[paranoia] Paranoia hangs at autosensing SG_BIG_BUFF size

[Douglas Gilbert]

"Pete St. Onge" wrote:
> 
> I had cdparanoia running without incident previously on this same box for
> several months - excellent software, btw. I looked through the recent
> archives, and not finding anything seemingly appropriate, here's my problem
> :)
> 
> Recently, my /dev/sda1 decided that it would lead a much happier existance
> as a paperweight. After I reinstalled my system to an ide disk (without
> changing any other hardware), I reinstalled cdparanoia from the new 9.7
> source.
> 
> Problem. The program seemed to hang right after I fired it off. I removed
> 9.7 and the libraries, and reinstalled 9.6 from RPM. Same problem.
> 
> Some details...
> - I run cdparanoia as root
> - /dev/cdrom links (777) to /dev/scd0 (b660), both owned by root
> - /dev/sg4 links (777) to /dev/sge (c600) both owned by root.
> - although / is on /dev/hda1, the cd's are on one scsi lun, and the disks
>   where cdparanoia is being called (where the files are to be written) are
>   on another scsi lun. this worked perfectly before, and like I said, the
>   only hardware change is reinstalling / on /dev/hda1. I can read / mount /
>   play all disks, cd's etc just fine, so termination doesn't seem like a
>   problem.
> - This is a stock RH60 install, default 2.2.5-15 kernel.
> 
> Here's the output from -vsQ ... as you can see, it identifies the CD-ROM
> just fine (Pioneer CD-ROM), that it's SCSI, etc.
> 
> [root at esox disk4]# cdparanoia -vsQ
> cdparanoia III alpha prerelease 9.5 (March 24, 1999)
> (C) 1999 Monty <xiphmont at mit.edu>
> 
> This is PRERELEASE software!  Report bugs to xiphmont at mit.edu
> http://www.mit.edu/afs/sipb/user/xiphmont/cdparanoia/index.html
> 
> Checking /dev/cdrom for cdrom...
>         Testing /dev/cdrom for cooked ioctl() interface
>                 /dev/scd0 is not a cooked ioctl CDROM.
>         Testing /dev/cdrom for SCSI interface
>                 generic device: /dev/sg4
>                 ioctl device: /dev/scd0
>                 CDROM sensed: PIONEER CD-ROM DR-766 1.00
> 
> Checking for SCSI emulation and transport revision...
>         Drive is SCSI
> 
> Checking for MMC style command set...
>         Drive is MMC style
> Verifying CDDA command set...
>         Expected command set reads OK.
> 
> Looking at revision of the SG interface in use...
>         Old 2.0/early 2.1/early 2.2.x (non-ac patch) style SG.
> 
> Attempting to autosense SG_BIG_BUFF size...
> 
> ... and that's where it hangs. Can anyone offer ideas?

Pete,
Replacing the scsi disk previously at /dev/sda1 with an
ide disk would have had the side effect of moving your
"sg" devices down by one. Still it looks like paranoia
is finding the cdrom. Perhaps you could put "strace" in 
front of that cdparanoia invocation and send the output 
to me.

Scanning the device space in Linux has always been
difficult, especially for cdparanoia. This is because
it tries to find both the cdrom and the generic interface
to the same physical device. Something called "devfs" has
just been added to the linux 2.3 development tree and
will appear in the forthcoming 2.4 production series.
'devfs' is supposed to make things easier for scanning
programs and its author (Richard Gooch) has a section
on cdparanoia's problems with the current scheme. As far
as I can see 'devfs' is going to give Monty some
compatibility headaches, depending on how the distributions
at that time package it. It is possible that they may
configure it out initially. Time will tell.

Devfs documentation can be found at:
http://www.atnf.csiro.au/~rgooch/linux/

Doug Gilbert

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