Subject: Reading DVDs on a Mac mini

From: Tom Parker <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 23 May 2005 22:07:08 +0200

I recently bought a Mac mini to try out a few things, but have been 
having some problems trying to get it to read DVDs. I was using the 
2.6.10 kernel (the Ubuntu linux-image-2.6.10-5-powerpc package) and I 
get the same results with 2.6.12-rc4 (kernel config for that is 
attached). Whenever I try to read a DVD-ROM (my test app is lsdvd, but 
same results with mplayer) I get the following error message:

libdvdread: Invalid title IFO (VTS_02_0.IFO).
Can't open ifo 2!

Varying the DVD sometimes gets ifo 3/VTS_03_0.IFO, but the result is the 
same. Looking at dmesg shows the following:

hdb: command error: status=0x51 { DriveReady SeekComplete Error }
hdb: command error: error=0x54 { AbortedCommand LastFailedSense=0x05 }
ide: failed opcode was: unknown
end_request: I/O error, dev hdb, sector 42872

Repeat lots and lots of times with values of sector jumping by 8 each 
time. I'm not sure where it starts, because my entire dmesg output is 
filled with these messages. Trying to play/copy stuff from burnt off 
DVD-Rs works fine, but store bought DVDs don't like the drive (region 2 
discs, the mini was bought in the Netherlands, a region 2 country). I 
have occasionally *rarely* managed to persuade some discs to 
occasionally read, but repeating the attempt then generally fails. 
Failure always happens within two or 3 reads.

The version of libdvdread in use is 0.9.4 (the Debian 0.9.4-5 
libdvdread3 package).

hdparm settings for /dev/hdb (the DVD/CD-ROM drive):

  IO_support   =  0 (default 16-bit)
  unmaskirq    =  1 (on)
  using_dma    =  0 (off)
  keepsettings =  0 (off)
  readonly     =  0 (off)
  readahead    = 256 (on)
  HDIO_GETGEO failed: Invalid argument

hdparm -i says the drive is a "MATSHITACD-RW CW-8124".

Any ideas? Because I'm all out of ideas, and I hope someone on here can 
help.

Thanks,

Tom Parker