Serious bug in recent Linux kernels?

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Posted: Wed Jul 15, 2009 5:49 pm

This week I tried several new Linux distros. Fedora 11 (DVD and Live CD), Kubuntu 9.04, openSUSE 11.1 (DVD and Live CD).
Did not manage to run (Live CD) or install any of them.
Always received "Buffer I/O error on device sr0" messages.
It seems I am not the only one, since a quick Google search revealed that lots of people had this problem.
Thought that my RW disks (Emtec DVD+RW and Princo CD-RW) were defective, but they work fine and without errors in Winblows XP.
Then I suspected my almost 4 years old NEC DVD-Writer; had tried some spare CD-ROM units, with the same results.
So, the only thing left are broken ATA kernel modules.
I managed to install Debian 5.0, but it's not my cup of tea since I could not figure a way to have root access (sudo does not work).
I turned back to Slackware 12.0 (which installed without a single problem) and later today I'll try to update it to 12.2.
I shall post this on several Linux oriented sites too (kernel.org and distrowatch).

Posted: Wed Jul 15, 2009 6:54 pm

I had a similar problem installing Windows 7, but in my case it was the dvd-rom drive which was acting up....

[Runs away hiding in a dark corner]

Posted: Wed Jul 15, 2009 9:16 pm

Which version of the kernel are you talking about? I'm 2.6.28-13 and its fine ( in Ubuntu at least)

Posted: Wed Jul 15, 2009 10:48 pm

I am not certain. I have to look what kernels are used by the distros I tried. Slack 12.2 install went ok. It has 2.6.27.7. Now I try to install ATI drivers, which is a time consuming PITA under Slack. I have no acceleration at all under X, and scrolling is like slugs on sleeping pills.

Posted: Thu Jul 16, 2009 6:56 am

Unfortunately ATI graphics cards have a bad rep with Linux Sad

. If you are not installing to a laptop i'd recommend an Nvidia card. ( but if you are geeky enough to be able to use Slackware properly you know that already! Very Happy

)

Posted: Fri Jul 17, 2009 12:14 am

Kabuto Sama wrote:

I managed to install Debian 5.0, but it's not my cup of tea since I could not figure a way to have root access (sudo does not work).

For Debian, you type su - in terminal and then enter the root passoword.

Posted: Fri Jul 17, 2009 7:01 pm

Maybe the OP isn't quite as geeky as I gave him/her credit for!

Posted: Fri Jul 17, 2009 7:48 pm

Well, geeky enough for Slack, but I don't have experience with Debian.
In the past 11 years I used RedHat, Fedora, Mandriva (back when it was called Mandrake), SUSE/openSUSE and Slackware.
Tried K(ubuntu), but I am used to the full power of a Linux distro and not like much desktop ones. And this is just the second time I try Debian (first time was 4 years ago with Debian 3.0), so pardon my ignorance Wink

Baiting Guru Joined: 04 Jan 2006 Posts: 3193

Ubuntu is a fully powered Linux. You just have to choose what you want installed, instead of having nineteen different applications that do the same thing installed from the beginning.

I had a similar problem with my last motherboard. I paid a new year's membership for Mandriva Club and found Mandriva didn't work. Crying or Very sad

In fact nothing but Ubuntu would see both my SATA controller and my graphics card.

There are a few annoyances with the modern installs that don't let you log in as root easily. One of them is the difficulty of getting a file-manager as root. I have a useful Nautilus script for that.

Master of Master Baiters Joined: 08 Apr 2006 Posts: 571

Ubuntu user here, actually just moved up to Karmic Alpha 2 because it supports the hardware in my laptop better than Jaunty. When I do a fresh install I cut out all the apps I don't need and have a very basic system, and then essentially live out of terminals and IDEs the rest of the time. Ubuntu is really nice even for that because it is the only distro I've used that I've been able to painlessly get hardware support for some of the weird setups I have Wink

I use Windows 7 on my big-ol-desktop though. Just not hardcore enough I guess...

As to the mentioned problem, no problems here, just the builtin mic on my laptop apparently doesn't work on Ubuntu before Karmic.

Posted: Sat Jul 18, 2009 5:31 pm

As a sidenote, last night I managed to f*** up 2 BENQ DVD-R 16x. Apparently, they are not compatible with my NEC 3540A burner.
A tried and tested Traxdata went ok. Now I have to find some friends with different burners and try to swap the remaining 18 BENQ's for some other brand of disks.

Posted: Mon Jul 20, 2009 12:35 am

Installed Kubuntu 9.04. So far I like it, and get-apt .deb is much better than .rpm and .tgz I was used to. ATI drivers still a headache (why o why did I get a HD 3650 more than a year ago?). Oh well... I wanted a graphic card manufactured by ASUS, Gf8600 GT to be more specific. The shop did not had it in stock, so I settled for another ASUS (the HD3650). Bugger...
Talk about strange combinations... My mobo chipset is nVidia, with Gf7050 o/b graphics.
What still bothers me about K(Ubuntu) is I cannot boot in runlevel 3. Old habits die hard. Used to boot in command line then startx.

Master of Master Baiters Joined: 08 Apr 2006 Posts: 571

Should be able to boot into the runlevel of your choice by passing it at boottime through GRUB. Haven't tried that since Ubuntu 6.06 though so maybe it doesn't work like it used to. I just switch between X and text terminal with CTRL+ALT+F1 (through F6) for text terminals and CTRL+ALT+F7 to switch back to X. EDIT: Nope, no multi-user console runlevel in Ubuntu... though you can make your own apparently if your into that kind of thing... just rm /etc/rc3.d/S*kdm and you have a runlevel 3 Smile

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