Comment 5 for bug 220957

Hi Leann,

(Bit annoyed because I just wrote a long answer, then hit Control-W by accident in Firefox and it's lost...)

I tried these methods today:

1. Insert a blank CD-R in the drive. Nothing happens. I'm expecting it to pop up a dialog asking what I want to do, or to show an icon for the blank CD-R on the Nautilus desktop, but neither happens.

2. With a blank CD-R in the drive, in Nautilus I double-click on a .iso file. Or right-click and select Open with "CD/DVD Creator". It shows a dialog for the drive selection (DVD_RW ND-6750A) and write speed (Maximum possible). I click the Write button, and a dialog appears with a progress bar. Then another dialog appears saying "Insert a rewritable or blank disc". There is one already so I click OK, and it just reappears. I eject the disc and insert it, or another one, and it does the same. No way past this.

3. Same as 2 with no blank CD-R in the drive to start with. Same results.

4. Using "cdrecord -v file.iso" from the command line, it detects the CD-R with details and writes successfully.

5. In Nautilus I right-click on a .iso file and select Open with "Brasero Disc Burning". This pops a dialog which clearly detects the type of CD-R inserted which is promising.

The first time I clicked the Burn button, it failed. But this was because I still had a CD/DVD Creator stuck in that "insert disc" loop open (buried under other windows). Not surprising, but the error message from Brasero was obscure and unhelpful: I thought Brasero wasn't also able to write discs because of it. It would be much better to say the drive is in use by another application.

After clearing that up, I started again. This time Brasero wrote the disc successfully, then ejected it, but didn't finish. Instead it popped up a dialog saying "Error while burning: the media in DVD_RW ND-6750A can't be ejected". The saved log is attached in brasero-session.log.

In all of this, there's no dmesg or /var/log/kern.log output.

Things noticed:

a. Disc writing does work, but the default burning app after upgrade from Gutsy, CD/DVD Creator (nautilus-cd-burner) doesn't work. I tried it from the command line too; there's no output to give a clue about the errors.

b. The dialog popping up on inserting a blank disc asking if you want to make a new CD, or the blank disc icon (I forget which one happens on Gutsy) aren't happening.

c. Even though I can right-click a .iso file and select Brasero, when I want to make a disc from individual files, I'll use the Nautilus "Places" menu and it only offers CD/DVD Creator. It's a Nautilus file browser where you can put files to prepare a data disc, then click to burn the disc. I didn't find any way to change this to use Brasero (see below).

e. Brasero (from a .iso file only) writes ok but finishes with an error. It's messages are unhelpful when there's a problem (other app locked the drive device, or Brasero confused about ejecting).

f. Brasero found the drive device locked when there were CD/DVD creators stuck in the background, but that didn't stop cdrecord from the command line from working.

g. Later, trying Brasero on a burned CD-R (one it made earlier) says "data can be appended to the medium" on the main dialog. But it doesn't offer any way to do that: the Burn button is grayed out. Why does it say data can be appended? If it can, why is there no (apparent) way to do it? That's misleading. Also, shouldn't a freshly burned CD-R be session-closed normally so it can't be appended to? I haven't changed any of Brasero's options.

Trying to make Brasero the default burner app:

1. I see nothing in "System/Preferences/Removable Drives and Media" or "System/Preferences/Preferred Applications" to change the default to Brasero. (And "Removable Drives and Media" has _no_ options about removable media!!!! just Cameras, PDAs, Keyboards etc. what does keyboards have to do with removable drives or media???!!!)

2. After much thinking, I found the options to manage removable media are found by opening a directory in Nautilus (something I never do so it took some guesswork), going to Edit/Preferences, going to the Media tab, and then systematically going through each of the selections in Other Media/Type (Blank Blu-Ray disc etc.) and for each one, changing the default to Brasero.

3. That is a silly place to put those options when there is a Preferences/Removable Drives and Media which doesn't have them. Equally, there is Preferences/Preferred Applications which has a multimedia tab, that would make sense too. Who would think of looking in Nautilus preferences to change the apps used with CD writers? It's not obviously a Nautilus thing. No problem if it's a duplicate of System/Preferences/..., but being the only place is obscure.

4. It's also unfortunate that you have to systematically go through each blank disc type and change the action for each separately, but not too bad. But what happens when a new disc type comes out and it's added to Nautilus? Will that get a different setting from one you carefully set all the others to?

5. Despite changing the above options in Nautilus prefs, and also seeing that "Never prompt or start programs on media insertion" is not set, and "Browse media when inserted" is set... nothing changes. Inserting a blank disc, nothing happens still. (No icon, no pop up dialog asking what to do). Inserting a data disc, nothing happens (no icon, no pop up file browser). The Places taskbar menu still shows CD/DVD creator, which opens a file browser with "Write to disc" option for creating a new disc from individual files. "Write to disc" still runs CD/DVD creator.

6. In the end, I opened Brasero by right-clicking a .iso file, then I clicked on Cancel, and then Brasero opened a dialog offering main options (create a data disc, create an audio disc etc.), then I chose create a data disc, then Brasero offered to make itself the default application for data discs. (I guess I would never find that again if I'd chosen No and "do not show this again"!!! It's not on any Preferences dialog I saw....) I chose Yes.

Conclusions:

- The hardware and kernel seem fine. There's nothing in dmesg or /var/log/kernel.
- CD/DVD Creator (nautilus-cd-burner) is not finding blank discs.
- Brasero and command line tools work, but Brasero doesn't finish cleanly, getting confused about eject at the end.
- Brasero creates a session-open disc (if I understood) which shouldn't be the default - should it? It says it can append to a disc it wrote earlier, and it lets you select files to do that, but it then doesn't permit it. It seems the session is open but with zero room (the .iso which I wrote was only 3MB by the way, it's not a full disc).
- Brasero produces obscure messages on the two different software errors I encountered, not so good for an app meant to be user-friendly.
- I didn't find any "Preferences" dialog to make Brasero the default burner app as it is presumably on a fresh Hardy install. (This is upgrade from Gutsy using update-manager).
- Through an unexpected sequence involving cancelling a .iso burn and then opting to make a data disc, Brasero says it can make itself the default CD burning app. But despite choosing Yes, nothing seems to have changed. CD/DVD Creator is the default in Nautilus both from double-clicking a .iso, and from taskbar's Places menu.
- Opening a .iso in Nautilus, but then clicking Cancel instead of starting a burn, or simply closing the burn dialog, shouldn't open the Brasero big main window. It should just close the dialog!
- I didn't find a way to make inserting blank discs do anything.
- The taskbar Places menu is stuck with CD/DVD Creator (nautilus-cd-burner) for making a disc out of individual data files dropped into a browser window.

It seems I can burn discs now, but nothing in the GUI works like it's supposed to. Only the command line tools are reliable. It seems very unlikely to have anything to do with my hardware, so I'd expect other Gutsy to Hardy upgraders to have the same problem (I'm surprised there aren't more comments).

Thanks.