Re: Failures burning with K3b

At 15:41:11 on Wednesday Wednesday 24 December 2008, Anne Wilson 
<[email protected]> wrote:
> On Wednesday 24 December 2008 11:42:02 Stan Goodman wrote:
> > The system is openSuSE v10.3.
> >
> > Yesterday I downloaded to iso images openSuSE v11.1, for 32-bit and
> > 64-bit architectures; all yielded correct MD5 results in K3b.
> >
> > I first burned the 64-bit image, checking the "Verify" box. When the
> > operation was over, there was an announcement that there was "nothing
> > to verify".
> >
> > I repeated the operation with the 32-bit image; at the end of the
> > operation, the disk was ejected and there was a laughter sound to
> > inform me of an error, so the verification failed.
> >
> > I repeated this operation, without verification. At the end, K3b
> > announced that it had been completed successfully. But both of these
> > disks failed to boot the T21 laptop for which they were intended.
> > When either of them is inserted into a running open SuSE system, the
> > system seems to inspect them normally, but the CDROM drive does not
> > appear in the "Disk information" list in Konqueror.
> >
> > When I insert the 64-bit disk into the T21, it does boot the machine,
> > and correctly announces that it cannot be used in that 32-bit
> > machine. Either K3b has become corrupted or the drive has become
> > defective; the drive reads normally. Short of substituting a new
> > drive, is there a practical way to determine which?
> >
> > I also tried to burn a DVD with some ordinary (non-image) files. This
> > two resulted in the laughter. When I insert it into the drive in
> > order to try to inspect it, the drive's activity LED never goes off,
> > so I have no idea what is there, except that I have made another
> > coaster.
>
> Stan, while your diagnosis may be right, there could be other reasons
> for the failure to boot.  I'd suggest that you should run md4sum (or
> sha1sum) on both the iso and the /dev/cdrom or wherever your disk will
> be found.  After that you'll know for sure whether it's a bad burn or
> something else.
>
> There are known problems with verification on some k3b installations -
> I don't know whether they are hardware or software caused.
>
> Anne

Thank you for this advice. But it doesn't consider the facts that the burn 
of one file did (apparently) produce a usable, though unverified, disk, 
while attempts with the others (with or without the checked Verification 
box) yielded something that can't even be seen by any software. I think 
the problem is deeper than only verification, and that I have to examine 
the drive, perhaps by using it on another machine.

Thanks again...
-- 
Stan Goodman
Qiryat Tiv'on
Israel