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LG CD-ROMs Destroyed by Mandrake 9.2
An anonymous reader writes "The latest offering of Mandrake's distribution, 9.2, has been found to not only be incompatible with some LG CD-ROM drives, but to destroy them during the installation process. Mandrake have posted information on their errata page and further information can be found on this thread [google]. Along with over 350Mb of updates within a week of release, it's not been a good start for this latest release."
Someone find a 1st level Cleric so they can cast Protection from Evil on these Lawful Good CD-ROMs. That should keep the evil Mandrakes from destroying them.
At least they should get a freakin' saving throw. What a harsh DM.
You see? You see? Your stupid minds! Stupid! Stupid!
Perhaps the drives don't truly conform to ATAPI standards. This is probably the first drive ever that has been "damaged" by Linux. Sorry, LG, you probably should test these things.
Exactly how does reading from a CD-ROM drive destroy the drive? Does it have to do with UDMA or what?
I haven't had software destroy hardware since a Commodore PET.
Learning HOW to think is more important than learning WHAT to think.
Is it Mandrake specifically or any GNU/Linux distribution that damages these drives?
...and software is capable of destroying your products, you're fucking fired.
Other linux distros? I'm sure if this was a real CD drive problem, it would show up on other distros, or is the Mandrake CD the only one expecting the CD-ROM drive to work?
I'll be that the LG CD-ROM is a WinCDROM, kinda like some modems are WinModems. Mabye the drive knows how to get boot info off of the cd, but nothing else. It may rely on a windows driver to do its work for it. If it is a WinCDROM, what does that mean for other hardware? Are we now going to see WinHardDrives? This could cause a major problem in the desktop linux world.
I haven't a clue if this is right; it could be a start, but probably isn't.
Do you think there might be a problem with your hardware if it can be destroyed solely with software?
"Smoking helps you lose weight - one lung at a time" -- A. E. Neumann
How can they be damaged permanently ? UNless you blow a non-reloadable firmware.. i find it hard to belive you can really damage hardware..
---- Booth was a patriot ----
Could these things be a result of trying to beat Fedora to market?
-- Knowledge shared is power lost. -- Aleister Crowley
mandrake must be the problem..
My LG CDRW 52/24/52 (HL-DT-ST CD-RW GCE-8520B) works fine under LFS-3.0 with 2.6.0-test4 kernel...
(worked with 2.4 kernels also)
But when it's open source like this or the problems slashdot is having, it's "oops", and "oh well".
Just another slashdot double standard for you.
Nuttin' like the smell of dead CD-ROM drives in the morning.
I know quite a few people who have had big problems with LG drives. I think that they are very unreliable anyway. Lots of people I know also have LG burners that mess up cds when burning. Stay away. Anybody else know people with faulty drives?
Me too. I am in an American prison though, which does explain a quite bit of my other problems too, including this sharpened plastic fork embedded in my crotch.
At this point, please do not install Mandrake Linux 9.2 on any computer containing a LG-based CD-ROM drive or it will damage your CD-ROM drive!
That's bad news for Mandrakesoft, LG provides OEM drives to Dell and many other bigtime manufacturers, But you can't really blame them. It's the dumb manufacturers that build hardware that can easily be rendered useless by software...
Just don't let the RIAA get hold of this technology!
"You had this look that of an angel, it was such a bad disguise" --Dishwalla
What are the chances that LG will pony up replacements for the broken drives?
I'd say zero... until enough people flip out on Dell. Maybe then...
Do not tell Steevie(B@m$ft.org) 'bout it.
Sober up, Mandrake froggys.
Anyone else had their systems destroyed by DiskDrake?
Some number of years ago there was one version of Mandrake that came with a free copy of partitionmagic in the box. However, the box implied that it was part of the installation process. In fact you had to do something funky involving poking around on CD 3 in the box.
When installing normally, it brought up DiskDrake, which unlike many programs of its type-- for example, fdisk-- does not make it clear when writing parition tables "I AM REFORMATTING YOUR DISK WITH WHATEVER'S ON THE SCREEN RIGHT NOW". The "ok, writing parittions now" dialogue was unclear even more so. It was very easy to fall into DiskDrake during the installation and think that it was PartitionMagic.
My GF accidentally had her windows system trashed when attempting to install linux out of curiousity. She is now soured to linux forever and refuses to touch it, since it's the thing that ate her hard drive. I can't blame her, as at one point I fell victim to the same thing and had a machine at a place where i was working at the time's hard drive get wiped because I did not realize I had just okayed the overwriting of the partition table.
Now, given, had this happened in the installation of, say, Gentoo or something, I would have been like, okay, so a mistake was made in installing an infamously techie-specific distro. Should have known this was expert stuff and been more careful. But this was MANDRAKE. It was supposed to be the "luser-friendly" distro. How can the "luser-friendly" distro be so idiot-unfriendly when doing THE MOST DANGEROUS PART OF THE ENTIRE INSTALL PROCESS?
Needless to say, I haven't been happy with Mandrake since this point.
I have a G3 500 Mhz imac that got its CD-RW fried when installing panther tonight!
People started noting this a week ago:
9.2 FRIED my CDROM drives
Whenever the offence inspires less horror than the punishment, the rigour of penal law is obliged to give way...
appears to be a kernel patch
I found this post.
Wait till someone writes a virus.
Actual hardware damage will be fun.
Does using Linux void warranties now?
Interesting choice of post to jump into the middle of the thread on, would that be a hint by any chance? If so, foolish, foolish thing to do; there are a lot of people capable of doing that that read Slashdot and one of them is almost certainly going to write the thing. I can only hope that they don't get caught, because if found guilty they are going to get one *hell* of a sentence for making a rash decision.
UNIX? They're not even circumcised! Savages!
as 1000's, if not 10's/100's of 1000's of folks are quietly marching about capitollist hill, SF, & several other locations today. not a word about it here? what is it they want?
.asp?
if it were a penguin parade, a felonious FUDgePackers' bawl, or some bad news about won of va lairIE's phonIE payper liesense stock markup FraUD '.contemporarIEs', robbIE'd be on it up to his mortgaged
http://saveie6.com/
class-action style. Good riddance.
Don't say the Open Source software business model is bad just because of one wack distro.
There are dozens of other distro's that don't fry cdroms.
Can someone point to the offending code in the install program? I'd like to whip together a quick Windows 95/98 program to produce the same effect. Then anyone who thinks this situation is outrageous (hardware being damaged by software? in 2003?), and who has a dell machine under warrantee, can run the program and give Dell, the angry giant, a bit of incentive to motivate LG.
I've had this sig for three days.
If Windows would do this to your drive there would be a public outcry. Here on /. it is more like "ah well, shit happens, it's mentioned in the errata so suck it up and get over it".
The kernel Mandrake uses enables a feature on CDROM drives. This kernel feature is officially not production stable yet, so other distro's don't use it YET. LG drives with buggy firmware die if this feature is enabled. LG doesn't support Linux, so this problem doesn't exist in their eyes.
Conclusion: It will happen to ANY distribution that uses kernels with this enabled. Mandrake unfortunately hit the trigger first in an attempt to have a slightly too cool kernel.
I've had this exact problem with the Cool Linux CD: http://emergencycd2.sourceforge.net/ This article just confirms the problem. I was using a Dell OptiPlex GX1 and the system would just halt on boot. Then on reboot the drive was no longer detected. The drive would not even respond to an eject - I had to do it manually to get my CD back. Unfortunately, I assumed that a CD-ROM could not be damaged by software and that this drive just happened to fail as I was booting...so I tried it on another system! Now I've got two dead CD-ROM drives waiting to be returned to Dell. Now time to play stupid about why the drives failed to get an RMA!
I had an old 48X LG-CDROM that got fried by SuSE 8.0. I also heard that my freind had his monitor destroyed by Debian (due to the buggy Xfree86 3.3.7.debian).
Luckily SCO will pay the damage for those of us that signed up with SCO....
Microsoft releases service packs regularly for Windows that are at least 350mb in size... usually bigger. There is clearly something wrong with the LG drives if they are able to be destroyed by software. How on earth you implied linux destroys hardware, I will never know. The only relevant observation i see here is that software destroyed the drive.. not linux. It could have easily been a flaw in Windows that did this.
"You had this look that of an angel, it was such a bad disguise" --Dishwalla
And for extra points, what first poster can say exactly what PET stands for?
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
Nice Microsoft trolls going around these boards nowadays.
I think we all know the bottom score so far, hundreds of billions of dollars and euros lost because of blasters, email worms et al'.
Not to mention all the bugs, problems, incompatibilities that are inherit with Windows. How many hundreds of billions have been lost in the last 20 years because of that?
"Oh well, I'll just keep paying 150? for each upgrade to my buggy Windows, because it makes life worth living."
If you're a hardware manufacturer...and software is capable of destroying your products, you're fucking fired.
So how do you propose putting firmware updates into CD-ROM drives, DVD drives, modems, etc.? Just about any peripheral which has flashable firmware can be rendered unusable by software.
Dude, software should never be able to damage hardware. Not in 2003. Part of this is just common sense -- how could anyone design hardware that bad? But beyond that, it is only a matter of time before someone writes a virus that includes this cute little effect. It is no longer possible to blow up a CRT by giving it an out-of-range signal, or to call halt-and-catch-fire, or to blow up your car's engine by overreving it (assume you haven't screwed with the rev limiter). It is not okay for normal usage to damage hardware, and in the computer world 'normal usage' means any data at all, even malicious or (in the case of Mandrake, it seems) really bad data.
I've had this sig for three days.
So, we all know the GPL says "No warranty..." etc. However, I'm willing to be this is the first time that an actual distribution -- something with a real company behind it (non-profits don't count, so don't post "you forgot GNU/FSF" as a reply) -- has put actual hardware at risk. I could easily see some small business, who installed Mandrake on their machines, get very upset that their CD-ROM drives released magic smoke. Yeah, ok, CD-ROM drives are dirt cheap these days, but that's not the point. This could lead to a test of the GPL in court. It will be interesting to see if anything happens.
No, I'm not saying anyone with a toasted CD-ROM drive has a valid case, but having a valid case is hardly required for filing suit. Will this lead to more disclaimers on packaging? At the very least, I'm sure the Microsoft PR folks are going have a field day with this, especially given the drives are found in a major manufacturer's computers (Dell), and not just some Joe's-computer-store brand. This will only fuel their "See, you lost a CD-ROM drive and because it's open-source, there's no one to cry to" argument.
Or perhaps someone will tell me this is not the first time a distro has created a risk for hardware, and this will all be moot.
There is no sig, there is only Zuul.
and no 'Dude, you're wreaking my Dell'.... weird.
-- I care not for your foolish signatures.
This, coupled with the 350MB of updates Mandrake has already released doesn't fill me with confidence concerning the "superiority" of the Open Source software business model, guys.
Pardon me for being picky, but what on earth does releasing updates and a business model have in common? A business model is how they plan to make money. Does Mandrake get a wad of cash every time they release an update?
Auto-reply to ACs: "Truly, you have a dizzying intellect."
Pretty Easily Torchable!
*rimshot*
Comment forecast: Bits of genius surrounded by a sea of mediocrity.
Mandrake 9.3 anyone?
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
From the Google Groups link:
:-)
/. put a link on the front page to a post that advocates writing viruses that destroys peoples hardware?!? It's not even that it was an important link that just happened to contain that information. There were numerous other, more informative posts that didn't advocate writing viruses that destroy hardware in the same thread that could of been linked just as easily. Why did the poster use that specific link and why did Michael post it!
> manipulate it. I am just waiting for the first Win viruses that kill LG
> drives by exploiting this flaw in the firmware!
It might be the best thing to happen if some script kiddies latch onto this
CDROM Drive hardware vulnerability and writea coupla' viruses that destroy
CDROm drives; that would force LG to rectify this vulnerability (that's what
it is). Then it's no longer anything to do with Linux / Mandrake
Since when does
I stole this Sig
they don't do that, except in the cases specified buy their ?pr? ?firm? scriptdead corepirate sponsors.
marching? is there a band? some kind of product giveaway?
"Not Linux! It must be the drive!"
Software should never be able to destroy hardware. Whether you're using Windows, Mac, Linux, or IraqOS.
LG was obviously trying to get costs down (think about how cheap CD-ROM drives are nowadays) and "sanify control commands" was one of the line items that was cut.
I have a older LG cdrw, No wonder it is so frigging hard to get recognised as a scsi-ide during inet. Slackware is the only one I can get to make it work as a cdrw, sometimes. I think it is time to give LG products a Penguin killer shithead manufacturer award! Someone with more pull around /. should look into this, are LG products and drivers that shitty to the OSS coders?
OH THE SHAME I fell off the wagon and use sigs again!
PET = Personal Electronic Transactor, if i remember correctly
PET == Psychiatric Emergency Team
This is going to be quite bad for Mandrake and Linux in general.
Who will pay to fix the drives then?
Mandrake will probably have a disclaimer.
LG will claim its Mandrakes and Linux
Dell machines are quite common, and they seem to be standardised on LG CDrom drives, so
Dell arent going to be happy bunnies either.
The media backlash is going to be quite large on this one.
There will of course be one winner! M$ and BillyG.
Not that they will milk this one.
Suspect this isn't part of the stolen SCO code then?
Do we have any details on the packet writer patch
that is in this kernel?
Not going to install Mandrake now. Nor any other distros for quite a while too in case the patch is in them too.
Guess its back to Windows.
We have standards for that sort of thing. Presumably, the LG optical drives are standard ATAPI drives, not "Windows drives". If Linux destroys them with standard CD-ROM drivers, then it's a problem with the drives.
In fact, it's hard to see how any CD-ROM driver should be able to destroy any CD-ROM drive unless the drive has some kind of serious design flaw.
PET - Personal Electronic Transactor.
Hence the name of the (long gone) magazine for Commodore owners, The Transactor.
My wife's dad had one, complete with small keyboard and built-in cassette tape drive.
-- Alastair
Yes, software -can- damage hardware if you don't know what you are doing.
When I first installed Slackware in '96, I had a brand new ViewSonic 17PS monitor which was not recognized by Linux by default. I had to research the monitor capabilities and I hand-crafted the XF86 modelines.
When I first ran X, the monitor made this horrible screeching noise. Yikes! I quickly dropped out of X and found someone else's modelines and put them in, then the monitor worked fine (still does).
Linux, hardware and standards are all improving, but ultimately things can go wrong - always read the hardware HOWTO first...
I've destroyed LG CD-Roms by simply looking at them the wrong way. This has got to be a distant second.
- A.P.
"Remember when the U.S. had a drug problem, and then we declared a War On Drugs, and now you can't buy drugs anymore?"
Positron Emission Tomography.
Don't be bringing that weak stuff up in here.
Even if a man chops off your hand with a sword, you still have two nice, sharp bones to stick in his eyes.
Portable Electric Toaster
.
== WolfriderV6 == I'm willing to admit that *I just might* be wrong... Are you??
The previous poster implying that these 350M updates are "an Open Source" problem is either:
a) Open Source Illiterate
b) On crack
c) An idiot
d) A complete moron!
e) All the above.
My guess would be E.
There's tons of other Open Sources OS's and what not. Linux is not the be it end all!
There's over 288 non-standard, fragmented Linux distro's floating around (last time I checked) so if there's a problem with one, doesn't mean all Linux distro's or even other Open Source OS's such as FreeBSD, OpenBSD, NetBSD, Debian/Linux, Slackware/Linux, etc... are the same or even affected by the same issues.
It doesn't surprise me of Mandrake being so poor in quality much like RedHat and most other bloated Linux distro's.
If you want something real... Debian, Slackware or *BSD UNIX.
Dude, software should never be able to damage hardware. Not in 2003. Part of this is just common sense -- how could anyone design hardware that bad?
Tell me the make and model of your motherboard, CD-ROM drive, DVD drive, CD-R/W drive, modem, and anything else in your system with a flashable BIOS. I'll send you a CD-ROM to boot up. Let me know how it goes for you.
P.S. Make sure that you have an alternate PC to e-mail me from.
And for extra points, what first poster can say exactly what PET stands for?
Personal Electronic Transactor.
This was the second computer I ever got my hands on, the first being a TRS-80 model I. After that was the Super-PET. Ah, the days...
I wonder how many folks here would be bitching out LG if it was XP that was trashing the hardware?
1984 was supposed to be a warning, not an instruction manual.
This just unscores how terribly poor the ATAPI support is with 2.4 kernels. The circa-95 IDE drivers with hacked-on ATAPI is a major thorn in the heel of Linux app developers, and is the reason that CD burning is currently limited to the speeds of slow, and slower.
Kernel 2.4 may have all the goodies, but it still isn't right, even after years of alterations. I don't know what went wrong with 2.4, but I eagerly await a stable 2.6, so I can finally upgrade my workhorse machines running 2.2.
Fred
"A fool and his freedom are soon parted"
-RMS
Pet? Isn't that thing a girl won't do with a geek?
Beware: In C++, your friends can see your privates!
or do they get them from another manufacturer and then brand them? This question was asked in the thread linked above but I didn't see an answer. If they don't make there own, it's posible there are non-LG drives out there that could be killed by this.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
So how do you propose putting firmware updates into CD-ROM drives, DVD drives, modems, etc.? Just about any peripheral which has flashable firmware can be rendered unusable by software.
If you consider scrambling firmware to be physical damage (I don't), a "RESTORE FACTORY DEFAULTS" switch solves that problem.
Obviously LG was cutting corners. Consider how cheap CD-ROM drives are nowadays.
LG CD-ROM Drive: "I'll need a weapon to fight off drunken Mandrake CDs when I get there."
Gary Gygax: "Here, take my +1 mace."
The programmers are obviously in the wrong business. They should start working for some virus making group instead. Them haxxing windows would be better for the Linux community than this.
This would make a great payload for a virus
or worm. Talk about forcing a drive maker
to fix their firmware....
As strange and arcane as this is, it doesn't surprise me much.
Mandrake has always been full of bugs, I've always found it way less stable and useable even then microsoft stuff. I think this has something to do with KDE but it seems there are enough KDE zealots around to defeat that line of reasoning. Everyone I've talked to likes mandrake's bubbly user friendliness at first... until they realize things keep crashing and/or are only half implemented.
If a Redhat or Debian distribution had this problem I'd be blown away, Mandrakes complete instability somehow makes it unsurprising.
Yes, and don't forget the 350 MB of updates too. So...
Microsoft releases patches for OS: OMG! Don't they test?!?! They are teh sux0r!!1!
Linux releases 350 MB of patches: Hey, the power of open source is the continual improvement from so many eyes looking at the code. 350 MB of improvements! They rox0r!!1!
I imagine this could possibly harm acceptance in the corporate world/enterprise. When a network install smokes your CD-ROM, well, that's going to raise the TCO a bit.
While it is nice that Slashdot posts this as a service to the community, it could have been an idea to at least try and get more facts before posting this.
Firstly, it seems to be only (or mostly) CD-ROM drives, and not CD-RW drives or CD/DVD drives, however Mandrakesoft is compiling a list of the affected model numbers.
Secondly, not all drives of the same model number are affected, since some drives of the same model, but with differing firmware revisions, have different results.
Thirdly, this is a hardware/firmware defect, which seems to be triggered by the packet writing patch (I believe SuSE has shipped with this patch for some time, so LG drives could be affected under SuSE). If your drive is still under warranty, LG should replace it.
It may also be possible to reflash the drives with a working firmware, but no-one has reported success with that yet.
Instead of posting a link to alt.os.linux.mandrake, maybe next time Slashdot can link to the thread on the cooker mailing list which has been posted to by the Mandrakesoft people investigating the issue? But I guess that's too much to ask of Slashdot.
without testing on the major assembler - Dell.
Dell makes a poor test case. They don't use particular brand and model number parts in their machines, they use whatever is cheaply available and meets their criteria. That's how they control production cost.
So, a problem with a Dell XYZ isn't necessarily reproducable on another Dell XYZ.
It's really hard to blame Mandrake for not testing for potential hardware damage in this day and age. The last documented case of software damaging PC hardware was when someone wrote a program to step the heads on an old 10M Tallgrass drive at just the right frequency, causing it to walk off of the desk. That was for a contest.
I have heard of non-reproducable incidents where some sort of wierd timing and instruction mix could lock up a '386 such that reset wouldn't recover it, but a day or so powered off would get it going again.
Gee, you'd think there was a business agenda pushing the release of this product before its ready. However, we know that doesn't happen in the Linux world.
I have a MDK 9.1 box running a 2.6.0test7 kernel, along with other nvidia obnoxities, and an LG DVD/CDRW. I've had issues periodically with system lockups when trying to read or write CDs (module conflicts methinks) but I've been able to mostly sort them out.
Is there new software in 9.2 that goes further?
And if Win XP was doing this, there would be calls to castrate Billy. However because it's Linux we just get jokes and "This shouldn't happen" posts.
There were updates for like 9 different kernels, so don't get your panties bunched up, as far as I know, you only NEED 1.
.
I updated and it was like 40 rpms and took less than 5 minutes to download and install on my cable modem.
As for the cdroms . . . I think it is pretty stupid/scary that hardware is not being built with simple safe guards like, "spin too fast/ get too hot, turn off and cool down." If my freaken toaster can do that (cost me like $10, too), I expect my cdrom to do that too.
I can't wait until there is a virus that goes after poorly designed hardware and makes somebody's house burn down. .
Sdelat' Ameriku velikoy Snova!
Just thought the same about Mac Os.
;-)
Imagine what would be the comments on that!
There's better comment when mandrake brake hardware then when iTunes PC don't support a few configs!
And about Mandrake being free, a new CD Drive is not really free
Seriously, I don't understand how sofware can "brake" a drive, except if it change the firmware. Shouldn't the installer ask if you want to "upgrade" a firmware?
"Do you want to upgrade you Cd drive firmware? Note: This will probably ruin it" [Yes] or [Yes]
The Linux Kernel archives has just released kernel 2.6.0-test9. Better test and debug it for the 2.6.0 release.
Download
Full release
Patch
otherwise the network/download install wouldn't have any reason to blow up the drive. It's just the act of getting extended status information from it (probably to decide whether you need to be set up for burning CDs) during the install process that kills it.
Did LG do this to prevent people from using the drive to duplicate copy-protected CDs?
Fuck Beta. Fuck Dice
All of the people I know have have installed the 9.2 version have had zero problems. I however am not suprized as Mandrake is really good at stepping on their dick to rush a release out when they don't need to be in such a hurry. They also are good including so much bleeding edge stuff these quick post release patches are almost always required. I do belong to Mandrake Club and am happy to help support developement of the Mandrake distro and Linux with my money not just my mouth. Their choice to use bittorrent is a good move too. I am happy using my now old 9.0 which is stable and as functional as I currently need. I am planning on putting an order in for the 7 CD set in November and upgrading then.
You MS suckboys really do need to get a grip.
If you don't like what I write don't be a CS and mod it down. Refute it.
Yea I can't spell. So what is your point?
How long before this code is lifted and put into a virus?
I have been really happy with Mandrake 9.1. It blows the pants off my previous Red Hat distro. Everything works and it is rock-solid stable. It seemed to me that 9.2 was a minor upgrade when I review the packages so I was not too interested in installing it. Thank God! I will wait until 9.3, I guess :).
Yeah. Probably saved ten cents a unit by cutting out the extra ROM space with the code that would have prevented this. And I'll bet if you went through all their in-house memos and emails, you'll find some programmer or engineer that warned about the very possibility but was overridden because of cost concerns.
... well, it's impressive that problems like this don't occur more often.
But when you consider the sheer number of component manufacturers, the even larger number of new products that come out each year and the hundreds of millions of lines of embedded code that run those products
Wait a month or so, buy another LG drive and try to install the current "flawed" version of Mandrake on it. Dollars to doughnuts it will work just fine.
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
Actually, there are mobos that have two bioses, and recover from screwed-up flashes. It could be argued that they should all do this.
French Terrorism at its finest.
Okay, slightly OT, but...
I had one of the old Apex DVD players with the IDE-compatible DVD drive in it. One day I put in a rental DVD that was perhaps a bit more scratched than usual. The player started OK then went slightly crazy, jumping to random blocks then just refusing to recognize that there was a disc.
Okay, no big deal (I thought). Eject, cycle the power, try again. Didn't recognize the disc. Tried another disc. Didn't recognize it, either. I finally pulled the drive out of the Apex and tried it in my computer. Still dead.
I know for a fact that the firmware on that player is upgradeable via a specially formatted disc. I don't imagine the random data from the bad DVD happened to match a "start programming" sequence, (which in any case upgrades the processor firmware, not the drive's) but it obviously triggered something bad. Or it could have just been coincidence that the drive died with that particular bad disk.
Sigh.
(I went out an bought another (different model) player and, since the new one was under warrantee, tried the bad DVD again. Didn't fry the player but wouldn't play properly either, too badly scratched.)
-- Alastair
Wow, that's some kind of record in karma-whoring. :-) ;-)
MOD ME UP... Jeez... True karma prostitute.
I gues you get what you pay for. Think I'll sue Linus...
This is why some people use Stable Distributions, such as Slackware, Debian, SuSE, or... Damn.
Honestly, damn. I've had shit with RedHat, Mandrake, Gentoo, everything I've tried.
SuSE costs money, which I can't afford (nothing against them charging, I'm just damn broke). Also, I had a few stability problems last time I used it when I tried installing all the programs I usually use. Not nearly as many as with Mandrake and RedHat, but a few.
Debian is a lot of hassle to install (Just my opinion, I know some disagree).
Slackwares easy to use and reliable, but I sometimes wish it had a couple features, or at least a feature. (Once again, my opinion)
CHS is always translated into a linear sector address at some point, every drive manufacturered since like 6 years ago accepts LBA directly anyway. And moreover, internally it has another translation layer that helps it protect you from bad sectors (it detects and relocates them on the fly).
Ever since you've started seeing "255 heads" or other absurd things in your drive geometry, it's pretty much impossible to destroy them even with vendor-specific commands, let alone normal ATAPI commands.
Fuck Beta. Fuck Dice
Well I have a motherboard that comes with a handy utility for Windows that allows one to do things like change the FSB speed and the CPU voltages. On the fly. In windows! Well if this program can do this, I would suspect any program could. And since this AMD system doesn't have thermal protection, I see the potential for a virus/worm/trojan that could do some major damage to this computer and many like it, given a chance.
I had a Dell sever CD-ROM die this august while installing gentoo. Any chance it was this? I wrote it off to it being a new drive failing during the break in period, and dell mailed me a new one and I never thought twice about it.
It just goes to show how shitty lin00xx is.
The big difference is that if MS did this, 90% of LG cdroms in the world would be dead. Mandrake does it, you get a handful. That is the danger of living with a monoculture. That is the danger of a monopoly.
Software != Firmware.
The mandrake problem doesn't have anything to do with firmware as far as I can tell, you just send a flush command to the drive, and it fails.
A simple software command should never, EVER be able to fry hardware. Screwing with the firmware is another problem entirely.
Clearly, it's microsoft's fault.
And slashdot has always been known for it's anti-linux bias.
Digital cryptographic signatures work pretty well. If the hardware will only function with a signed firmware, then it's unlikely you will do much besides temporarily disable the drive, requiring a reflash.
Hardware, software, and blinking lights!
Supposedly, users' monitors died because of frequency in the drivers. Newsgroup threads for details.
Ant(Dude) @ Quality Foraged Links (AQFL.net) & The Ant Farm (antfarm.ma.cx / antfarm.home.dhs.org).
Microsoft releases service packs regularly for Windows that are at least 350mb in size... usually bigger.
Two problems with that argument:
1. Mandrake 9.2 has only been out since October 14. Microsoft does not release 350MB of updates within two weeks of releasing the OS.
2. Windows service packs are not "at least 350MB in size... usually bigger":
Windows 2000 Service Pack 4: About 132MB
Windows 2000 Service Pack 3: About 127MB
Windows XP Service Pack 1a: About 128MB
Windows NT 4.0 Service Pack 6a: About 35MB
There is clearly something wrong with the LG drives if they are able to be destroyed by software.
Can flashing the wrong BIOS on your motherboard render it unusable? If I can prove to you that it can, will you be demanding a new motherboard from the manufacturer?
How on earth you implied linux destroys hardware, I will never know.
Because this distro did do just that and Mandrake admits it.
It could have easily been a flaw in Windows that did this.
So the next time that a worm hits Windows, will you be saying "a flaw in Linux could allow the same thing, so let's not criticize Microsoft"?
Then put a separate copy of the original firmware into read-only memory at manufacturing time and provide a physical button that writes the known good firmware over the current firmware...
Penile Erection Technology?
Of course not. We'd still be bashing LG.
Because lots of us run Windows, and we know just as well as anyone else that they use ATAPI just like the rest of the fucking world to talk to the drive.
So, if the drive dies when you run GearPro with packet-write support, or the UDF CDR feature of explorer, but no other drive dies when you use it, then would you blame GearPro, Microsoft, or LG?
Sure, there'd be some jokes made, yadayada, but no moreso than usual-> no one would seriously blame MS (and stay modded up). Slashdotters want to know the real cause of their technological troubles, no matter who's involved.
Fuck Beta. Fuck Dice
However commercial software sometimes is hurried due to market targets and whatnot. However Windows2k and WindowsXP was quite stable when it was released.
RedHat does more QA as well as Debian. Mandrake is a much smaller company so they do not have the resources. Debian and BSD are quite popular and have thousands of testers and developers so this is why they are higher quality.
SO just like commercial software it depends where you go. But I have noticed things like the latest KDE or Gnome are sometimes quite buggy.
Even the default gnome with FreeBSD 4.8. I always have to do a cvsupit to get a more stable port.
http://saveie6.com/
My hd started failing after I installed Mandrake 9.2, of course, it's an old drive that has had lots of abuse... but a funny coincidence.
If you consider scrambling firmware to be physical damage (I don't),
I never said that it was "physical damage." I said that it could render it unusable.
a "RESTORE FACTORY DEFAULTS" switch solves that problem.
Does your motherboard have a "restore factory defaults" switch? Does your CD burner? Such a switch would require a completely separate, non-flashable copy of the firmware and a CPU capable of flashing that copy back into the flash memory.
Bad hardware that can be destroyed by software is apparently the "in" thing now, because the Epson 1260 scanner can be ruined by using Sane drivers below version 1.0.10.
Linky: Sane Epson 1260 sectionAmazingly, I used my Epson 1260 without popping the fuse by being lucky and only scanning a few times at low-resolution. RH finally released patched drivers in the last few weeks, after I had already upgraded Sane manually a few months or so ago.
...well, then you got a CD-ROM drive which is cheap and, propably because of that, unrelayable. Simply as that. I have never blamed software of damaging hardware, because, well, it shouldn't be possible THAT easy. And if it is - and SO easy as in this case - it's totally hardware maker's fault.
And just stop trolling. No one gonna stop adoptation of Linux because omg Mandrake release got bad publicity of large bunch of paches and fried CD-ROMs. Fried CD-ROMs will be replaced by vendors (because it's THEIR fault), users will choose Fedora, RedHat Enterprise, or Debian or Gentoo, if they have lost their trust to Mandrake.
It's our freedom to choose.
Not your freedom to follow.
user@ubuntubox:~$ stfu This server is going down for shutdown NOW!
Wow, that's some kind of record in karma-whoring. :-)
I maxed out on karma long ago. I just wanted everyone to see what I had to say.
Professional Electronic Technician
or the hardware could use public/private key signatures to only allow firmware updates signed by the hardware manufacturer? hmm, I guess that is Microsoft's Palladium..
cpeterso
Is the chip on your shoulder that big?
I think your blowing this way out of proportion. This kind of thing has never been reported on Slashdot before AFAIK, so how can you say how we would have reacted?
And there's plenty of posts here criticizing Mandrake, so suck it Alec.
Fuck Beta. Fuck Dice
Yeah, but this is a completely diffenet type of damage. It has nothing to do with firmware.
#include "sig.h"
I believe this happened to Apple -- some of the first copy-protected CDs could damage Apple drives. And, yes, the RIAA got blamed, rather than Apple.
It's true, though, that hardware manufacturers should generally strive to keep software from damaging their hardware. This is *definitely* the case for simple hardware like CD drives.
I'd like to know whether the drive manufacturer will provide replacements.
May we never see th
Your kidding me right? I wrote some automation software for my company that scripts installs for anything we want. We use it to patch 1,600 windows 2000 desktops/kiosks that we have across the country. We just pushed out service pack 4, SP4 was about 130 MB alone. There has easily been 500+ MB of patches/service packs for win2k that we have had to push down to 1,600 devices. All these devices are connected over a dedicated 128K frame relay. It wasn't fun pushing down all those patches and took a *very* long time. WinXP also has a whole lot of patches and and a huge SP1. This sure doesn't make *me* confident about closed source/proprietary software.
Also, if you had done some reading, you would have read that this has nothing to do with an OS. It happens when a flush cache command is sent to the drive, and it gets fried. Nice try troll.
If Tyranny and Oppression come to this land,
it will be in the guise of fighting a foreign enemy. -James Madison
Let's not forget that LG stands for Lucky Goldstar.
You remember Goldstar, maker of $49 stereos and $89 air conditioners. Not to knock Korean products, most are very good, but I've never known any one who had luck with Goldstar. Wonder why they renamed the company? (Like your Maxima? - dude, you're drivin a friekin Datsun!)
Everyone Look At Me! Look At Me! I'm Special!
That's why you rode the short bus.
I've been using 9.1 on several boxes with no problems. I've got it installed on 5 boxes here at my home office and on two other boxes I have other distros installed.
I have installed 9.1 on several dozen machines for other people and they love it. No problems.
However, 9.2 pretty much bites the weenie.
I installed it on one box and had several problems with it. I think they jumped the gun on *THIS* release.
Mandrake would do well to recall this release and work out the many serious bugs. If they ship this to the stores and fill mail order with 9.2 they will do themselves great harm.
I like Mandrake in general, a lot. I was going to buy a full boxed set on CD/DVD of 9.2 w/manuals and was going to have several other people do the same but after having all these problems there is no way I will buy now.
I've told all my customers, friends, family, etc. to hold off until they sort this out.
If Mandrake ships this as it is it will be the death of the company. They are already in dire straights before this. This is very bad for their image.
As for is it the fault of Mandrake or is it the fault of LG, who knows yet. It doesn't matter at this point, this is a BAD problem and it needs to get fixed ASAFP...
Oh, how wonderful it is to have the upportunity to talk to the clueless directly!
1) Hardware should not be able to be broken softare-wise. Never. Hardware should be robust.
2) Let is see, every once an a while a major car manufacturor recalls a line of cars to have a discovered defect fixed. Now this doesn't fill me with confidence concerning the "superiority" of the propriatery buseness model. (See? Your logic is that of a retard)
Digital cryptographic signatures work pretty well. If the hardware will only function with a signed firmware, then it's unlikely you will do much besides temporarily disable the drive, requiring a reflash.
If the device has the CPU to deal with that, then, yes, it would work. That's the idea behind a lot of the DRM hardware we've heard about. No flashing of unauthorized firmware.
if a Microsoft service pack caused this kind of effect?
Are you some kind of moron?
You sure showed that guy. Let's see him try to post here again.
Though I agree with the meaning of your post, its delivery could use some polish.
More of my thoughts
Way right to the point. I am a MDK translator, and I haven't instaled it yet (due to some other problems I must confess). While I just love MDK, I must confess this version seemed rushed out to me. Anyways, software *always* have bugs. That one of these bugs could cause a hardware piece to die out completely so easily - it's not like it stressed it to death - it's no doubt a big mistake of the hardware maker. Just wait for the next generation of trojans/worms/virii that kill your CD-ROM. BTW, I happen to own an LG drive. A DVD, thankfully.
Where is that guy who'd die defending what I had to say when I need him?
"Linux releases 350 MB of patches"
No, cretin, _Mandrake_ releases a heap of patches for its bug-ridden distro. Not Linux. Not Debian. Not Slackware.
You can't be very bright...
Yeah, but this is a completely diffenet type of damage. It has nothing to do with firmware.
I looked on the ESOL (English for Speakers of Other Languages) Mandrake web site and they referred to the drives being "physically dead" or some such, but I have no faith that it's not indicative of a firmware corruption problem. Most software people say that the motherboard is "fried" when they flash in the wrong BIOS, so I don't put much faith in non-technical explanations. Do you know what the particular problem is?
According to LG Electronics, their ODD (Optical Disc Drive) products do not support Linux nor do they test with Linux. Unfortunately, many Dell computers (possibly others) come with these CD-ROM drives. Solution: Currently there is no solution or work-around for this issue; it is still under investigation. Damage occurs even when doing a network install. At this point, please do not install Mandrake Linux 9.2 on any computer containing a LG-based CD-ROM drive or it will damage your CD-ROM drive! We are actively looking for a solution to this problem.
To me, it sounds like LG is not being very helpful in the situation. I say we boycott LG products until they change their policies. Even put some pressure on Dell as well, considering they sell servers with Linux some may have LG drives in them.
Mandrake should have not released a version of their software that was flawed. However, bugs happen. To us all.
Both get paid. Both should have looked out for their customers.
The lesson is: test your software. nuff said.
"Programming is life, the rest is mere details"
My MB does. Many Gibgabyte boards have a dual bios feature. And yes, it does have a restore factory defaults option.
I've never heard of an open-source CDROM drive, so the complaints about this algorithm being proprietary are mostly irrelevant. The only issue is hostile OEM firmware (DRM or other misfeatures), which is a case for market pressure (if I found that my drive had been crippled by an OEM firmware, I'd demand a refund).
Hardware, software, and blinking lights!
lucky goldstar ;D
Well made American OS?? Hmmmmm, would that be,
Redhat?
Gentoo?
Debian?
Slackware?
Suse?
"Well made" excludes M$ of course.
Should firmware flashing utilities be able to check a MD5 checksum. (Or perhaps a digital signature? Nah, that would prevent us from building our own firmware.)
Those who would give up liberty in exchange for security and DRM should switch to Microsoft Palladium!
I have a GA7VAX Gigabyte with the dual BIOS feature. Sweet stuff. As for a restore factory defaults switch... uhm... haven't seen that one.
Even with the Gig boards, if you flash both BIOSes at the same time, like an idiot, and there's a problem, you're screwed.
Where would the system restore from if both BIOSes (or the one BIOS, in a single BIOS system) was trashed?
Wow, thanks. I have an Epson 1260, and did not know this.
Although.. i dont use linux.. but if I did =P
Are LG Cdroms made by the same people who make the knock off cellphones aka qualcomm?
Bugs can happen, tons of updates in 2 weeks simply mean "beta".
The Raven
Well what you said wasn't particularly insightful and just sidetracks the discussion.
Actually it was insightful. That's why it was modded up. Come back when you have an ID to post under.
I took me 2 dead CD-Rom drive to notice the problem... While trying to use a rescue distro (systemrescuecd.org), I got 2 CD-Rom 48X drives CRD-8480B sent burning in hell :/
The removal of the Packet-writing patch, on a newer version fixed the problem.
But I agree, LG has to fix the problem as no software should be able to kill some hardware (not talking about firmware though).
Do what any designer with a brain does. Make a boot loader, and a failsafe bootloader. If the bootload doesn't work the device loads the failsafe.
Lete not get all worked up, we all know what is going to happen.
1. LG continues to deny any responsibility.
2. The usual suspects will float a few pieces on the ZD rags and perhaps C|Net spreading FUD that Linux is dangerous.
3. One of the Linux IDE Gods will become sufficently annoyed that a proper investigation will happen, the flaw in LG's firmware will be documented in overkill detail.
4. The PR war will turn against LG, they will repent and issue a firmware update, stick a penguin somewhere deep on their support site and declare their eternal love of all things Linux. But it will strictly be for PR.
5. Once understood, a workaround will keep Linux from destroying unpatched drives. Probably something as simple as not checking for packet writing capacity unless basic RW support has already been detected.
6. No longterm changes anywhere. Nothing to see here, move along.
Democrat delenda est
...if it were a new Microsoft OS release breaking people's CD-ROMS, we wouldn't be blaming it on the hardware. And you know it.
Me as a tech support of a cheapo cdrom buyers comunity (lg, creative, btc, benq, lite-on, even actima) have found that linux distros (red hat, mandrake, suse) always treats cdroms as shit . I mean having them spin at top revolutions all the time and such things. I have learned lessons installing linux distros from CDROM, enough to prefer to install from any other source at all costs, instead of shorten dramatically my cdrom lifecycle.
What I don't understand is why windows generally knows better how to deal nicely with cdroms even with the new ones. As far as I know there aren't drivers specific to a model or brand embedded in windows and you don't install any normally. Obviously CDROMs are mainly designed for windows, but doesn't linux developers use this guidelines?
Anyway for me this is a kind of selection. Shall the bad hardware die in the hands of the transparent ever growing monster.
How much until we have "open" hardware?
.. that LG's CD drives are as well designed as their cellphones.
Seriously, my wife has gone through 4 LG flip phones in the past two years - most of the problems stem from a really crappy design of the hinge - they keep breaking.
LG - cheap crap to be avoided whenever possible.
My bro got a couple LG drive fried while installing SCO OpenServer 5.07 (don't ask why, long story).
...
I guess this goes on to show that Linux contains deadly SCO code
(vdanen being Vincent Danen who is responsible for updates).
So how do you propose putting firmware updates into CD-ROM drives, DVD drives, modems, etc.? Just about any peripheral which has flashable firmware can be rendered unusable by software.
Unusable != Destroyed
dd if=badfirmware of=cdrom; ; dd if=goodfirmware of=cdrom; cdrom = works again (=unusable)
dd if=badcode of=cdrom; dd if=goodcode of=cdrom; cdrom = still broken (destroyed)
Exigo spamos et dona ferentes
I didn't do any beta's this time around but I started a download the first day it was available. Bittorrent worked very well for me but a few people seemed to have problems. 9.2 is working very well on my two home systems here. I don't have much respect for a h/w vendor who doesn't release spec to interface. I have no respect for a manufacturer who releases h/w which can be destroyed by software. Looks like they should start a recall on all these CD drives but I bet they don't even let buyers know they are defective.
My personal impression of the LG brand is that it is quite good. I have never had an LG branded piece of electronics break or not work right off the bat. It seems to me that the S. Koreans are in that stage the Japenese were in during the late 70s and early 80s -- their quality has become very good but the prices haven't jumped yet. I purposely try to buy Samsung and LG brands because they work, they work for a long time, they are cheap, and I know my money isn't going to a communist nation which will give it in donations to the Democrats.
I thought it was German. I know yanks have a habit of claiming they invented stuff (usually 19 years after it was invented by a non-american) but this is too much.
" CHS is always translated into a linear sector address at some point, every drive manufacturered since like 6 years ago accepts LBA directly anyway. And moreover, internally it has another translation layer that helps it protect you from bad sectors (it detects and relocates them on the fly)."
Well it's not working very well then.I have an IBM Desktar (DTLA) 60GB. It occasionally would get a clicking noise. Then I ran the IBM diagnostics disk and it told me that I have a couple of bad sectors and would have to erase the disk to fix the problem. That of course would break my Linux installation because "/usr", "/var", "/" (XFS) along with swap are on that disk. Manually reconstructing all that would be a pain in the ass. The only solution is to mirror that disk to another disk, and install that while I fix the other. Then swap back.
Actually, to get DVD playing to work, I had to use a totally different set of packages. I believe they were RPM's made for Red Hat. The PLF ones, at least according to the reports I saw, are totally borked. I've never gotten DVD's to work with the PLF stuff before, so I was happy to find another solution.
Here's the article I read over on alt.os.linux.mandrake with instructions on how to get DVDs playing. The instructions are slightly confusing, since he sends you through the ogle site, where you then have to follow links to the freshRPMs site. You have to force one of the library packages to install, since it overwrites one of the native ones from a Mandrake package. Probably not for the weak of heart... and likely to make future upgrades a pain. But I gots me DVD's playing! w00t!
PLF is good for other packages, though... the DVD ones are the only ones that ever gave me problems.
Installed Madrake 9.2 a few days ago and have LG burner. No problems so far (except having to mount it as a hd) Newer kernel, newer gnome, kde and the rest.
It's my second full use distro and it's quite a step-up from what I was using. I've had a few bad crashes where the keyboard and mouse don't respond (I just ssh through another machine and reboot, easy enough).
Linux does make computers fun again...
Any truth to the rumor that Microsoft/LG knew about this problem? That it was an intentional violation of the ATAPI standard, and selected to avoid getting hit by windows?
Talk about a landmine for Open Source. Or the next worm...
The idea that people should, for whatever reason, react the same way towards a convicted illegal monopolist as they do towards one of it's extremely small competitors is too mind-numbingly stupid for words.
Besides, even if this were caused by a Microsoft product, the simple fact of the matter is that software should never be able to fry hardware in the manner we're seeing here. Period.
Please read this URL. I think you will find following the instructions therein will greatly help your ability to express yourself publicly.
yeah, today some new motherboards have a backup bios that can save you from a bad flashing.
...but they should have advised the users of certain models of their drives to check and possibly update the drive firmware.
The thing which kills the drives is - wait for it - setting them up for packet writing. The hackers who made the patch to do this (included starting with Mandrake 9.2rc1) may be able to figure out a way to do it without triggering LG's bug, or may not, in which case any Linux kernel which features this packet writing code will kill a broken LG drive.
Note that this happens when the drive is init'ed, not when you write a CD with one, so you'll kill a drive just as effectively even if you install over the network or whatever.
As to responsibility, well... the drive software is broken, end of story. If your LG drive dies, take it back and make a warranty claim.
For those who assert that Mandrake should have tested 9.2 on every known drive before releasing it, the answer is that Mandrake did indeed test 9.2 on these models of LG drives, but none of their testers happened to have the broken firmware revision(s). <shrug>
For those speculating about what would happen if it had been MS-Windows-XP's problem instead, the only differences would have been that more than 80% of all broken LG drives would have been killed by now due to semi-forced upgrades, Penguinistas would have been gleefully rejoicing that their software didn't kill drives, and Microsoft would still be ignoring the problem and we'd expect them to for at least another two weeks.
I don't know whether it's possible to flash a killed drive's firmware and resurrect it, or whether the broken firmware actually destroys hardware.
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing
That there's such a showstopper of a bug in a recent mandrake release comes as no surprise.
I'm not a linux expert but I do like fiddling around with it. And I'm not afraid of using a CLI. I find with a few minor exceptions Linux meets my needs as a desktop user -- student/home user. KDE + Mozilla + OpenOffice and XMMS. Everything else is just nice.
Mandrake 8.1 was the first distribution that would boot on my computer out of the box. Or rather after burning the downloaded ISO's. I had good experiences with 8.1, 8.2 & 9.0.
Mandrake 9.1 got to be so annoying that I switched to Suse 8.2
Mandrake 9.1 had annoying flaws in the ADSL scripts. Everything was ok in 9.0. I thought the problem would surely be fixed in the 9.2 betas and RC's. But, no. I had to copy and manually edit even after using Mandrake Control Center. The error was something like "n=eth0 (using >Name of the NIC module
In addition there were errors error in the fstab. So that there were always odd errors in mounting my cdrom & floppy. Again the result of carelessness and sloppiness.
All of the above can be found in a search of ALT.OS.LINUX.MANDRAKE on google groups.
Mandrake actually tested on several broken models of LG drive, including one I own. It didn't kill any of them. Why not? Well, it turns out that none of the drives tested had the broken firmware revision(s).
Using your reasoning, Mandrake should have tested every single firmware release of every single model of every single piece of hardware that their OS interacts with - in all possible combinations - with every single subrelease of their own kernel. Got a spare aeon or two?
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing
I recently installed Debian 3 from a DVDR using a pioneer DVD drive.
After the install I noticed that movies don't play properly on my drive anymore. The picture is permanently zoomed in on the center so you can only see 50% of the picture. It is the same no matter what software is used to play the DVD.
Now I think about it the only thing I have done with my DVD drive apart from playing DVD movies is install debian, so its a bit suspicious:)
LG drives work with Windows, but Linux fries your CD. So which one would you pick.
Instead of blaming the drives, let's get some responsibility, otherwise don't compare Linux with Windows.
Imagine you put Linux to run your car and your car's engine burns because of bad software.
When would you EVER flash both bios's at the same time. Fine- if you have a good update, test it for stability(I mean really test- 36 hours or so), then flash the other bios with this known good copy - but never both at the same time. Thats like downloading and burning a new dist and chucking out all the old dist cd's without testing the new dist is gonna install...
OrionRobots.co.uk - Robots From sol
Huh...I know I will be modded down for this because I'm on Slashdot...but...
;-)
Windows never *destroyed* any of my hardware.
The problem is (and it is still the manufacturers fault) that the IO routines for upploading firmware may be in the firmware - and bad firmware will render it useless as you can no longer flash the thing...
OrionRobots.co.uk - Robots From sol
However, I've got a feeling it's like this:
If someone makes a product like this, it'll cost a few extra dollars to produce. Maybe it'll add 5-10% to the total price (remembering that all the middlemen will add a percentage to the price rather than a fixed amount, so $5 of extra hardware could end up costing you, the consumer, $20.)
This particular feature isn't something a marketing person is going to put on a box. Hell, half of them have enough problems just listing technical standards. "Includes safe firmware flashing feature!" isn't going to appear in a jagged "flash" label on the front of the box, and it's unlikely to appear in the list of technical features either.
So the person seeing this, deciding whether to add it, knows that consumers will be faced with two identical boxes. One will contain a "safe" device, but will cost $20 more than the other, which will not. The purchaser will not know that the $20 more expensive one is the one that contains the system for safe firmware updates. And even if they did, chances are most wouldn't understand the ramifications, or would assume it wouldn't affect them anyway.
Can you guess why safe firmware update features are the exception, not the rule?
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
been using it on stock debian(woody and sarge), libranet(2.7) and the latest Knoppix.
no troubles.
LG doesn't support Linux, so this problem doesn't exist in their eyes.
When I bought my LG CD burner, they claimed compatibility with Linux - Slackware 2.0, but Linux - on the box.
Geez, they make phones, hard drives, and that crazy internet fridge.
If a drive can be trashed by a Mandrake CD, lord only knows what my cooking will do to their fridge. Eek.
A lot of people have said its from sending a command to flush the cache
"We have got to make Stan understand the importance of voting, because he'll definitely vote for our guy." - South Park
Mace? But everyone knows that Gary Gygax is a polearm freak. Maybe a +1 Glave-glissarm-volge?
One line blog. I hear that they're called Twitters now.
Somehow this reminds me of Hofstadter's illustration of Godel's incompleteness theorem in Godel, Escher, Bach... wherein Achilles has a phonograph which he claims can reproduce any sound, so the tortoise gives him a record with a sound which destroys phonographs...
Well, it was funny to me.
Where are you going?
How about a write protect jumper? There's already a jumper block back there, it can't cost too much more to add a jumper, except on those drives whose plastic rear bezel (which is unnecessary to begin with) is too restrictive to fit another one back there.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
My motherboard has a ROM flash bios programmer which is smart enough to read floppy disks, understand enough of the FAT filesystem to find and read a BIOS image from the floppy, and program the flash bios. Hence I do not even need a program to flash my bios, and I do not need a good BIOS either.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Since when is firmware not software? It's compiled from source code, transferred to storage media, and then transferred into non-volatile ram... and it runs as a program when the drive is used. That's like saying a stuffed bear is not a bear.
Flash your LG drive to the latest version of their firmware and it won't die, even if it is on the blacklist.
I don't like and don't use the LG drives. You may have a good one, but I've seen all sorts of marginal behaviour in them with customers. For example, many of them won't work without hdX=nodma. When the time came to choose a CD burner for myself, I shelled out the extra 15% and bought a Sony, and have had no complaints. It actually does burn reliably at the rated speed, even without packet writing.
My Pioneer DVD burner hasn't caused a problem yet either, but OTOH the shine has hardly worn off. It's in an external USB2.0 case so I can use it with my lappy, desktop or elsewhere so I'd expect it to be damaged more rapidly than one in a fixed installation.
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing
nuff said!
Yes.
Mandrake are not the only people to use this code, merely the first to unleash it in large numbers.
When the drive is set up for packet writing, part of the procedure is to completely flush the drive's command queues and such. The command to do this guts certain models of LG ("Lame Goldstar?") drives with certain revisions of their firmware.
I don't know whether the drive can be flashed and recovered or not.
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing
A standard ATAPI command with standard parameters etc etc does the damage to certain revisions of firmware on certain models of LG drive. The technical term for this kind of behaviour is "suicide". Take your drive in and warranty it.
R. I. P.
L.G. Drive
Killed by
Firmware
- 2003 -
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing
It is actually only recent cd drives. I would have to guess that it was designed to destroy itself if it saw a special sequence. Perhaps one that should not normally occur. Perhaps one that might only happen if writing an MP3, wav, or ogg designed to kill it.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
I do not like this distribution at all.
It always breaks on me..
I installed a clean 9.2 install and it was working nice and fine.. And I was like *cool they fixed things*.. But then I installed all the updates..
and Just booted up that system now and most of the menus are missing.. The configuration link is gone.. the system is completely broken.. Same thing happened with my 9.1 install after I installed security updates.. Well at lesast I can clean up 3GB of disk space now..
(1.5 for CD images, and 1.5 for vmware install).
You're right. Windows at least installs. And if it's online, you'll get a virus before you're even able to log in. It's quite incredible, really.
So how do you propose putting firmware updates into CD-ROM drives, DVD drives, modems, etc.?
Simple, you use the "Upgrade firmware" command, which mandrake obviously wasn't using. If you make hardware that attempts to upgrade the firmware on other random commands, then you're fucking fired.
I think it will happen eventually, since MB manufacturers have to deal with the costs attributed to a bad flash somehow. Even if their approach is "you screwed it up, you pay to fix it", it still costs them in reputation and customer loyalty. I think we'll see it eventually, although the consumer may not even be aware the feature exists. It'll just be one of those "I heard company X is more reliable" issues.
How could anyone design hardware that bad?
Well they are cheap but they are also from the company formerly known as GoldStar.
They had to change the name after the quality of their products became so low that not even their very low prices made them attractive.
GoldStar is the skoda of electronics.
Their business model is and always has been sell poor quality but cheap stuff.
Anyone that buys the cheapest lowest quality products from GoldStar get what they pay for.
This is not done by flashing the firmware. This is done by sending a perfectly ordinary ATAPI command. With certain firmware revisions on certain drive models. It was only a matter of time before something tripped over it.
Perhaps the Powers That Be should rename the command HCF (Halt and Catch Fire) in honour of LG and after the best hardware traditions. The HCF instruction meant "Halt for/on Carry Flag" on some ancient transistor-era architecture - kind of like a wait-for-interrupt on a modern architecture that actually has interrupts - and the effect was to spinlock the machine until another piece of hardware knocked the carry flag on the head. Certain race conditions would result in the carry flag failing to be pushed over if the HCF was executed in the same cycle that the carry-clear happened, at which point the machine would spinlock for seconds instead of milliseconds, hardware not designed for this would heat up and let out the smoke, and the machine would die. The Jargon File mentions the same thing happening with an MC6800 micro system, although I can't personally see that. I guess the modern equivalent would be "Halt and Corrupt Firmware".
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing
And I agree. They should. (-: Just a s-l-i-g-h-t incompatibility there :-)
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing
You can't be very bright...
Coming from an AC, that means a lot. You clearly have strength of conviction behind your words to post anonymously.
But I digress. What you fail to understand is that to the people who make decisions about Linux in the workplace there is no difference. They will hear about this little issue and be concerned. They won't think, "Oh, that's just Mandrake, we're running RH so no problem."
A flush command which happens while deciding whether they're a writer or not has been redefined (<thwack!>) by LG to mean "upload firmware" (with predictable results). To quote Juan Quintela from the Cooker list, "Yep, whoeved decided at LG that reusing for UPLOAD_FIRMWARE command FLUSH_CACHE comand should be shoot. Twice."
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing
What about a command that sets the video card to a really bad scan rate and/or resolution, damaging the CRT? There was an early "hardware" virus that supposedly did this.
Get off my launchpad!
http://www.hardwareanalysis.com/content/article/16 72.3/
I'm a rabbit startled by the headlights of life
The IBM Desktar line do not have a stellar performance record. It is likely that it has deteriorated to the point where it is trying in frustration to figure out how to remap bad sectors, but failing at it, as it doesn't have enough free where it needs them.
Thus, it recommends you wipe the disk and start afresh, where it can mark off entire blocks of the disk as do-not-enter territory. This will reduce the reported size of your disk. Since it can't make any guarantees as to where it will have to remove writable addresses, your data cannot be realistically preserved (filesystem generally doesn't like having data being magically moved around with some gone missing.)
Fuck Beta. Fuck Dice
That's fucking funny.
Please, don't get me wrong, I'm not such a nasty person all the time. This is my chew-people-out-with-interdespersed-cusswords account.
I have an image to uphold, dog!
Fuck Beta. Fuck Dice
Simple, you use the "Upgrade firmware" command
I'm an embedded systems engineer. There is no standard "Upgrade firmware" command built into the ATAPI or IDE spec, is there? Each manufacturer picks a method and random probing will trigger some of these methods.
dd if=badfirmware of=cdrom; ; dd if=goodfirmware of=cdrom; cdrom = works again (=unusable)
dd if=badcode of=cdrom; dd if=goodcode of=cdrom; cdrom = still broken (destroyed)
Jesus Fucking Christ! The ignorance some Linux users have about firmware is amazing. You can't flash CD-ROM firmware by copying a file the device with the dd command.
I submitted an article about this after I fried THREE CD-ROMs in about 2 hours installing 9.2 on a rack of 5 machines. In the article I submitted were the exact model numbers of the dead puppies. All that remains of the article now is:
- 2003-10-23 20:40:24 Mandrake 9.2 Eats CD-ROM Drives On Install (articles,mandrake) (rejected)
When I get back to work Monday I'll post that info (and the firmware versions, if I can get them) to the Mandrake Club Install forum. Of course, that's where I should have posted it in the first place. I'll know better next time, but I tried to warn 'ya!
Any technology distinguishable from magic is insuficiently advanced.
Any technology distinguishable from magic is insufficiently advanced. - Geek's corollary to Clarke's law
Just wait until the first worm, virus, or trojan uses this little misfeature. It's not just Mandrake- especially if they're using proper ATAPI stuff (which shouldn't zap ANYTHING).
It's LG that should be busy about it as much as Mandrake- don't go blaming someone else for some hardware vendor's half-assed reflash (which is what this suspiciously sounds like to me with them using the "Linux isn't supported and they don't test against it" defense about the whole thing.).
I am not merely a "consumer" or a "taxpayer". I am a Citizen of the State of Texas
How about a write protect jumper?
Sounds good to me. But what happens when you tell the average user (who pays Best Buy to snap in DIMMs) that they need to pop the cover off of their PC to upgrade the drive firmware? 99% of them will freak and at least one of those people will sue the company because they pried the cover off of their PC with a tire iron. Not only that, IT departments would be livid if they had to upgrade firmware in 500 PCs and had to pop the cover on each one to do it.
Which, by the way, is what they did.
I am not merely a "consumer" or a "taxpayer". I am a Citizen of the State of Texas
Well to change the flash on any device, it should reqiure a certain combination of bytes to be sent over, a combination that cannot be sent by chance or a bad distro. That combination would only be known to the firmware developers at that company.
Better yet put an internal jumper in the device so the user has to unscrew the device in the unlikely event of updating firmware which is, what, once in 3 years after the purchase and then never again?
"Give orange me give eat orange me eat orange give me eat orange give me you." -Nim Chimpsky
A lot of people have said its from sending a command to flush the cache
I've seen that claim, but don't know if it's true or not and I'm not going to lend it any credence until I see some better evidence than "a lot of people" repeating something that they've heard. That's how urban legends are spread, not how one should approach engineering.
This is a long-shot, but I don't know the age of the LG drives in question, but the Flush Cache (E7h) command is relatively new to the ATA-ATAPI spec and may not have existed at the time that the LG drives were created. LG might have co-opted that then-unused command for some other purpose (e.g., some factory test or calibration mode).
IT costs money to do that. Right now, on parts alone, CD-ROM's are so cheap, theres basicly no margin in it.
Then theres that minor engineering programme you need to fund to work out how to apply that button to the unit. Then you have to work out the modification to the production line, sort out the suppliers etc.
With the declining number of CD-ROMs sold these days, i don't think it's justified.
Sometimes I wish I was a plumber, then I'd know how to deal with other people's shit.
This shows that Mandrake started to sucks... now that they filled chapter 11 some time ago, nobody can sue them for the damages caused on their hardware. I'm sorry but it's time to start thinking to abandon this distro. Was good while it stand, but their time has finished for me with this.
Very funny. Thank you. Gotta go get a towel now.... ;-)
"The most sensible request of government we make is not, "Do something!" But "Quit it!"
A decent CD-ROM is pretty cheap - I'd probably get a CD-RW while I was at it.
Sorry, I can see that this argument has merit when it comes to complicated stuff like embedded routers, but why the hell should a CD-ROM need to be firmware-upgradeable? It should correctly support all the standards that are available when it is released, and that's it. It isn't like there's a new CD standard out every week.
If firmware updating is something that is required there should at least be a lot of safeties, preferably including a physical jumper switch.
"'I pass the test,' she said. 'I will diminish, and go into the West, and remain Galadriel.'"
- JRR Tolkien.
How about "But what happens when you tell the average user that they need upgrade the drive firmware?"
Ship the drive with the jumper in the "write-enable" position. The clueful and paranoid can remove it at installation time. And we can resurrect the old idea of the keylock, except instead of locking the keyboard, we activate all the write protect jumpers.
Another way to go about this which would really delight companies and which will scare the hell out of the anti-DRM types; implement DRM, and require that all firmware images be signed. If you do this however, you have to include enough flash for two copies of the program image, because you also have to have the system operate in the case that the image is sent incompletely -a good idea regardless.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
The LG CDROMs die because they see FLUSH_CACHE and do UPLOAD_FIRMWARE.
I do have a Microsoft keyboard to hand on which the function keys (and some special keys like Insert) don't send the standard codes. You have to invent a keymap for yourself if you're not running on MS-Windows. But noi, we'r enot abusing our monopoly power at all. Beward of keyboards with a "FN Lock" key near the top right.
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing
This command will fix Windows after using PartitionTradgic with Mandrake.
OH THE SHAME I fell off the wagon and use sigs again!
Who would you say is to blame?
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing
Ship the drive with the jumper in the "write-enable" position. The clueful and paranoid can remove it at installation time. And we can resurrect the old idea of the keylock, except instead of locking the keyboard, we activate all the write protect jumpers.
I have used both the key-locks and spare "turbo" switches for motherboard write-protect jumpers. I've also used said switches for CMOS discharge back when I used to play the overclock-till-it-won't-boot game.
Another way to go about this which would really delight companies and which will scare the hell out of the anti-DRM types; implement DRM, and require that all firmware images be signed.
That scares the hell out of me since I have hacked firmware in my DVD-ROM that makes it regionless. I prefer the jumper method and your remove-if-you-are-smart-enough idea sounds pretty reasonable to me -- though I fear that most people would leave it in place.
There is nothing Linux does fundamentally different to Windows with CDROM drives. Windows makes no attempt at spinning at less than maximum speed. In fact, a large portion of the drives I've tested don't even support speed setting. So, there is no reason why Linux would "shorten dramatically [your] cdrom lifecycle". I suspect you added that just to troll a bit.
I've personally had the displeasure of implementing CD ripping software for an embedded device, and dealing with the multitude of buggy-as-hell CDROM drives. It's a nightmare - every single drive I tested ended up requiring at least one workaround for a firmware bug. It's shocking how little testing has obviously gone into these devices. CDROM drives suck, basically.
Also something you don't understand is that CDROM drives are inherently not made just for windows. They all run (these days) to either the ATAPI or SCSI MMC spec (which are pretty much the same thing). There's nothing in those documents which refers to Windows, or Linux for that matter. CDROM drives are open hardware, in a sense.
Where it all goes wrong (and where it's gone wrong in LG's case) is when a manufacturer only tests their drive against one system, rather than against the spec, or multiple systems. That not only ensures that it's largely untested, but it also pisses off the software developers of the system they test against - they're stuck with not touching "untested" commands from then on! You end up with stupid whitelists or blacklists or just never supporting any enhanced feature set, for fear of destroying drives, or otherwise malfunctioning.
I'm actually not shocked that LG have the incompetence to create a firmware which can destroy itself. It's normally a very, very hard thing to do because flash chips have a "write protect" you normally turn on first thing, so software bugs can't accidentally kill it. But given the very obvious lack of technical skill of the people involved in writing CDROM drive firmware these days, nothing surprises me.
Mandrake, unfortunately, has a reputation for being a bit too bleeding-edge for its own good sometimes. I am quite surprised about the missing kernel-source RPM in the download edition. This problem has occured in the past, when they first released 2-CD betas. QA must be sleeping.
Pity. Versions 5.x-6.x of 'drake were nice...
Michel
Fedora Project Contribut
Any combination can be sent by accident, so no matter what they pick, their chance of screwage remains the same. And if they keep it secret, folks working at the hardware level can't exercise extra caution around that sequence because they don't know it! Really, secrecy is the WORST kind of security.
Better yet put an internal jumper in the device so the user has to unscrew the device in the unlikely event of updating firmware
That's a really good solution, if you ask me. And cheap to implement, too. ALL flashable chips have a write-protect pin, so it's just a matter of running a trace on the board to the back edge and putting a jumper to ground there.
If a job's not worth doing, it's not worth doing right.
This not good.
I know that bitching about free software will not get me good karma points, but Mandrake 9.1 made me loose a good night of sleep yesterday. I have already installed it on one computer and was using it under Vmware, and thought it was a dream distro. As Red Hat has put their new versions on a very short life cicle, I am looking for alternatives and Mandrake seemed perfect.
I am not the only computer user at home, so I can't nix Windows. I installed Mandrake 9.1 on my brand new computer, and Lilo corrupted the MBR so bad that it didn't even load - it just showed a sequence of 9s. I had to boot from a floppy and do a fdisk /mbr to restore the MBR, what put me back on a Windows-only enviroment. I have installed several times Red Hat and Conectiva, and this sort of thing had never happened to me. I am going to submit a bug to Mandrake and go back to Red Hat 8.
These kind of catastrophic bugs, that make your computer unbootable or damage a hardware piece, can drive newbies away from Linux entirely.
I think that you forgot 2a: "the usual suspects" will maintain that you shouldn't use Linux, not only because it's dangerous, but because if it does something bad to your computer, there's NoBody To Hold Accountable. Because Mandrake isn't in a position to pay for drives, they have noone themselves to fire, and the implication will be left hanging that if software from "the usual suspects" had caused such an issue, that they would have accepted responsibility.
Of course they wouldn't either, but then it wouldn't be FUD...
--
$tar -xvf
It actually has something to do with firmware...
If you read the posts higher-up, you will discover that someone at LG, in writing the firmware for their normal CD-ROMs (not their CD-RWs), redefined the code that normally means "write flush cache" (which I guess is used by an experimental kernel patch to detect if you have a CD writer capable of packet writing, if I read everything correctly) to mean "firmware upload".
Naturally, the kernel driver expects to get an error returned back to it, indicating that we don't have a CD-RW drive. Instead, the LG CD-ROMs initiate a firmware wipe and await the upload of new code.
Whoops.
Can't believe they misanderstood the flash_cache command.
This reminds me of an odd issue seen in some Apple Repair shops. If an owner of a certain breed of iMac attempted to install OS X 10.2 before updating their firmware, you would get no video on reboot. You couldn't boot to OF to change to boot to OS 9, either, I don't believe; but you could attach an external monitor, which worked correctly, update the firmware, and then things would be hunky dory again. You could install 10.2, and the built-in monitor would work fine.
Does anyone in the know care to describe how this particular effect was created by simply installing 10.2? We were pretty stymied in the shop until we hit on it.
--
$tar -xvf
Last I knew, this BIOS feature simply loaded and ran the awdflash.exe on the floppy disk. The actual code to flash the bios does not exist in the bios itself, but code to load a program from the floppy disk and flash itself is stored in a read-only part of the bios on most new systems. Pressing ALT+F2 at boot will trigger this usually. Also the FAT12 filesystem is incredibly simple, so its probably not hard to write code to read (and not even write) from it.
Morphing Software
Sorry, I can see that this argument has merit when it comes to complicated stuff like embedded routers,
Compared to CD-ROMs, routers are simple. Do you have any idea of the complexity of the firmware in the average CD-ROM drive?
but why the hell should a CD-ROM need to be firmware-upgradeable?
Because they are having read errors on copy-protected discs using Cactus Data Shield. Because the new CD-RW media introduced by Fictitious Corp. has a lower reflectivity than can be handled by the firmware currently in the drive. Because they discover that a small percentage of the drives are getting read errors at 52X on some CD-R 700MB media. Because the drives are exceeding FCC RF emission limits during motor start-up. Because the spindle motor manufacturer made a minor design change that requires a longer spin-down but didn't inform the drive manufacturer before shipping the drives. Because Promise's new IDE controller doesn't assert the cable select line soon enough after power-on. Because there is a problem when the CD-ROM drive is a slave to a Western Digital WD2000JB drive. Need some more examples?
What command? What are your sources to support that claim? I want real sources, not a quote from some unconfirmed posting you read on Slashdot. Mandrake's web site had only this to say:So you know something that they aren't revealing? What is it and where did you learn it?
Yes its a bad luck you have a bad hardware. ...). then I was to install in my own office, and my machine did not install. Then suddenly, I analyse and remove remove some power concetors of the machines, leaving only cdrom and hd, floppy, second etc out. ..) since the instalation use all the power of machine, memories, cpu .. ...?
In the old times I was installing Non Dedic. servers OS/2 (my preference in that time)an others solutions for Small Office needs, and what surprise me in that time was that in some machines was impossible to install OS/2, but WinXX, 3.1 or 95, (memories...), and others dos based works (Novell was dos based install
After months of experience, I concluded that OS/2 with a fantastic time sharing switch (really 32bits, WinXX wasn't
Then, a bad memory, a bad power suply, a bad anything was denunciated since the installation.
And windows and others
well, after a time, loose data, loose time, loose money, loose patient.
But, in this case, its nice to see Mdk show this problem, because near to none companys did this.
I use mandrak with a CDRW LG with no problens. The big mistake is that they don't explain that it occur only with some Bios.
cheers
Unless the software is rented to you and the company goes belly-up, you can still use the one that came with the hardware, right? You wouldn't be able to run the latest OS on the old hardware anyway, so what's the point?
That was quite likely an urban legend. Anyway, it hasn't been possible with monitors made in the last 10 years.
A coworker of mine had a word document he was trying to open... word started to read it, then the computer crashed. He reboot only to find his bios zorched. He replaced it with a spare (identical) motherboard, tried it again, same result. He got a new motherboard, a fresh install of windows (95 or NT, it was a while ago), and a fresh install of office, tried to open the same file... EXACT SAME RESULT! He sent the word document to ms, they confirmed it would zorch the particular motherboard he had been using, and that it sucked to be him.
My guess is that it was a very lucky buffer overflow in the corrupted document that did it, but it's not what most people expect from a brand-spanking-new microsoft install.
HIV Crosses Species Barrier... into Muppets
"how could anyone design hardware that bad? "
have you SEEN the international space station?
oi.
somehow this dell not suprise me at all.
SIGERR: laziness exceeds quota
or to blow up your car's engine by overreving it (assume you haven't screwed with the rev limiter)
1. Get on the highway and rev it up to the limit in 3rd gear.
2. Shift down to second.
3. Pro.. uh, kaboom!
HIV Crosses Species Barrier... into Muppets
I guess you never heard about pseudocode then. Because that's what the original poster wrote.
Many new ones have a unflashable 2nd BIOS which always remains as from the manufacturer,,
Reece,
You get an extra gold star if you compress the drive image and manage to fit the whole 60GB into 8 (since most is probably empty space...) all in one go. A bootable redhat distro with rescue mode should be enough. ;-)
Then swap out the old drive, and decompress it back onto the new one. Wheee.
i'd say that would mean some monitors were poorly designed.. When monitors didn't have failsafes against this (long time ago now..) the video cards at the time rarely had high enough refresh rates / resolutions to da much harm to a monitor...
Reece,
Any combination can be sent by accident, so no matter what they pick, their chance of screwage remains the same
I really intended to say it should be a tough combination. Instead of sending a 'command' for writing to the chip consisting of one byte, it should send maybe a 8 byte preshared key. Sending 8 bytes by chance of a buggy software to exactly that port should be EXTREMELY rare.
can't exercise extra caution around that sequence because they don't know it
I still believe the firmware write command combination should be kept secret. Driver developers should only send combinations they do know about, and they should be able to get that write combination if the original company authorizes them to change the firmware, making them sign they wont redistribute that key.
The chance of virus/trojan makers or crackers breaking into systems using lax passwords is very high. If hardware can be damaged by writing a bad firmware, an outlook worm can destroy a great deal of hardware.
"Give orange me give eat orange me eat orange give me eat orange give me you." -Nim Chimpsky
nah.... just your mind..... soul....
Redundant drives, redundant drive controllers, redundant power supplies, redundant servers, why not redundnant firmware? Better yet, as another poster pointed out, make one of them read-only so it can never be overwritten. If the device fails at startup because of a BIOS checksum error, flip over to the known-good default ROM.
Why didn't they do this years ago, before Chernobyl/CIH-spacefiller? That thing wiped out our school's engineering lab and cost us thousands of dollars to resolve.
First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win. -- Gandhi
Isn't it ironic that an open source product is the first to implement Orin Hatch's "if they try to burn a CD ROM, destroy their computer" protocol? But hey, Mandrake is even more advanced! It uses the famous Republican "preemptively destroy all threats to politically well connected monopoly profits" policy, too! Who said open source advocates didn't understand business???
I have read most of the threads here and I only have two comments:
1. I will never, never be using any LG disk products! No matter how you put it, in no way should ANY sequence of data be able to destroy a CD-ROM drive. I've seen the discussions, I've heard the arguments and it is all BS! I have checked my systems here, there are no LG CD-ROM drives and now there never will be! There are NO Acer CD-ROM drives here for much the same reason. The one Acer drive that I installed was the only one I ever used that had flash-firmware; I upgraded the firmware 3 times (3 differnet revs in 1 month) and it still didn't work right; I finally threw the damned thing away and have not bought Acer since.
2. I will never, never be using ANY Mandrake distribution! 350 Mbytes of fixes one week after release? Who the fuck do they think they are, Microsoft? It is for this very reason that I am actively moving away from Microsoft software to Linux and OSS.
Both of these problems are due to poor QA. Whether LG admits it or not, that drive firmware should never have left the factory as it did. Whether Mandrake admits it or not, this release should never have left the factory as it did. Doesn't anyone test their poducts before shipping anymore? And don't give me that old saw about having to ship on time or there won't be a company anymore; as far as my purchasing dollars are concerned, these two companies don't exist now because they shipped crap on time.
Companies cannot use flash upgrading or online patch distribution as a reason to put out shit assuming that it can always be fixed later in the field.
I, for one, am voting with my money and my feet. People; we have to start demanding a higher level of quality from our hardware and software vendors or this sad sorry state of affairs will never change.
Check for yor local mirror at http://www.mandrakelinux.com/en/ftp.php3 first, next here's how to do it :
/mnt/dload /mnt/dload
:
/usr/bin/mkisofs -o /mnt/dload/mdk92.raw \
:
:)
# cd
# wget --mirror ftp://ftp.mirror.org/pub/mandrake/9.2/i586/
# cd ftp.mirror.org/pub/mandrake/9.2
# mv i586/
# rm -rf ftp.mirror.org
Next create a dvd iso using the following command
#
-b isolinux/isolinux.bin -c isolinux/boot.cat \
-no-emul-boot -boot-load-size 4 -boot-info-table \
-hide-joliet-trans-tbl \
-l -r -L -J -V "Mandrake 9.2 i586 DVD" -P "MDK-92-2003102001" \
-p "MDK92" -A "Mandrake 9.2 i586 DVD" "/mnt/dload/i586"
next burn the raw Bootable dvd-r iso with your favorate burn program, i used OSS DVD from http://crashrecovery.org/oss-dvd.html
# cdrecord -v dev=0,0,0 driveropts=burnfree -dao mdk92.raw
actually i'm writing this currently from inside Mandrake 9.2 FiveStar. The DVD-R install went smooth and took 15 minutes
Robert
I think we need to know some more details before blaming one side or another.
Products have defects, and because of this, both hardware and software manufacturers need to be dilligent. Perhaps the real problem is a lack of close co-operation between hardware and software vendors. For example, Windows has a certified driver programme: as much as you may think that this is just marketing, it sets some basic level of guarantee that the driver has been verified to work against your hardware.
Some questions are:
Did LG know of the hardware problem ?
Is it a defect, or a bad design decision ? If a bad design decision, LG may be liable. If a defect, then warranty may only apply.
Had they published this and made software manufacturers aware of it (e.g. does the Windows device driver have code in it to prevent this problem from occurring with the specific model / version numbers of the drives ?)
Did Mandrake inspect LG release notes / details, or query LG, before putting this code into the kernel ? There's an obligation on any software manufacturer to _check the details_, if not by actual testing, then by asking.
Let's wait for the facts. Otherwise, this is sounding much like the usual public ranting you get before someone does a real and credible investigation.
LG/GoldStar was one of the first companies to print a "Runs with Linux" tag on its boxes. But unfortunately, a CD-ROM drive was one of the few which weren't Linux-compatible at all.
Kind of reminds me of how you can fry a monitor by having it emit more than it can actually take...
Here's an idea, to flash the firmware you need to send a big long 'key' that matches the firmware before it gives you write access. Easy as cake.
"Sometimes, I think Trent just needs a cup of hot chocolate and a blankie." -Tori Amos on Nine Inch Nails
Knoppix 3.2 destroyed an older CD drive when I tried to demonstrate it to my friend. I had to replace the drive :(
What is it in CD images that can cause this?
Is there something that can be done to prevent this from happening in the future?
All data is speech. All speech is Free.
Some people in russian-expert maillist report that ASP Linux is affected too.
I tried this with an Tseng Labs ET4000 video card and an old Goldstar VGA monitor several years back. I wrote up a program to randomly change the scan rate every several seconds. (The info for VGA registers I got from the Programmer's Guide to EGA, VGA and SuperVGA by Ferraro.) I left it running fo two days.
The video card and the monitor worked fine afterwards.
So much for that urban legend.
On the other hand, there was a pre MGA video monitor which COULD be destroyed by misprogramming the scan rates according to the same book by Ferraro, but that hardware design flaw was corrected in later versions of the monitor.
Only it's not quite the traditional reason. Attention, sladerous humour coming up.
/Apologies.
An IYFEG firmware engineer is calling his cousin, who studied English, to discuss a problem of terminology.
IYFEG Engineer: Ni-haw-mah! Please, you speaking engrish, what to be meaning by "frush"?
Cousin: How-Mah! I think you mean "flush", it means to wipe, to clean, to get rid of something. Rike you flush the toiret.
Engineer: OK, I understand. Thank you. (puts down phone). Now, how do I implement a "flush" instruction on broody CD-ROM drive? Broody western committees not thinking straight! OK, I make feedback loop with +5v, so massive power surge wipes firmware crean. That should do it!
(later) PHB: Engineer! You implemented frush command correctry?
Engineer: Totarry, boss! It frushes creaner than a radies bottom!
PHB: OK, let's ship the damn thing.
Ceci n'est pas une signature
"Right! God, if only that war on drugs hadn't been so effective! I could really use some fucking marijuana now!" :)
This isn't as much "normalization" as it is "don't take so many drugs when you're designing tables."
CRC32 is a wonderful (and easily programmed) thing. How 'bout a simple challenge, response using CRC32 before hardware decides to start reflashing?
18th hour?
PUSSY.
Try 48-60 hrs then come back to me.
18th hour indeed. Pfft.
but I haven't had any trouble with it. I've been using Mandrake since 7.2, the missing kernel source issue is sort of a repeat from 8.2 (I believe it was on the cd, but not installed by default). I've been using 9.2 since it was released to the club (actually before, but that was the beta). It is a solid release with some great improvements. Dependancy problems I haven't experienced in a long time, certainly not in the 9.x series. As for the LG Drives it sounds like it was just their luck to discover the bug and they've been pretty forthcoming about it. All in all I'm about as happy as I've been with this update. Here's looking forward to the 10.x series.
Quack, quack.
Now that is funny... LG claims the opposite... But they claim they support only Slackware 2.0, which of course comes with a kernel that doesn't support the "FLUSH_LG_DRIVES" command.
Imagine what would slashdotters say if Microsoft had done this.
Improve at backgammon rapidly through addictive quickfire position quizzes: www.bgtrain.com
... 'pet' means fart.
You don't know the details either, so shut up.
What people failed to understand, is that there's been almost a month before 9.2 went public, because MandrakeSoft wanted to have the boxed version at the same moment. So, there is *nothing* strange with a large number of updates for 9.2, because this is what usually pile up in that amount of time.
Of course this is just perfect for some FUDdish pseudo-journalism report, as you could see on osnews ("See? megs and megs of updates, plus the lg drives burning: they have MAJOR PROBLEMS!")
rehdon
I nearly installed this on my Machine with a new LG DVD. So glad I didn't. This has just put me off Mandrake distros for good, especially as they didn't test it on one of the most common DVD ROMS in the UK!(Available from Dixons, Currys and Comet to name a few).
Get your act together and stop releasing half baked distros. Typical lack of testing is the hallmark of poor design and development.
Shame people can't sue for their money back - we'd see some proper testing after hitting them were it hurts with a debacle like that!
This would prevent 2 things:
- dvd region removal
- me buying such drive.
In any case, don't most proprietary licenses deny any responsibility, even for damages caused by legitimate usage of the software?
If a Microsoft printer driver damages your printer, you won't get a refund either.
Absolutely. I think Mandrake is a pretty immature distribution in many ways.
I used to work in a company that had Mandrake running all their servers and desktop-machines. It was not very reliable, to say the least.
It's absurd that mandrake is getting the blame for this. The LG CDROMs are clearly b0rken, in fact, qouting the discussion thread on Mandrake
Firmware does seem to matter a bit since a GCC 4480B DVD/CD-R/RW/CDROM with a 1.00 firmware was fried, while a 1.01 fw was not.
So if LG actually prevented the problem in a firmware upgrade of their own, I'm pretty certain that it's NOT MANDRAKE'S FAULT LG MADE A FUCKUP!
Don't you think it would be a better idea to just put a standardized and well tested firmware loader into the drive?
If the firmware is fu^H^H broken you could just upload a new one. That's the way a lot of devices work.
Both ideas cost money (as has been observed). I don't think it would be benificial to CD-ROM drives unless it could be done really cheap.
And yes the engeneer should be shot, and yes I would not buy an LG drive before being shot (for my own machine at least, for company use: whatever).
So how do you propose putting firmware updates into CD-ROM drives, DVD drives, modems, etc.? Just about any peripheral which has flashable firmware can be rendered unusable by software.
First if there is a documented section of the command set for changing firmware you use that and only that to change it. Second you make the procedure to actually alter the stored firmware complex, so that it is hard to do accidentally, and such that if the procedure is not completed nothing is changed. Maybe you don't need to make things quite as complex as for changing the firmware of spacecraft though, since you can at least get physical access to the thing.
You sir, are an idiot.
If you read the posts higher-up, you will discover that someone at LG, in writing the firmware for their normal CD-ROMs (not their CD-RWs), redefined the code that normally means "write flush cache" (which I guess is used by an experimental kernel patch to detect if you have a CD writer capable of packet writing, if I read everything correctly) to mean "firmware upload".
Redefining parts of a command set is always a bad idea.
The simplist work around would be for the driver to first check for the faulty drive. Which would be rather easier if LG would simply release a list. Indeed LG are the people most able to submit a kernel patch.
Naturally, the kernel driver expects to get an error returned back to it, indicating that we don't have a CD-RW drive. Instead, the LG CD-ROMs initiate a firmware wipe and await the upload of new code.
Wiping the old firmware before getting the new firmware is not the smartest of ideas in the first place.
"So how do you propose putting firmware updates into CD-ROM drives, DVD drives, modems, etc.? Just about any peripheral which has flashable firmware can be rendered unusable by software."
A read-only switch would do. Preferably a hardware one, or a jumper, but I realise that some motherboard firmware have software control of their read-only settings.
C'mon, updating the firmware on your CD-ROM isn't exactly something you want to do by accident, and it shouldn't be something which can be done by any software without some explicit action by the user.
Anyone remember chernobyl the virus? Any non-write-protected hardware gets trashed. If a CD-rom comes without a jumper-switch to enable write access, it's only a matter of time before Adobe decides to kill it if you enter the wrong activation code for photoshop.
Any combination can be sent by accident, so no matter what they pick, their chance of screwage remains the same.
It would be kind of hard to generate "sequence A, checksum, sequence B, checksum, sequence C, checksum" at random.
And if they keep it secret, folks working at the hardware level can't exercise extra caution
People writing drivers are more likely to use documentation than sending random bits of data to a device to see what it does (if anything).
A lot of people are posting "If it can be destroyed in software, it's always the manufacturer's fault" type rants. Regardless of what happens with the LG/Mandrake issue, I don't necessarily believe that that's completely right, though I do have reservations about the trend towards flashable firmware.
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
...Bill Gates is laughing his ass off about this one!
Is that going to keep the average user from losing this DVD rewriter when they make their first collection of photos? Chances are, Mandrake people are simply the first to discover what a piece of junk Wyntech has made under the LG label. I know for sure that I'll avoid it. You can get a Sony DVD, does every format, for less than $200.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
Commie Quality in a Commie OS is what it is
I guess you never heard about pseudocode then. Because that's what the original poster wrote.
I'll give you the benefit of my 20+ years of experience: Pseudocode is not cryptic Linix commands strung together but is, instead, designed to be descriptive and easily understood by humans. Also, even if it was "pseudocode" (a claim that even the author did not have the gall to make), it demonstrates a real lack of understanding. You can't just copy new firmware to a peripheral once you flashed bad firmware to it. It often requires a factory-only programming interface be plugged into an internal connector -- or it requires that the flash part be physically removed, reprogrammed, and replaced.
CRC32 is a wonderful (and easily programmed) thing. How 'bout a simple challenge, response using CRC32 before hardware decides to start reflashing?
That assumes that the CD-ROM drive has enough RAM to store the entire flash image for the purposes of doing the comparison. When people want to spend no more than $19.99 for a CD-ROM drive, you can't rely on there being the RAM to do that.
You want to blame the kernel for frying a CDROM? Why? Only a subset of crappy LG DVDs burn up and any hardware that fries from software was poorly designed. Next you want to tell me the Mandrake install puts in a firmware update?
There's entierly too much BS and FUD in that mail thread and here.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
First if there is a documented section of the command set for changing firmware you use that and only that to change it.
/ ide/.
There is no such standard in ATA/ATAPI. See http://www.storagereview.com/guide2000/ref/hdd/if
Second you make the procedure to actually alter the stored firmware complex, so that it is hard to do accidentally, and such that if the procedure is not completed nothing is changed.
That assumes that the device has enough RAM to store the entire image prior to writing it. Many low-cost peripherals do not.
Maybe you don't need to make things quite as complex as for changing the firmware of spacecraft though, since you can at least get physical access to the thing.
When I worked on satellite firmware, it was actually not that dangerous. Unlike consumer electronics, there is hardware that lets you directly write to memory. You don't have to rely on the CPU and firmware in the bird being functional to start with.
That's sad. With something this important, there should be a standard agreed upon for such commands. Having read your message describing the various reasons for firmware upgrades in a CD-ROM, never mind the article, this becomes even more obvious.
Failing a standard method, there should at least be a reasonably complex key that random probing would be unlikely to produce. Something simple like an MD5 checksum for the firmware (and checking the firmware after loading it into a buffer space) would suffice.
LG needs to replace these CD-ROMs, and possibly get some training for their engineers.
GPL: Free as in will
>>chucklesgrins) If you do like Mandrake, the way I went (after our local stopped stocking) is their subscription method... you'll get the box well after you could have downloaded the distro, but that gives time for bugs like this LG one to rear their ugly heads (no matter who's fault it is, hardware or soft or both).
It does appear that it's the flush cache command, but I believe that the assertion that it is interpreted by LG to mean "update firmware" is unverified.
Still, it certainly seems to do *something* undesired... And it's quite interesting that it's only a few drives with certain editions of the firmware that are affected. I would say that probably it was a program bug in the firmware. And as unexpected by LG as by Mandrake.
Assigning blame doesn't seem to make much sense. Fixing the problem does. And I suspect that all parties are currently busy changing things so that this particular problem doesn't recur... but it is the nature of complex systems that there will be others.
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
No, I'm not talking about caching a flash image.
A challenge/response would require very little memory. When a write to flash is requested, the drivee would respond with some data which is the challenge. The computer would then compute a CRC32 on the data and send the CRC32 back to the drive. If the computer's CRC32 response matches that which the drive calculated, then and only then it would proceed with a flash write.
Minimum RAM requirements would be 4bytes + scratch for the running caclulation as the challenge could be just as simple as copying the first umteen bytes of ROM.
Thanks, but I still remember some JCL myself :-)
Pseudocode is not cryptic Linix commands strung together but is, instead, designed to be descriptive and easily understood by humans
Depends on your definition of a human. Myself, I had no problem with the 'dd' example. What would be an easier way to illustrate copying of a block of data into a device?
You can't just copy new firmware to a peripheral once you flashed bad firmware to it
That is simply incorrect. Flash with r/o boot blocks exists for many years, and even many MCUs today come with this feature. My last project, based on some Atmel MCU, had it.
Hey, I'm not *defending* LG here. :-) I'm just trying to flesh out the facts. Just for the record, I think it is moronic that they redefined commands, and I also think it is moronic that just by issuing a firmware upload command you can trash the current firmware.
I believe I read someplace that LG is working on fixing its firmware. That is truly the appropriate fix.
That is simply incorrect. Flash with r/o boot blocks exists for many years
But are much less often used than EEPROM w/o boot-block protection in inexpensive peripherals due to cost.
, and even many MCUs today come with this feature. My last project, based on some Atmel MCU, had it.
AVR series? I've got a development kit sitting right next to me.
I wholeheartedly agree with you on all of your points.
The roll-your-own flashing is a mess and should have been standardized years ago. Also, LG was apparently negligent in their engineering. Either that or it's an incredibly unlucky, and unlikely, series of accidents to blame. On the other hand, Mandrake wasn't any too thorough in their testing of the 9.2 release either.
Add a jumper to enable/disable firmware flashes, or disable the capability to flash. Except for a few power users, few people reflash CD drives.
With regard to the MCU, I used ATMEGA32-16AI in TQFP package. There are cheaper AVR MCUs (I used 8535 before), but nowadays it does not make any sense to even bother with smaller ones, unless you really count pennies. And even if you do, being penny-wise is not always a smart move (as LG's example shows, and earlier Ford Pinto debacle).
I found that the only way to deal successfully with Dell is by the sort of mail with a stamp on it. Phone calls, faxes or emails have never happened, but something on paper is harder to ignore. The bizzare thing is that I'm not talking about complaints here, but purchase of spare parts for machines that need to be used in the middle of nowhere.
There are cheaper AVR MCUs (I used 8535 before), but nowadays it does not make any sense to even bother with smaller ones, unless you really count pennies.
;-) Remember Firestone 500s? Some companies never learn.
Or pins. Sometimes it's really handy to be able to breadboard with 8-16 pin DIPs. I've used the 8535, 8515, 4414 (now defunct, I believe), the 2313, the 1200, and some of the really little guys. The flat-pack chips are neat for volume applications, but not fun for breadboarding.
The AVR is a great series, though. Love them and can't understand why PICs remain popular anymore.
And even if you do, being penny-wise is not always a smart move (as LG's example shows, and earlier Ford Pinto debacle).
Your age is showing.
AVR is indeed good. My first MCU was 8080, then some flavors of 8051; before that was just TTL, lots of it. Got to practice with them when I was repairing IBM 360/370 at school. Today I like AVR a lot, they are simple and easy to use, and AVR-GCC is fairly reliable (haven't failed on me yet, at least.) The C code translates into machine commands quite well - AVR was marketed as RISC optimized for high level languages. I can believe that.
PIC ... never worked with them; I treat them as dinosaurs of MCU world. But at previous job we had a portable device where a PIC (24-pin or something) was used. Why? Because the engineer knew PICs and had the tools. That's the only reason.
And with regard to Ford Pinto ... I am not *that* old, thank you :-) I just read a lot. But I don't own anything Ford anyway, just in case :-) Prefer to stay with something more reliable (being dirt cheap helps too :-)
at work my boss makes me use a LGcdrw drive, every time i insert a disk with "Safedisk V2" the drive may run the autorun program and crash or just crash. By crash i mean the drive enters a loop of trying to read the drive and the OS stop responding, if you remove the disk the OS comes back but unstable. if you try to restart the drive tries to boot to cd and crashes. an i have seen this on alot of new LG drives, so to fix the problem i just pay the extra $6AUD and get a ASUS retail boxs with the bonus blank CDs
Yeah, right.
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing
This particular feature isn't something a marketing person is going to put on a box. Hell, half of them have enough problems just listing technical standards. "Includes safe firmware flashing feature!" isn't going to appear in a jagged "flash" label on the front of the box, and it's unlikely to appear in the list of technical features either.
It's funny you would say that. I have a Gigabyte motherboard box sitting right here which states as it's second major "feature", "DualBIOS: A new revolution in Motherboard." Although it admittedly follows the DualBIOS advertisement up with the nonsensical tagline "Doubles your PC's stability". It also had a large sticker for DualBIOS across the PCI slots when I first opened it up. DualBIOS is a secondary BIOS which can be toggled in place of the primary BIOS if a flash goes bad or a nasty virus comes along.
Random and weird software I've written.
Natural selection, anyway. (-:
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing
Weird.
Hollow words will burn and hollow men will burn.
Any decent monitor should reject an invalid scanrate, atleast mine all do.. 2 show up blank, and this one actually displays an error message saying the input signal is invalid.
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How much does a plain non writeable rom chip cost anyway? hardware with flashable firmware should ship with a known good version of the firmware on a non writeable rom chip, along with a jumper to set to copy from the rom to the flashrom..
Why? flashable firmware, while very usefull, is a MAJOR hassle in many ways..
First, it makes firmware vendors lazy... instead of making firmware work well first time, they take the attitude that they can release buggy untested crap and make people update it later..
Secondly, if the firmware update procedure goes wrong, possibly a power or software failure during update, or a piece of malicious code designed to trash firmware.. then many pieces of hardware can be rendered unuseable and often have to be sent back to the manufacturer for repair.
Third, the risks associated with firmware updates often prevent people from actually installing the updates..
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But its still only enough code to read a new firmware image from disk, its not enough to boot an os..
Imagine this, you just tried to update your firmware, only to find there is a problem with the new firmware and you want to revert to the old...
You dont have a copy of the old firmware on disk, and you need to download it... only you cant download it because your only computer has just fried its firmware.
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But a standard in upgrading firmware would increase the risks of:
People installing alien firmware to a device it doesnt support...
Virus authors more easily doing damage to a larger array of devices at once.
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Mandrake cooker is where new stuff goes for Mandrake distros. The fault should lie with LG as its silly of LG drive to zap itself on what looks to be a logical command. OK no write on a read-only but flushing cache for something that doesn't have such a thing would logically mean that the command gets ignored. Still can't wait for the latest MS virus to try and utilise this new feature. Thank goodness I have Mitsui and Sony drives, though I have used LG before.
Everyone, please. Do yourself a favor, and buy this book. Read it. Then read it again. Then if you are feeling especially saucy, pick up his "Metamagical Themas" and see if you can wrap your brain around THAT one. Hofstadter is awesome.
My beliefs do not require that you agree with them.
Sounds like you've never flashed your bios before. .bat files most vendors provide to automate the process automatically save the current image to old.bin or some file like that. If you only have one computer and need to flash the bios and you don't save a backup of the current one first, I don't feel sorry for you.
awdflash.exe asks if you want to save the current image to disk before loading a new one. The little
Morphing Software
Your right, i`ve not flashed a bios before...
I don`t actually own any x86 hardware with a bios to flash, tho i do own an alpha.. the alpha machines have 2 firmware images, SRM, and AlphaBIOS..
The update procedure updates one, verifies it, then updates the other.. Or you can update them seperately.. In the event of a failure during the updating of one, i would assume it should revert to the non corrupted one.. both of which allow you to perform firmware updates.
The only time i updated the SRM on this machine, was from the 6.x version it shipped with, to 7.2, the latest version.. and the only difference i notice is the new version number on startup... aside from that, the machine runs exactly as it did before.
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"Microsoft destroys CD-ROM (hypothetically): More proof that M$ is an evil moneygrubbing capitalist pig corporation.
Linux destroys CD-ROM: It's the CD-ROM's fault."
Manufacturers give the _complete_ specs of a piece of hardware to Microsoft. When they don't it is because MS told them how to engineer their hardware to work with Windows.
If Windows killed a CD drive it would be because the manufacturer did not tell the MS devs that a packet writing driver that works in the standard way ( and works on every other drive out there ) would be able to wipe the firmaware on the drive.
-- "It was as if the paint factories had decided to deal direct with the art galleries." - Thursday Next