problems with CDRom

[Walter Garcia-Fontes]

I have a DVD R/W unit and from time to time it freezes. This is a Dell
Precision 690 with Fedora Core 5, latest kernel.

At bootup I get some error messages that I attach
(/var/log/dmesg). The systema allocates /dev/hda to the cdrom (the
hard disk partitions get sda, sdb, ...). The lines referring to the
unit in /var/log/dmesg are:


Probing IDE interface ide0...
hda: PHILIPS DVD+/-RW DVD8801, ATAPI CD/DVD-ROM drive
ide0 at 0x1f0-0x1f7,0x3f6 on irq 14

and then later:

-- hda: ATAPI 48X DVD-ROM DVD-R CD-R/RW drive, 2048kB Cache, UDMA(33)
Uniform CD-ROM driver Revision: 3.20

so far no errors, but further down:

hda: command error: status=0x51 { DriveReady SeekComplete Error }
hda: command error: error=0x54 { AbortedCommand LastFailedSense=0x05 }
ide: failed opcode was: unknown
ATAPI device hda:
  Error: Illegal request -- (Sense key=0x05)
  Illegal mode for this track or incompatible medium -- (asc=0x64, ascq=0x00)
  The failed "Read 10" packet command was: 
  "28 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 08 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 "
end_request: I/O error, dev hda, sector 0
Buffer I/O error on device hda, logical block 0
Buffer I/O error on device hda, logical block 1
Buffer I/O error on device hda, logical block 2
Buffer I/O error on device hda, logical block 3
Buffer I/O error on device hda, logical block 4
Buffer I/O error on device hda, logical block 5
Buffer I/O error on device hda, logical block 6
Buffer I/O error on device hda, logical block 7
hda: command error: status=0x51 { DriveReady SeekComplete Error }
hda: command error: error=0x54 { AbortedCommand LastFailedSense=0x05 }
ide: failed opcode was: unknown
ATAPI device hda:
  Error: Illegal request -- (Sense key=0x05)
  Illegal mode for this track or incompatible medium -- (asc=0x64, ascq=0x00)
  The failed "Read 10" packet command was: 
  "28 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 01 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 "
end_request: I/O error, dev hda, sector 0
Buffer I/O error on device hda, logical block 0
hda: command error: status=0x51 { DriveReady SeekComplete Error }
hda: command error: error=0x54 { AbortedCommand LastFailedSense=0x05 }
ide: failed opcode was: unknown
ATAPI device hda:
  Error: Illegal request -- (Sense key=0x05)
  Illegal mode for this track or incompatible medium -- (asc=0x64, ascq=0x00)
  The failed "Read 10" packet command was: 
  "28 00 00 00 00 01 00 00 01 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 "
end_request: I/O error, dev hda, sector 4
Buffer I/O error on device hda, logical block 1

And after initializing the rest, at the end of dmesg this message
appears a lot of more times. 

The unit works fine for a while, but at some point it freezes and I
cannot eject it, or remount it, or anything. Not even manually I can
open it. 

Is it a hardware problem?


---
Walter Garcia-Fontes
Barcelona