Bug 143561

So I installed goobox.  It skips also, but at least it does not crash.
Pressing help when in preferences gives "Could not display help... please check your installation".  And pressing "Eject" gives "I/O" error.

My sound card is:
00:09.0 Multimedia audio controller: Creative Labs SB Live! EMU10k1 (rev 07)
00:09.1 Input device controller: Creative Labs SB Live! MIDI/Game Port (rev 07)
As I said "hwinfo" is defective.



Does SUSE come with an old-style CD player, that simply enables the analog audio outputs?

So I tried "Rhythmbox".  No luck.  I get "There is no element present to handle the stream's mime type audio/mpeg.".  

Ripping does... nothing.

And I still can't play a CD.  Jeeze!

*** Bug 143558 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

hwinfo > <filename> should work fine.  Since all the players are failing, I'm going to assume some sort of hardware issue as the primary here, which could mean a driver issue.

Created attachment 63893 [details]
linux:/home/bryce # hwinfo > /tmp/hwinfo.log

Guess I have to be root to run hwinfo -- nothing said that anywhere.

The two DVD drives work fine in other context.  For example I professionaly duplicate CDRW's by the hundred on the LITEON drive, using cdrdao.  I am able to write DVD's just fine with this drive.  And read DVD's using either drive, including the SUSE install DVD which lives in the lower drive most of the time.

It's just audio CD's that don't work.

****
There are two ways to play an audio CD.  One is to tell the drive to start playing, and list via the analog CD input on the sound card.

The other method is to get the audio bits digitally from the drive, then play those bits digitially via the sound card.


Which method is SUSE using?  And can I switch?  Is there an old-style analog CD player avaialable?

This doesn't look like a kernel issue, but I'll let Takashi make the final call and send somewhere in userland if appropriate.

I suspect the first issue is "digital extraction opf bits", vs. "instructing CD player to play CD"....  that one clouds the next steps.

This pretty depends on the application.  KsCD is known one that doesn't support CDDA.  This is described in the sound section of SUSE handbook.

Ok: is there any application that can switch back and forth, to help narrow down this issue?

Remember- this same machine played CD's just fine under RedHat, and under Windows boots.  Same players, same audio card.

RTFM :)

But, the fact that it runs with a same app on RedHat implies that the mixer configuration is somehow wrong.  Make sure that you adjusted "CD" playback volume and unmuted it.  Try to run "amixer CD 90% unmute", for example.

So under RedHat, if I insert a CD it just plays.
But under SUSE, if I insert a CD I need to RTFM?

I thought CD playing was supposed to 'just work'.  I thought the point of a distribution was to supply a working set of software?  Do I misunderstand SUSE's role?

PS: Clearly since I'm getting skipping audio, the mixer volume is not the issue.  And since nothing comes out on the front jack of the CD player, clearly SUSE is defaulting to CDDA anyway, which would play through PCM, not the CD mixer channel.

You asked about CD-player applications about CDDA and non-CDDA?  The f*** handbook will give you the answer.

Note that there is no "SUSE default" thing.  Whether it's CDDA or analog CD output is 100% dependent on each application and its setting.  The choice of "default" CD player appearing on menu depends strongly on which software selection you chose and what desktop you use.

Well, you wrote that "under RedHat, this all worked fine".  So I understood that KsCD worked fine on your system with RedHat.  That's why I asked about the mixer configuration.  Or did I misunderstand?

If it's not the case of mixer configuration but rather a cd driver problem, you can try to turn on/off DMA setting via yast.

My point is that under RedHat, I did not neet the f*** manual, because things just worked.  Am I wrong to expect that playing a CD is simply a matter of sticking the CD into the drive?

Under RedHat whatever CD player came installed worked -- I don't remember the name.  Why would I?  It just worked.  But since I did not use KDE, and still don't use KDE, it probably was not KsCD.

Searching for "CDDA" in the Suse Linux help returns six copies of the same, very brief paragraph.  But I'm no closer to listing to a CD.  Please remember this is a bug report.  It should have worked.  I tried several things to make it work.  I am unaware of any additional avenues to try.

You appreantely ignored the smiley mark in the text.  Calm down, don't be too serious and emotional for such a kidding.

Did you try any of what I asked/recommended in comments #11 and #13?  Yes, it's a bug report.  Let's get debugging more serious now...

Created attachment 64606 [details]
Curious.  The cd drives show up twice here.

Could a fight between two drivers be at fault here?

Hmm, that's weird.  How do the directory trees /sys/block/hd* (particularly hdc and hdd) look?  They show the device and the driver being used with symlinks.

Reassigned to yast2-storage maintainer.  Thomas, any clue?

Ok: so I read the the "m", and it was "f***" wrong.  Sorry:

CDDA und anloge CD-Wiedergabe
Es gibt zwei unterschiedliche Methoden für die Wiedergabe von Audio-CDs. CD- und DVD-Laufwerke, die die analoge CD-Wiedergabe unterstützen, lesen die Audiodaten aus und senden sie an das Ausgabegerät. Einige externe Laufwerke, die über PCMCIA, FireWire oder USB angeschlossen sind, benötigen CDDA (Compact Disk Digital Audio), um zunächst die Audiodaten zu extrahieren. Anschließend werden sie als digitale PCM wiedergegeben. Die in den folgenden Abschnitten vorgestellten Player unterstützen CDDA nicht. Verwenden Sie XMMS, falls Sie CDDA-Unterstützung benötigen.

I'm not using XMMS, yet clearly CDDA is in use (I can disconnect the analog cable, and nothing changes).  The PCM slider sets the volume.

So we're definitely in CDDA land, which makes sense because of skipping.  Listing to the drive it appears that two tasks are fighting for it (there is a lot of seeking going on).

KsCD            - Analog
Goobox          - CDDA
XMMS            - CDDA
Gnome CD Player - Non-functional, can't tell.  Probably Analog.
Banshee         - CDDA

Thanks for the listing.   So, the conclusion is that CD-analog doesn't work (due to lack of cable connection) and we should concentrate on debugging CDDA issue, right?

My cable connections are just fine, thank you.  Each has now been tested with KsCD, and levels set appropriately.  There was never any problem with the cabling.



CDDA skips on all players -- at the moment I'm guessing because two or more drivers are vying for the drive.

CD-Analog works with KsCD.

I don't know what gnome CD player is trying to do.  The CDDB track names are all correct, and it counts down the time correctly, there is just no audio output of any kind associated with that activity (no Analog, no CDDA, no front jack on the player).

Banshee, of course, still locks up and must be manually killed.  Useless.

Ah, OK, thanks for clarification.  BTW, how does /etc/fstab look like?  Are there duplicated entries for DVD/CD-ROM there?

Also, you can turn on/off DMA manually via hdparm.  For example,

  # /sbin/hdparm -d 1 /dev/hdd

turns on DMA for /dev/hdd.  To turn off, pass -d 0.

/dev/hda2       /               reiserfs   noatime,acl,user_xattr        1 1
/dev/hda3       /home           reiserfs   noatime,acl,user_xattr        1 2
/dev/hda4       /local          ext3       noatime,acl,user_xattr        1 2
/dev/hda1       swap            swap       defaults              0 0
proc            /proc           proc       defaults              0 0
sysfs           /sys            sysfs      noauto                0 0
usbfs           /proc/bus/usb   usbfs      noauto                0 0
devpts          /dev/pts        devpts     mode=0620,gid=5       0 0
/dev/dvd        /media/dvd      subfs      noauto,fs=cdfss,ro,procuid,nosuid,nodev,exec,iocharset=utf8 0 0
/dev/dvdrecorder /media/dvdrecorder subfs      noauto,fs=cdfss,ro,procuid,nosuid,nodev,exec,iocharset=utf8 0 0
none            /subdomain      subdomainfs noauto         0 0
#/dev/hdb5      /mnt/hdb5       auto    noatime,defaults        0 0
#/dev/hdb6      /mnt/hdb6       auto    noatime,defaults,user,umask=000 0 0
#/dev/hdb7      /mnt/hdb7       auto    noatime,defaults,user,umask=000 0 0
#/dev/hdb8      /mnt/hdb8       auto    noatime,defaults,user,umask=000 0 0
#/dev/hdb9      /mnt/hdb9       auto    noatime,defaults        0 0

In beta#2 the fstab entries for dvd and dvdrecorder will be gone.
No idea if these are the reason for the problems, but to verify this you
may remove them manually, reboot and see if the problem is fixed (which I doubt).

Apart from that I cannot see why yast2-storage could be responsible for 
problems concerning audio CDs. It does nothing with cdrom drives except 
creating this fstab entry. Please reopen if problem still exists in beta#2
or with removed fstab entries.