k3b, wodim, cdrtools, cdrecord (Solved)

[Gerd50]

Some days ago i wanted to burn an ISO file with k3b which i use in gnome. But it didn't work as usual. I don't have rights to
access my burner was the output of an k3b error message. At first, after searching the web for the error message, i thought it's
a udev problem. After reading tons of stuff and trying x things that perhaps might fix it, i found out it's 'wodim' that over the
years sometimes is working pretty well, but in other times it doesn't. Seems like we have these other times now

In LMDE the version of wodim is 1.1.11-2, in LM9 it's 1.1.10 which is working without problems. I don't know when 1.1.11-2
came into testing. The last time i was burning a CD without problems was in February. I didn't use k3b or another burning tool
later on until now.

The reason for the cdrtools, cdrecord, wodim trouble ist the Debian license policy

http://cdrecord.berlios.de/private/linux-dist.html

My question of the day to the distributor is, is it possible to offer the original cdrtools in LMDE instead of the wodim fork?

[viking777]

I know this doesn't answer your question Gerd, but why k3b? I can understand people not wanting to use Brasero because it frequently gives you rubbish information (like the disc you are trying to write to is too small or not supoorted or some such nonsense). My answer to that is xfburn which is considerably lighter than k3b, and considerably more reliable than Brasero, and doesn't use wodim, so your problem no longer exists.

[jeffreyC]

For the real cdrecord and cdrtools

http://deb.grml.org/

I agree, I have not burned a coaster with them.

[secipolla]

If I want some ISO properly burnt I use wodim (as root) directly.
If I want it really properly burnt I use -sao and speed=4 (CD) or speed=2 (DVD).

[jeffreyC]

I use Xfce so I set up a Thunar custom action to burn ISO's at 4x with cdrecord, two clicks and sit back while it does the work

[Gerd50]

Thanks Jeffrey, i will try the grml sources

Using k3b for me is only a question of personal preference viking. I could use another tool yes, but in this case i wanted
to make attentive on wodim. I can help myself, but what about newbies if they find they can't unlock their cdrom drives
after an interrupted burning process with a somehow weird error message. First i thought i need a hammer to open my drive
and i think it can't be, that i have to reboot my pc to open it.

Mandriva, Suse, Gentoo turned back to the original cdrtools. Maybe if some other distributions will go this way too, Debian
will follow or wodim could get better. I do not find it acceptable, a buggy package corrupts older cdrom drives.

@secipolla, i tried k3b as root as well, but the errors were the same. It's only working in TAO mode. Automatic or SAO mode
don't work.

@Jeffrey, i've added the grml sources and public key to my sources.list but don't get cdrtools/cdrecord as offer to install.

[jeffreyC]

I found them but you will need to use gdebi or dpkg -i to install them

http://deb.grml.org/pool/main/c/cdrtools/

http://deb.grml.org/pool/main/s/schilyutils/

It was a while ago since I installed them, I forgot they might no longer be current.

[Gerd50]

Thanks for the links Jeffrey. Unfortunately none of the pks works on my pc. cdrtools produces dozens of errors by running
make/make install. All i got was a folder opt/schily with important things missing. Because the command make is not
optimal for this package i tried smake. smake sayd something like - can't make "all". With the command 'smake all' it
was the same.

With the cdrecord and mkisofs pks k3b recognized them in usr/bin and choosed them instead of wodim. But the burning
process was interrupted with a buffer overflow. Instead of 4x burning speed k3b tried 63,5x even the max speed of my
burner is 24x. The good news is, my cdrom drive unlocked itself, i didn't need a hammer

A Ubuntu Lucid cdrecord package in a newer version locked the drive, made it unusable.

I think we really need a cdrtools package build for LMDE. Not only k3b, brasero too could profit from it.

[Gerd50]

Cdrtools 3.0 is available - http://cdrecord.berlios.de/private/cdrecord.html -

I could install it, but don't know how to use it All the Readme's are not written for me. Seems like i have to study
IT for one or two semester

J.Schily is not talking friendly about Linux, specifically Debian and GNU make. What i can understand after a stupid license
discussion years ago which ended in the wodim fork. (if i understand all the unicorns correctly)

[dagon]

J.Schily is not talking friendly about Linux, specifically Debian and GNU make. What i can understand after a stupid license
discussion years ago which ended in the wodim fork. (if i understand all the unicorns correctly)

Jörg Schilling is a real nightmare to deal with when it comes to any bugfixing. He always blames anyone else but his buggy code. Which resulted in ridiculous stuff like this in the code:
Edited by moderator

/*
* You are not allowed to modify or remove the following code.
* I am sorry that I am forced to do things like this, but defective
* versions of cdrecord cause a lot of work load to me and it seems
* to be impossible to otherwise convince SuSE to cooperate.
* As people contact me and bother me with the related problems,
* it is obvious that SuSE is violating subsection 6 in the preamble of
* the GPL.
*
* Note that although the SuSE test is effective only for SuSE, the
* intention to have non bastardized versions out is not limited
* to SuSE. It is bad to see that in special in the “Linux” business,
* companies prefer a model with many proprietary differing programs
* instead of cooperating with the program authors.
*/

and this is still sitting on his website:

Important Information:

Both RedHat and SuSE started to publish the bastardized and defective variants of cdrtools from Debian in their distributions.

The guy is impossible to work with. And I am sorry, but the OPs problem with k3b has nothing to do with cdrkit/wodim but is caused by system misconfiguration.

[dagon]

Whether someone is possible to work with or not has nothing to do with this issue. The guy has maintained a piece of software for the open source community for longer than some of the users have lived. In my case wodim has been giving me a hard time while cdrecord just worked.
@Gerd50, check the link:
http://deb.grml.org/pool/main/c/cdrtools/
I think cdrecord and mkisofs are the ones you want. Worked for me in Mint 10... But then I just did it for the fun of it and not because anything was broken. I don't know if you need to set up k3b afterwards.

For license issues and who said what stuff my personal recommendation is this. Just stay out of it. Life is much to short for wasting time on arguments.

[doktornotor]

Whether someone is possible to work with or not has nothing to do with this issue.

I beg to differ. When you ask:

My question of the day to the distributor is, is it possible to offer the original cdrtools in LMDE instead of the wodim fork?

then my answer would for sure be no. Introducing packages with known moronic upstream only causes maintenance troubles for no gain. This Schilling guy is about on par with Dan J. Bernstein whose "infallible" products (qmail/djbdns) are pretty much unusable without tons of patching and hence undistributable (except for "from-source" distros). They are also an extreme maintenance PITA and the guy has earned such a "great" reputation that people refuse to touch these simply as a matter of principle.

[Gerd50]

My debian based installations were not misconfigured. They were misupdated sometime last year. Because i don't
burn cds often, i don't know when it happened. The symtoms were, k3b no longer working with default settings
and my CD-ROM drive was locked after a burning process. I had to restart my pc in order to open it.

I was looking for a solution and found the hint to use the original cdrecord instead of wodim. But a working version
wasn't available at that time. Somehow in my eyes it had to do with the lincense discussion hickhack.

Since i changed from Gnome to XFCE i use xfburn, but have trouble with a locked CD-Rom drive again. This is the reason
why i wanted to try cdrecord yesterday. And i want to try mkisofs in order to create iso files from qt4-fsarchiver fsa files.

Thanks for the link dagon. I could install both packages and both are working

[iironjade]

Another vote for Xfburn. Much less trouble than K3B, if not quite as pretty.

[secipolla]

I never said to you to use k3b as root.
I said that I used wodim as root and it never failed to burn ISOs (many, many times in the same CD-RW).
If you have more than one burning device , run 'wodim --devices' first, then
wodim dev='/dev/sr0' -v -sao speed=4 xxxx.iso
(remove the 'dev=xxx' part if you have only one device)

[doktornotor]

Since i changed from Gnome to XFCE i use xfburn, but have trouble with a locked CD-Rom drive again. This is the reason
why i wanted to try cdrecord yesterday. And i want to try mkisofs in order to create iso files from qt4-fsarchiver fsa files.

Until you actually post some real info instead of these pointless rants, you will NOT get any meaningful advise. Stop ranting and post the error messages...

[Gerd50]

dagon wrote:

@Gerd50, check the link:
http://deb.grml.org/pool/main/c/cdrtools/
I think cdrecord and mkisofs are the ones you want. Worked for me in Mint 10...

That was the meaningful advise i needed, i have what i wanted, thread is marked as solved. End and over doktornotor.