dirs/TrueType"
EndSection

Section "Module"
Load "bitmap"
Load "ddc"
Load "extmod"
Load "freetype"
Load "glx"
Load "int10"
Load "vbe"
EndSection

Section "InputDevice"
Identifier "Generic Keyboard"
Driver "kbd"
Option "CoreKeyboard"
Option "XkbRules" "xorg"
Option "XkbModel" "pc105"
Option "XkbLayout" "us"
EndSection

Section "InputDevice"
Identifier "Configured Mouse"
Driver "mouse"
Option "CorePointer"
Option "Device" "/dev/input/mice"
Option "Protocol" "ImPS/2"
Option "ZAxisMapping" "4 5"
Option "Emulate3Buttons" "true"
EndSection

Section "InputDevice"
Identifier "Synaptics Touchpad"
Driver "synaptics"
Option "SendCoreEvents" "true"
Option "Device" "/dev/psaux"
Option "Protocol" "auto-dev"
Option "HorizScrollDelta" "0"
EndSection

Section "InputDevice"
Identifier "stylus"
Driver "wacom"
Option "Device" "/dev/input/wacom"
Option "Type" "stylus"
Option "ForceDevice" "ISDV4" # Tablet PC ONLY
EndSection

Section "InputDevice"
Identifier "eraser"
Driver "wacom"
Option "Device" "/dev/input/wacom"
Option "Type" "eraser"
Option "ForceDevice" "ISDV4" # Tablet PC ONLY
EndSection

Section "InputDevice"
Identifier "cursor"
Driver "wacom"
Option "Device" "/dev/input/wacom"
Option "Type" "cursor"
Option "ForceDevice" "ISDV4" # Tablet PC ONLY
EndSection

Section "Monitor"
Identifier "Generic Monitor"
HorizSync 28.0 - 51.0
VertRefresh 43.0 - 60.0
Option "DPMS"
EndSection

Section "Device"
Identifier "Generic Video Card"
Driver "nvidia"
EndSection

Section "Screen"
Identifier "Default Screen"
Device "Generic Video Card"
Monitor "Generic Monitor"
DefaultDepth 24
SubSection "Display"
Depth 1
Modes "1600x1200" "1200x800" "1024x768" "800x600" "640x480"
EndSubSection
SubSection "Display"
Depth 4
Modes "1600x1200" "1200x800" "1024x768" "800x600" "640x480"
EndSubSection
SubSection "Display"
Depth 8
Modes "1600x1200" "1200x800" "1024x768" "800x600" "640x480"
EndSubSection
SubSection "Display"
Depth 15
Modes "1600x1200" "1200x800" "1024x768" "800x600" "640x480"
EndSubSection
SubSection "Display"
Depth 16
Modes "1600x1200" "1200x800" "1024x768" "800x600" "640x480"
EndSubSection
SubSection "Display"
Depth 24
Modes "1600x1200" "1200x800" "1024x768" "800x600" "640x480"
EndSubSection
EndSection

Section "Extensions"
Option "Composite" "Enable"
EndSection


Now that I'm running a stable release, can anyone help me out a bit?

[Husse]

Well xorg.conf is not the file to look at for a problem with a DVD drive - but fstab is (/etc/fstab)
I need some help here - how did you install
that is more than one drive? Never on a laptop I think
So it reads and burns CD discs OK?

[Zimmyzum]

A, yes, sorry. I knew fstab is what was needed, but if my grammar didn't give it away already, I was quite tired at the time of writing that last post

fstab:
# /etc/fstab: static file system information.
#
# <file system> <mount point> <type> <options> <dump> <pass>
proc /proc proc defaults 0 0
# /dev/sda6
UUID=bb710279-8ea0-4c02-bff1-39cce57c9838 / ext3 defaults,errors=remount-ro 0 1
# /dev/sda7
UUID=cabf9179-aec3-4a6c-a609-03d7b8b2805c /home ext3 defaults 0 2
# /dev/sda1
# /dev/sda2
# /dev/sda5
UUID=8158a11a-fca8-43db-b3fd-5666bd0ebd37 none swap sw 0 0
/dev/hda /media/cdrom0 udf,iso9660 user,noauto 0 0






No, I do not get CD playback or mounting at all. I think I read somewhere about editing where it's called "cdom0" to hda1.. but I'm not sure. I really like Mint, but I'll have no choice but to move to another distro if I can't get any sort of playback. I really don't want it to come to that, so your patience and help is greatly appreciated.

Just a side-note.. will it be possible to install the KDE packages for Mint once it's released? I know I can install the Kubuntu packages, but then I still have all the Gnome apps (I was too lazy to remove) and the Kubuntu splash/theme... I'm just wondering if the transition will be cleaner using the Mint KDE packages.

Thanks again, so very much.

[Zimmyzum]

Here's some fumbling I did after reading this:

http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php? ... unt&page=3


Post #25 seemed interesting and got me further than anything else, but I'm still at a loss.





sam@samsacer:~$ ls -a /dev | grep cd
ptycd
ttycd
sam@samsacer:~$ ls -a /dev | grep dvd
sam@samsacer:~$ ls -a /dev | grep dvdrw
sam@samsacer:~$ ls -a /dev | grep cdrom
sam@samsacer:~$ ls -a /dev | grep ptycd
ptycd
sam@samsacer:~$ ls -a /dev | grep ttycd
ttycd
sam@samsacer:~$ ls -a /dev/hda
ls: /dev/hda: No such file or directory
sam@samsacer:~$ ls -a /dev/sc0
ls: /dev/sc0: No such file or directory
sam@samsacer:~$ ls -a /dev/scd0
ls: /dev/scd0: No such file or directory
sam@samsacer:~$ ls -a /dev/hdb
ls: /dev/hdb: No such file or directory
sam@samsacer:~$ ls -a /dev/hdc
ls: /dev/hdc: No such file or directory
sam@samsacer:~$ ls -a /dev/hd
ls: /dev/hd: No such file or directory
sam@samsacer:~$ ls -a /dev/hd0
ls: /dev/hd0: No such file or directory
sam@samsacer:~$ ls -a /dev/hda
ls: /dev/hda: No such file or directory
sam@samsacer:~$ ls -l /dev | grep cd
crw-rw-rw- 1 root tty 2, 221 2007-09-27 09:44 ptycd
crw-rw-rw- 1 root tty 3, 221 2007-09-27 09:44 ttycd
sam@samsacer:~$ cat /etc/fstab
# /etc/fstab: static file system information.
#
# <file system> <mount point> <type> <options> <dump> <pass>
proc /proc proc defaults 0 0
# /dev/sda6
UUID=bb710279-8ea0-4c02-bff1-39cce57c9838 / ext3 defaults,errors=remount-ro 0 1
# /dev/sda7
UUID=cabf9179-aec3-4a6c-a609-03d7b8b2805c /home ext3 defaults 0 2
# /dev/sda1
# /dev/sda2
# /dev/sda5
UUID=8158a11a-fca8-43db-b3fd-5666bd0ebd37 none swap sw 0 0
/dev/hda /media/cdrom0 udf,iso9660 user,noauto 0 0
sam@samsacer:~$ sudo mount -t iso9660 /dev/hda /media/cdrom0
Password:
mount: special device /dev/hda does not exist





When I go into Computer, I see CD-ROM 1. When I right-lick and say "mount", it tells me, "Unable to mount: mount: special device /dev/hda does not exist
"

Properties:

Name: CD-ROM 1
Type: Folder
Contents: Nothing
Location: computer:///
Volume: /
Free Space: 4.8GB

[Husse]

If you can't use the DVD player how did you manage to install?
At least in the fstab files I've seen the cd has never been hda but hdb or hdb and hdc so try to change to hdb
Your post immediately before this appeared after I originally posted this - strange
Is there a folder in /media called cdrom1?
There should be one probably called cdrom0 or the same as in "Computer"
You must have a disc inserted if you right click and select mount

[Zimmyzum]

It worked for the install.. don't ask me how.

In /media, I see cdrom, cdrom0, sda1, and sda2.

I've had a commercially-produced CD in the drive the whole time.. as I said in the very beginning, the drive responds when I insert a CD by spinning it, but nothing mounts or can be read.

[Husse]

It seems that your system thinks it has two CD players and gets confused
Did you try to change the CD to hdb in fstab?

[Zimmyzum]

I tried hdb, hdc, hdd, and hde... all to no avail. I'm thinking it's just not supported by the kernel. I might have to just try the Kubuntu Gutsy Beta... if it works on there, I'll just stick with it until Mint uses a newer kernel.

I love my laptop, but all this brand-new hardware is a REAL pain in the ass when it comes to Linux.

Honestly though, thank you yet again. You have unbelievable patience, haha. I really do appreciate it and I look forward to giving Mint another try.. or perhaps I'll put it on my old Dell laptop. Should work fine with it's specs