I just bought an ASUS ZenDrive External DVD writer.
I cannot figure out how to even tell if my system is recognizing the drive. I’m wondering if I need to install a driver for it. I did a lot of searching but found only support for Windows.
blkid does not show the cdrom drive.
lsblk does not show the cdrom drive.
I don’t see any entries in dmesg output (I grep’ed for ‘cdrom’ and ‘9660’).
$ cd-drive --cdrom-device
cd-drive version 2.1.0 x86_64-redhat-linux-gnu
Copyright (c) 2003-2005, 2007-2008, 2011-2015, 2017 R. Bernstein
This is free software; see the source for copying conditions.
There is NO warranty; not even for MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A
PARTICULAR PURPOSE.
No loaded CD-ROM device accessible.
Drivers available...
GNU/Linux ioctl and MMC driver
cdrdao (TOC) disk image driver
bin/cuesheet disk image driver
Nero NRG disk image driver
$
$ lsblk -i
NAME MAJ:MIN RM SIZE RO TYPE MOUNTPOINTS
sdc 8:32 0 1.8T 0 disk
|-sdc1 8:33 0 899.7G 0 part
|-sdc2 8:34 0 404.2G 0 part
|-sdc3 8:35 0 404.2G 0 part
`-sdc4 8:36 0 128.5G 0 part
sdd 8:48 0 1.8T 0 disk
|-sdd1 8:49 0 900G 0 part
|-sdd2 8:50 0 403.9G 0 part
|-sdd3 8:51 0 404.2G 0 part
`-sdd4 8:52 0 128.5G 0 part
zram0 252:0 0 8G 0 disk [SWAP]
nvme0n1 259:0 0 931.5G 0 disk
|-nvme0n1p1 259:1 0 600M 0 part /boot/efi
|-nvme0n1p2 259:2 0 1G 0 part /boot
`-nvme0n1p3 259:3 0 929.9G 0 part /home
/
$
OK, that was it. I added my user name to the cdrom group. It took me a while to figure out that I had to reboot my system to see the user in the cdrom group.
OK, so I have an audio CD in the drive, but I cannot get any track to play.
I hear the drive ‘clicking’ as it seems to be moving the arm inside across tracks maybe? But I cannot get a track to load and play. I’ve tried Haruna and Elisa apps.
Something is not right. The CD appears as “Audio CD” in the “Removable Devices” part of the navigation panel in Dolphin File Manager. The CD has directories for CDA, MP3, Flac, Opus, and WAV. I’ve tried double-clicking Track 01.wav of each format. Elisa starts, but it does not show any indication that it recognized or loaded the content.
I know this CD worked on my mac with an Apple Super Drive.
By the way, this is a new ASUS drive, just bought it. I’ve never seen such a slow drive… I’m wondering if I need a different driver?
I installed RhythmBox. I was able to successfully play track 1. But I cannot see the CD even in RhythmBox. It doesn’t seem to recognize the CD or the track layout or the CD contents in general.
I am now trying to copy the full CD to my computer. I’ve never experienced a CD so slow. It’s definitely not reading at 8x speed, which is what the drive is capable of supporting (the ASUS box and leaflet says 8x speed). It’s either the CD device itself or the drivers that are not commanding the player properly.
56KiB/s transfer rate…?! Wow… something is definitely wrong.
I don’t want to interrupt the transfer of this current CD. But when finished, I’ll attach the drive to a Windows laptop that my brother has. That will be a good test to isolate whether the problem is a faulty drive or drivers.
Devices have a firmware and this can be updated. Especially when you work with Linux where it has fast changing kernels. So what would you call it when the firmware is not working fine with the newest kernel? A hardware or a driver issue? If you make the comparison with windows you will not get an answer on that. Your device is declared working with Windows and MacOS, linux is not listed, right.
What you can do while being on Windows is to upgrade the firmware of the device, if the command fwupdmgr update gives you no information about the device you are using. Windows might work with the firmware as it is!
Your conclusion will not say a lot about, if it will work on Linux or not. When the closed source driver from windows works with the firmware, it is just because it has been tested and released with it.
p.s.
I ordered me a no-name external cd/dvd drive and will tell you then, if I do have the same troubles as you. While I checked on mine that it says it is compatible with Linux
However thanks so far about the information about the cdrom group membership
Right. That’s why I said it’s likely a driver issue.
Also, I did not mention one other observation. The CD drive is not even spinning 90% of the time. Only briefly does it spin (where I can hear it spinning and feel it spinning when placing my palm on it). I highly suspect that the driver is wrong because it seems to be behaving like a disk driver. Of course I could be very wrong about this.
But I am perhaps biased. Once, in my first real job out of school, I had to write a driver for a tape drive. I didn’t really know how so I ended up writing a driver that behaved like a hard disk drive. It would seek to the header after each write operation (which meant rewinding the tape to the beginning!!).
Well, it was a stop-gap solution at a short-staffed start-up company. I eventually learned how to write a proper driver. At least no one laughed at me because no one else had the time to do it (and they appreciated that I just jumped in to try to do the best job I could for the company’s need at the time).
I’ll try the firmware upgrade (or test to see if there is an upgrade available). I’ll just try this from my Fedora system as I don’t think it can affect my Fedora system.
@ilikelinux Actually I’m not sure what I said was accurate. The fwupdmgr man page is pretty weak.
I only want to update the firmware on the CD drive. But it’s not clear to me how to do that after reading the man page.
Any advice or guidance (or warnings) would be appreciated. I just read a few web pages after an internet search, but I still don’t feel confident that I will NOT be altering my Fedora system.
fwupdmgr get-updates # [DEVICE-ID|GUID] Gets the list of updates for connected hardware
Many devices will not be listed because they just not available via fwupdmgr.
if you use
fwupdmgr --help # lists the available commands.
fwupdmgr --help |grep list # shows you commands which are listing information
I doubt that Fedora preinstalles software which will just execute a command if you type it in the terminal (without any confirmation).
All commands are without sudo, no real danger in my opinion.
I have 2 different external drives (both USB 3.0). One is DVDRW and one is BDRW
Both carry the LG brand and both work flawlessly with fedora linux
On amazon.com the DVDRW is listed for ~$20 and the BDRW is listed for ~$80 or so (USD currency)
I received mine today plugged it in and it worked (adding me to cdrom group first ).
lsusb
Bus 005 Device 009: ID 1132:4511 Toshiba Corp., Digital Media Equipment [hex] IT-CEO USB Device
With 4 extra usb connectors and one mini usb to charge a phone.
25,5 $
Important note: Ipad / Surface / Chromebooks are not supported. It also is written that it needs enough power, means best connecting to USB3 or USB C.
No extra Manual but on the back of the box clearly declared.
@rhimbo cd-drive command was new to me, thanks to mention it
