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Mandriva Businesses Hardware

LG CD-ROMs Destroyed by Mandrake 9.2 685

Posted by michael from the whoopsie dept.
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."
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LG CD-ROMs Destroyed by Mandrake 9.2 More

LG CD-ROMs Destroyed by Mandrake 9.2

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  • Quick... (Score:5, Funny)

    by Junior J. Junior III ( 192702 ) on Saturday October 25, 2003 @05:37PM (#7309927) Homepage
    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.

  • Well... (Score:3, Funny)

    by 13Echo ( 209846 ) on Saturday October 25, 2003 @05:39PM (#7309942) Homepage Journal
    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.

    • Re:Well... (Score:5, Insightful)

      by sketerpot ( 454020 ) <sketerpot&gmail,com> on Saturday October 25, 2003 @05:42PM (#7309970)
      Yes, if the drive as actually destroyed then it's the drive maker's fault. No data should be able to harm a CD-ROM drive. I think that LG should be getting busy soon with making sure this doesn't happen in the future.

      As for Mandrake, I'm sure that the updates are a good thing, unless they're stupid bugs that should have been fixed before release.

      • Just wondering... (Score:5, Insightful)

        by rhombic ( 140326 ) on Saturday October 25, 2003 @06:05PM (#7310135)
        I wonder how many folks here would be bitching out LG if it was XP that was trashing the hardware?

        • Re:Just wondering... (Score:5, Insightful)

          by gmack ( 197796 ) <gmack@noSpAM.innerfire.net> on Saturday October 25, 2003 @06:19PM (#7310236) Homepage Journal
          Just as many. The OS should not be able to fry harware with a simple access even if it's XP.
          Were not talking crashes were talking hardware fails.

      • Re:Well... (Score:4, Insightful)

        by mentin ( 202456 ) on Saturday October 25, 2003 @06:49PM (#7310419)
        No data should be able to harm a CD-ROM drive.

        That is stupidiest BS I've seen. OS can e.g. override firmware of the disk drive. If it writes bogus firmware, the disk will be permanently damaged. Just like OS can screw your BIOS and computer would not boot anymore. Current hardware is highly configurable by software, and if software damages hardware, it's software fault.

        I think that LG should be getting busy soon with making sure this doesn't happen in the future.

        I think Mandrake should be busy about it.

      • Apparently already fixed by LG... (Score:5, Informative)

        by leonbrooks ( 8043 ) <SentByMSBlast-No ... .brooks.fdns.net> on Saturday October 25, 2003 @07:59PM (#7310818) Homepage
        ...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.

        • Re:Apparently already fixed by LG... (Score:4, Informative)

          by Dahan ( 130247 ) <khym@azeotrope.org> on Saturday October 25, 2003 @08:09PM (#7310869)
          The thing which kills the drives is - wait for it - setting them up for packet writing.

          Why would you want to set up a CD-ROM drive for packet writing. CD-ROM drives can't write--that's why they're called CD-ROMs and not CD-Rs or CD-RWs.

          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

          I got an idea... how about don't try to enable packet writing on a CD-ROM drive!

          • 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."

            • Re:The packet writing itself doesn't kill them (Score:4, Insightful)

              by Dahan ( 130247 ) <khym@azeotrope.org> on Sunday October 26, 2003 @12:28AM (#7312003)
              Huh? Where did you get the idea that the FLUSH CACHE was used to determine whether or not the device was a writer or not? Look at pkt_flush_cache() in drivers/block/pktcdvd.c... it's used to flush the cache of pending writes when closing the CD device.

              I saw Juan Quintela's message to the list too, but I get the impression that he's just speculating that LG treats FLUSH CACHE as UPLOAD FIRMWARE; it's not like we've got any official word from LG other than "we don't support Linux." All we know is that for the drives in question, FLUSH CACHE renders the drive inoperative. Note that the ATA standard defines a "DOWNLOAD MICROCODE" command for uploading firmware. Juan's message mentions that the -21mdk kernel fixes the problem... looks like the fix was just to remove the packet writing support.

              Anyways, don't use FLUSH CACHE to determine whether a device is a writer or not--that's a lame way to do it. Writers these days support the MMC command set (and the old ones that don't aren't gonna do packet writing anyway)--get the Capabilities and Mechanical Status mode page instead; it'll return bits saying whether the drive supports writing to CD-R, CD-RW, DVD-R, etc...

    • Re:Well... (Score:2, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward
      Yes how silly of LG not to test with a version of an operating system which hadn't been released when they made the drives.

      How exactly can this me LG's fault if mandrake is the ONLY distro that does this and it ONLY started doing it with this version.
      • No matter what I do, I should never be able to get the US to launch a nuclear strike. It doesn't matter what action I'm contemplating; my actions should be entirely disassociated from that destructive event. Similarly, there is no way that data sent to a device (as opposed to illegal, non-data signals sent on the same lines) should ever cause the device to permanently malfunction. The data is simply a customer of the device; the device should not cause destruction based on the advice of a non-trusted user.
    • Hmm.. LG is a el cheapo brand in many cases, so I'm not really surprised by these news. :-P

      A drive shouldn't be physically destroyed by a logical error on a CD. Ever... Regardless what.

    • Re:Well... (Score:5, Insightful)

      by AstroDrabb ( 534369 ) on Saturday October 25, 2003 @06:05PM (#7310137)
      I just read a post from Alan Cox, it appears that if you send a flush cache command to the specific LG drives or their compaq rebadged ones, the drive gets fried. So this really has nothing to do with Mandrake and everything to do with a poorly designed drive.

      • Re:Well... (Score:5, Funny)

        by Black Art ( 3335 ) on Saturday October 25, 2003 @07:46PM (#7310745)
        I just read a post from Alan Cox, it appears that if you send a flush cache command to the specific LG drives or their compaq rebadged ones, the drive gets fried. So this really has nothing to do with Mandrake and everything to do with a poorly designed drive.

        I guess LG had a different idea what "flush drive" meant.

      • Re:Well... (Score:3, Insightful)

        by Dahan ( 130247 )
        Why is Linux trying to send a flush cache command to a CD-ROM drive in the first place? That's a stupid thing to do. The ATAPI FLUSH CACHE command tells the device to flush its write cache to the media. A CD-ROM has no write cache, and can't write to any media. Of course, it's even more stupid for a drive to self-destruct when it gets a flush cache command...

        • Re:Well... (Score:4, Insightful)

          by AstroDrabb ( 534369 ) on Saturday October 25, 2003 @09:00PM (#7311142)
          It is not Linux, it is Mandrake who put an *experimental* kernel patch into a *production* release. It was very stupid. The patch was meant for ide cd-rw drives in which case you want to flush. That is why the LG CD-RW drives are not affected, only the normal CD-ROM drives. This is one of the reasons I *never* use Mandrake. I have had too many problems with their distribution. I stick to Red Hat. It is *far* more stable and Red Hat has 6 of the top 10 kernel developers working for them.
      • Only it's not quite the traditional reason. Attention, sladerous humour coming up.

        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 o

      • Re:Well... (Score:4, Interesting)

        by Alan Cox ( 27532 ) on Sunday October 26, 2003 @10:21AM (#7313381) Homepage
        I disagree in part. Sending a command to a device without knowing it is supported is not good ATA practice at all. The patch they applied should have checked but didn't.

        Shipping easy to fry drives isnt bright either and I suspect LG know this without any help, especially when they get lorry fulls of faulty drives back. Not only can a wrong command occur due to an error on the cable (very unlikely) so should be handled tolerantly, but every virus writer on the planet now knows how to toast all the LG ROMs (and rebadged LG ROMs).

        I just hope Mandrake have the decency to recall any boxed sets sitting in warehouses and heading to shops and replace the CD's in them.
    • 21mdk just updated (vdanen should be doing the official update) fixes that problem. Only LG plain CD-ROMS are affected.

      [...]

      PS. Yep, whoeved decided at LG that reusing for UPLOAD_FIRMWARE command FLUSH_CACHE comand should be shoot. Twice.


      And I agree. They should. (-: Just a s-l-i-g-h-t incompatibility there :-)

  • Ouch. (Score:2)

    by chill ( 34294 )
    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.
    • Oh, the old Pet. I remember that--a single POKE statement, and the thing would enter a single-instruction loop until the processor melted.

      Classic computers. They don't build 'em like that anymore.

      • Re:Ouch. (Score:3, Interesting)

        by XO ( 250276 )
        Actually, the POKE would change the power supply voltages, thereby smoking the whole thing...

    • Commodore PET

      And for extra points, what first poster can say exactly what PET stands for?

      • Considering you could change PSU voltages to dangerous levels and melt the CPU and such, (see other reply's to grandparent post), I'd say it stands for...

        Pretty Easily Torchable!

        *rimshot*

      • 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.

    • Re:Ouch. (Score:3, Informative)

      by harlows_monkeys ( 106428 )
      I haven't had software destroy hardware since a Commodore PET

      Windows 95 was able to destroy certain early Athlon motherboards, by erasing the BIOS. This happened during the hardware detect, and so of course you didn't get very far when it got to the point where it was time to reboot!

  • If you're a hardware manufacturer... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by defile ( 1059 ) on Saturday October 25, 2003 @05:40PM (#7309950) Homepage Journal

    ...and software is capable of destroying your products, you're fucking fired.

  • What about.... (Score:3, Interesting)

    by jdhutchins ( 559010 ) on Saturday October 25, 2003 @05:41PM (#7309955)
    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.

    • Re:What about.... (Score:5, Informative)

      by Croaker ( 10633 ) on Saturday October 25, 2003 @05:54PM (#7310053)

      Well, after RTFT, I came across this:

      ...But yes, it is LG's fault. The current news is that it was triggered by the
      addition of packet-writing code to the 2.4.22-rc2q5 kernel on Aug. 15, no news on how that determination was made. One must suspect that querying the drive for the format of the disk or its capabilities somehow triggers a firmware self-destruct bug in the CRD-84xx models.

      So, I guess if you tend to use bleeding edge kernels, beware. Mandrake sometime tosses in non-"Linus blessed" things, I believe, so this might have been something you'd only get if you went looking for it.

      I've installed 9.2, and it's been a mess. The missing kernel source package in the download version ws a major pain in the ass. Since I'm a silver Mandrake Club member, I was able to get the PowerPack edition as a download as well, but that kept messing up when trying to install. The checksums all checked out, so I have no clue why I got the various problems I did. I've finally gotten it stable, and able to do a few things I haven't been able to get working in the past, like DVD viewing (no, not through the stock Mandrake stuff... only through additional non-Mandrake packages).

      Sad to say, Mandrake messed up this release big time. It just wasn't soup yet. It's really too bad, since I've had pretty good luck with them in the past.

  • To LG (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Unominous Coward ( 651680 ) on Saturday October 25, 2003 @05:41PM (#7309958)
    Do you think there might be a problem with your hardware if it can be destroyed solely with software?
  • How can they be damaged permanently ? UNless you blow a non-reloadable firmware.. i find it hard to belive you can really damage hardware..

  • LG drives (Score:3, Informative)

    by mrsev ( 664367 ) <mrsev&spymac,com> on Saturday October 25, 2003 @05:43PM (#7309973)
    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?

    • Re:LG drives (Score:3, Informative)

      by ponzo ( 719063 )
      I work in a retail store and we sell at least 100 LG burners and 150 LG cd-roms every week and we probably get 1 or 2 returns a month. I really can't say anything bad about them.
  • It can't possibly be a problem with the cd-image or the boot media... quoted from the issues page:
    Damage occurs even when doing a network install.
    I don't think i've ever heard of anything like this happening in my life
  • 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...

  • This seems to be a recurring mandrake problem. (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward
    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

  • More Information (Score:5, Informative)

    by heli0 ( 659560 ) on Saturday October 25, 2003 @05:47PM (#7310011)
    People started noting this a week ago:

    9.2 FRIED my CDROM drives [mandrakeclub.com]

  • the culprit (Score:5, Informative)

    by spoonist ( 32012 ) on Saturday October 25, 2003 @05:47PM (#7310013) Journal

    appears to be a kernel patch

    I found this post [google.com].

    Nobody really knows what the problem is at this point, but yes, it is the case that ANY hardware that can be put out of commission by software is at fault, morally. The latest from the cooker list is that the problem seems to affect LG cdroms (not burners, not dvds) with the model number CRD-84xx, and that it seems to have been triggered by a patch for packet-writing added to the 2.4.22-rc2q5 kernel on Aug 15.
  • Wait till someone writes a virus.
    Actual hardware damage will be fun.

    Does using Linux void warranties now?

    • Re:Warranty (Score:5, Informative)

      by Mashiki ( 184564 ) <mashiki&gmail,com> on Saturday October 25, 2003 @06:07PM (#7310155) Homepage
      Already been done. "Back in the day", there were plenty of virus written that would throw your monitor out of sync, simply baking the tube.

      Some others that whould smash the read/write heads of your HDD into the spindle destroying the drive, that's why it's controlled at the hardware level now. That was back when the heads actually required a seperate program to park them. That was alot of fun.

      I'd say that Mandrake is responsable for the replacement of those drives.
  • 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.

  • Code? (Score:2)

    by addaon ( 41825 )
    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.
  • 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.

  • Problem on other distros too... (Score:4, Informative)

    by AELinuxGuy ( 588522 ) on Saturday October 25, 2003 @05:53PM (#7310050)
    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!

  • SuSE too. (Score:2, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward
    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).

  • Potential fallout? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by jdreed1024 ( 443938 ) on Saturday October 25, 2003 @05:57PM (#7310075)
    I'm sure this'll get modded as troll simply because I raise a "what if" question that most folks won't like, but....

    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.

    • Re:Potential fallout? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by ScrewMaster ( 602015 ) on Saturday October 25, 2003 @06:33PM (#7310321)
      Well, what I think will happen is that there will be more effort put into eliminating our choice as to what software we run on our PCs and what we use them for. After all, that's really what Palladium and "trusted computing" is all about. More FUD is on its way about how these "rogue" Linux systems can't be trusted not to burn up your equipment, etc. etc.

      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.

      Of course, practically speaking there is never anyone to cry to when hardware fails other than the hardware manufacturer, or your local retailer. This problem could easily have shown up in a Microsoft product first, since it is using a documented feature of the drive! There are reasonable limits you can expect software vendors to go to in testing hardware, given the vast number of products on the market. In any event, even if Windows did toast my drive (and I've had a couple mysteriously croak under Windows although I never suspected it was a firmware issue) I can't see Microsoft sending me a new drive, or for that matter ever admitting it was their fault! All the pro-Microsoft apologist trolls here on Slashdot can grumble all they want, but at least here the accountability trail is very complete (a definite plus for open source) and we'll be able to verify when and how the problem is fixed. Try doing that with Windows.
    • I think it's much more likely that they could sue LG. Mandrake was merely distributing an enhancement for their CDROM support that would work on virtually any CDROM drive outside of this range. This would classify that use as "normal use".

      A product that dies during normal use is a problem for the manufacturer. LG should just recall them before this becomes a fiasco.

  • 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?

  • LG's problem, not Mandrake's (Score:3, Interesting)

    by penguin7of9 ( 697383 ) on Saturday October 25, 2003 @06:02PM (#7310105)
    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.

  • Research next time? (Score:5, Informative)

    by buchanmilne ( 258619 ) on Saturday October 25, 2003 @06:09PM (#7310166) Homepage
    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.

  • Gentoo? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by boopus ( 100890 ) on Saturday October 25, 2003 @06:21PM (#7310254) Journal
    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.

  • How this ends (Score:5, Interesting)

    by jmorris42 ( 1458 ) * <{jmorris} {at} {beau.org}> on Saturday October 25, 2003 @07:17PM (#7310590)
    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.

    • Re:How this ends (Score:3, Informative)

      by Reziac ( 43301 )
      Stifling my embarrassment at doing even worse than RTFA, I went off and read the entire 6 pages of comments at MandrakeClub forum that someone here linked to. Seems the fried drive problem occurs on several models with firmware v1.00 but not with v1.01. So LG may be aware of the problem, and it's likely worth your while to check with LG for a firmware update. Also, someone mentioned that the trigger is in one particular module that any disty could have used, but Mandrake was just the unlucky first. Kinda li

  • LG makes drives?! (Score:3, Funny)

    by EvilStein ( 414640 ) <.ten.pbp. .ta. .maps.> on Saturday October 25, 2003 @08:33PM (#7310993)
    Geez, they make phones, hard drives, and that crazy internet fridge. [lge.com]

    If a drive can be trashed by a Mandrake CD, lord only knows what my cooking will do to their fridge. Eek.

  • The ''Drive-killing disc'' (Score:5, Funny)

    by 0x20 ( 546659 ) on Saturday October 25, 2003 @08:38PM (#7311028) Homepage
    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?

  • /., I tried to warn 'ya... (Score:5, Interesting)

    by PSaltyDS ( 467134 ) on Saturday October 25, 2003 @10:08PM (#7311447) Journal
    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.

    • Re:/., I tried to warn 'ya... (Score:4, Insightful)

      by buchanmilne ( 258619 ) on Sunday October 26, 2003 @05:58AM (#7312868) Homepage
      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.

      Actually, you might want to try a route that will get you to developers more directly, either by filing a bug in the bug tracking system for stable releases [mandrakelinux.com] or by posting to the cooker list.

      It took over a day to get from the Club to developers, as I picked it up a bit late on the Club, and could only post to the maintainers list the next morning.

      Anyway, posting to a news site is not the first thing you should do if you're interested in having it fixed quickly (people don't take kindly to getting bad press without you giving them an opportunity to investigate first).

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