Bug 7167

Summary:	Installer couldn't see CD in ATAPI CD-ROM drive
Product:	[Retired] Red Hat Linux	Reporter:	Jay Sekora <js>
Component:	installer	Assignee:	Jay Turner <jturner>
Status:	CLOSED CURRENTRELEASE	QA Contact:
Severity:	high	Docs Contact:
Priority:	medium
Version:	6.1	CC:	srevivo
Target Milestone:	---
Target Release:	---
Hardware:	i386
OS:	Linux
URL:	http://www.aq.org/~js/RH6.1-problems.html
Whiteboard:
Fixed In Version:		Doc Type:	Bug Fix
Doc Text:		Story Points:	---
Clone Of:		Environment:
Last Closed:	1999-11-29 17:15:29 UTC	Type:	---
Regression:	---	Mount Type:	---
Documentation:	---	CRM:
Verified Versions:		Category:	---
oVirt Team:	---	RHEL 7.3 requirements from Atomic Host:
Cloudforms Team:	---	Target Upstream Version:
Embargoed:

Description Jay Sekora 1999-11-20 04:40:10 UTC

When I booted from floppy (from the boot-RHEA-1999:044.img disk), the
installer couldn't see my CD in the ATAPI CD-ROM. After I was asked
where the installation media was and said `Local CDROM', the screen
cleared to blue and there was a very very long pause (several minutes)
during which my IDE CD-ROM spun up and down a couple times and its
light came on. Then the installation program said `I could not find a
RedHat CD in any of your CD-ROM drives'. (Yes, there was one in the
drive. :-)

Although an ATAPI CD-ROM is pretty vanilla hardware, I guessed that
maybe some prior hardware probe might have been causing it to
misbehave somehow, so I tried an expert-mode installation. That did
not give me an option to read from an ordinary ATAPI CD-ROM drive.
However, fortunately I happen to have a SCSI CD-R, which expert mode
was able to see. I put the RedHat CD in the SCSI CD-R, and the
installer found it and I was able to do the upgrade.

After the installation, the CD-ROM was seen normally; dmesg includes:
  hdb: BCD-16X 1997-03-25, ATAPI CDROM drive
  hdb: ATAPI 10X CD-ROM drive, 128kB Cache

By the way, the pause after `running /sbin/loader' is extremely long;
it might be useful to change that message to `running /sbin/loader;
please wait' or precede it with `It is normal for the following step
to take a long time' or something like that.

(Since I've already accomplished the install, this is a matter of
curiosity for me and a bug report, rather than something I personally
need a fix for.)

Comment 1 Jay Sekora 1999-11-21 01:37:59 UTC

Fascinating.  I've since discovered that the problem occurs after installation
too - but *just* with the RedHat 6.1 installation CD.  I can mount it in my
SCSI CD-RW drive, and I can mount other CDs in my ATAPI drive, but I can't
mount the RH6.1 install CD in my ATAPI drive.  Maybe it's a problem with the
media (but a problem that my SCSI drive manages to overcome).  Anyway, I suspect
this is not a kernel or boot disk bug at this point.

Comment 2 Jay Sekora 1999-11-21 01:42:59 UTC

I can't mount the RedHat SRPMs CD from my box set either.  (Sometimes I
eventually get "no medium found", sometimes the mount attempt just hangs
until I ^C it.)  I *can* mount the Linux Application Library and PowerTools
CDs that came with my (deluxe) boxed set, and other important CDs like my
Quake CD.

Comment 3 Jay Turner 1999-11-29 17:15:59 UTC

I am closing out this bug as it appears to have nothing to do with the installer
and more to do with recognizing ATAPI cdroms.

Comment 4 John Waalkes 1999-11-30 19:23:59 UTC

I'm (possibly) adding a simular bug regarding this too. But what I found was
that if you ejected the CD, and retried the install, it would take off fine.