sata lightscribe drive not working for fc6 on dc5750

[Bill Hayman, WI]

dvd installs of suse10.1 and fedora core 6 on a dc5750 failed because after the initial dvd boot, the drive was not found. I installed fc6 by copying the dvd to another node and then using the "install via ftp" option.

now that fc6 is installed, the sata lightscribe dvd drive is not working. during boot, dmesg
shows the ahci driver reporting:
ata2: port is slow to respond, please be patient
ata2: port failed to respond (30 secs)
...
ata2: COMRESET failed (device not ready)
ata2: reset failed, giving up

anyone else experience this?

Linux 2.6.18-1.2849.fc6
Bios 1.54a with SATA emulation set to raid
(not because I wanted raid, but because support said that was the option to use to get AHCI
mode)

thanks.

[Huc_1]

if you do a dc5750 sata linux sear on google
you will find a lot of replys saying that you need to set some bios setting and you need at least Bios 1.54A (This is the one you have so there should be no problems).
Have a look at this reply.
http://mccune.ece.cmu.edu/wordpress/?p=173

Hope this get you running fedora

Jean-Pierre Huc

[Steven E. Protter]

Shalom,

Seems that the hardware is not supported.

In such a situation, I would favor using different hardware. Perhaps the system bios can be updated to overcome this issue.

SEP

[Gerald Hochegger]

I'm also experiencing problems installing Linux on a dc5750 and according to
http://mccune.ece.cmu.edu/wordpress/?p=173
the solution would be a bios upgrade to version 1.54a

Can someone please tell where I can download Bios version 1.54a - on the HP website the only version available is: 1.04a from Sep 29 2006.

Thanks,
Gerald

[Bill Hayman, WI]

Here's a link to the web page for the driver:
http://h20000.www2.hp.com/bizsupport/TechSupport/SoftwareIndex.jsp?lang=en&cc=us&prodNameId=3253418&prodTypeId=12454&prodSeriesId=3252512&swLang=13&taskId=135&swEnvOID=1093

Basically it's under "download software and drivers" for the dc5750. Better to look under an OS such as Windows XP Pro, because last time I looked under "Firmware" they just had the old driver.

BTW, Mr. McCune was kind enough to tell me that 1) by "regular operation" he meant "native IDE", and 2) he had a DVD-ROM drive on his system, not a DVD-RW.

I found from HP support that the "RAID" option was the proper choice in order to access the fourth sata emulation mode that apparently other BIOS's list as "AHCI".
Basically you choose "RAID" even if you don't want RAID but then in the BIOS raid setup window, allow the drives to remain as seperate drives.

I found that the DVD-RW drive sold with the DC5750 didn't work for any of the BIOS sata emulation modes: "legacy IDE", "native IDE", or "RAID". However the "drive busy" light only worked correctly (for the linux "ahci" driver) when sata emulation mode of "RAID" was specified.

Good luck with your installation. Would be interested to hear how you fare.

[Gerald Hochegger]

Thank you Bill for the firmware download link - i was indeed looking in the "firmware" section for the bios upgrades - seemed logical for me.

Now my results with Bios version 1.54a, Ubuntu Feisty Herd-3 (kernel 2.6.20) and the lightscribe DVD-RW drive:

Sata Emulation - legacy or native:
Boots up but fails when the kernel tries to access the DVD-RW drive
(ata 2.00 exception Emask 0x40 ...)

Sata Emulation - Raid:
Doesn't even boot - DVD-RW drive is not found as boot device

I powered the DVD-RW drive off and installed the box with PXE over the network.

When powering the DVD-RW drive on again later the kernel produces the same error messages as before regardless of the Sata Emulation mode (legacy, native or Raid)

So the HP lightscribe DVD-RW Sata drive does simply not work with Linux (even with the latest 2.6.20 kernel)

How easy was all this with the well defined SCSI standard.

Gerald

[ivan basso]

I have also attempted to install linux (opensuse 10.2) but also run into problems with the lightscribe not being found. (I purchased the machine with XP and was intending to make it dual boot).

It's worth noting that the HP DC5750 is avaliable on-line in a "linux" configuration:

http://h10010.www1.hp.com/wwpc/us/en/en/WF05a/12454-12454-64287-321860-3328896-3253421.html

Also note that for this "linux" option, (it's actually with free dos), you can select a lightscribe drive.

HP may wish to consider removing the lightscribe from the on line configuration as this would appear to be an invalid configuration.

[Bill Hayman, WI]

Thanks for reporting your install attempt.

I ordered my machine under the linux link and did configure it with the Lightscribe drive. But rather than removing that on-line option I would much prefer that HP offer some support there ... get the drive to work with linux and let us know how.

HP Support did send me a replacement drive (not for linux issues, but for problems that the bios would occasionally report). The new drive didn't resolve the linux issue. At least I eliminated the possibly that it was a bad drive.

Currently I'm researching to see if there are any OTHER brands/models of sata dvd-rw drives that work well with the linux ahci driver on a ATI SB600 controller.

Bill

[Carl George]

I had the same problem when I was trying to install fc6. I then tried another distro and I was able to get Ubuntu 6.10 installed without an issues. My next step is to install fc6 via a USB drive and recompile the kernel using similar options as in Ubuntu. I am under the assumption that if it works in one version of Linux then I should be able to get it to work on another using the right kernel options.

[Primoz Peterlin]

Has anybody made any progress with this? Here is what I have been trying.

1) I have upgraded the BIOS to v2.10 and set SATA emulation in BIOS to "Native IDE". Windows XP already installed on their own partition were still accessible after reboot.

2) I tried to install Fedora Core 6 (x86_64) from a DVD and failed as described above (CD drive not found).

2b) I copied the DVD to a shared disk on another computer in a local network and successfuly proceeded with the installation. When I rebooted the machine in Windows, I didn't see the DVDRW drive any longer, and after some mangling in BIOS, which returned it to me, I was unable to restart the machine in Linux any longer.

3) I tried to install OpenSUSE 10.2 (x86_64) and failed in a very similar way as with FC6. People at SuSE however seem to have a solution:
https://bugzilla.novell.com/show_bug.cgi?id=241334

4) I also tried Ubuntu 6.10 (x86_64) as suggested above, but without any success either.

5) With SATA emulation set to "Legacy IDE", I successfully installed an old FC2-based distribution. Here, however it didn't recognize the sound card, the ethernet etc.

What bothers me is that FC6 installation makes the DVDRW drive invisible in the BIOS setup - I was only able to restore it by changing SATA emulation back and forth for a while.

I have also seen people suggesting plugging the DVDRW drive into a separate SATA controller. Has anybody tried it?
http://www.fedoraforum.org/forum/printthread.php?t=140285

With kind regards, Primoz