[Debburn-devel] Improving usage of CDR_NODMATEST?

[wolfram at the-dreams.de]

Hello,

yesterday I was setting up a desktop-machine which crashed badly when
trying to burn a CD. Setting CDR_NODMATEST did the trick (it's a
CyberDrive burner), still, for me, it needed some research to find
this solution, because at first it seemed that it was simply
Gnomebaker freezing the machine. When searching the net, I found that
there are more users having similar problems and in lots of forums,
this solution could not be provided. So, I was wondering if there are
some possibilities to make life for users easier regarding this issue,
like:

1) Be automatic and do not call 'get_dmaspeed' in wodim for drives
known to fail here? The vendor string 'CyberDrv' might be a very good
candidate. I know it is not a wodim bug, but a firmware or
kernel-driver bug. Nevertheless scsi_cdr.c is already checking lots of
vendor-specific drives and it seems to me an easy way to significantly
increase stability.

2) What about making it possible to specify CDR_NODMATEST in
/etc/wodim.conf? This would save an environment-variable, making a
wrapper, etc... Plus, some accompanying text to this option will
spread the word about drives being sensitive to the dma-test.

3) Perhaps it is also an idea to mention CDR_NODMATEST in the
Bugs-section of the wodim manpage? Maybe more people are like me and
look there if a program crashes :) Of course, it should be marked as a
problem of the drive or the kernel driver. But IMHO this is another
nice place to give a hint.

Opinions about that? I am willing to make these or other changes or
assist with them, if you think they are useful and/or appropriate.

Regards,

   Wolfram Sang