[gentoo-user] No cdrom device created

[Harry Putnam]

I think I found the reason for a long standing problem I've had with
the machine locking up.

I see no evidence of a cdrom link or device name in /dev.

dmesg seems to show that it is recognized on boot, but I'm not smart
enough to know what the lines from dmesg really mean:

Just showing the key lines here but the full dmesg output can be views
if so desired at this link:  www.jtan.com/~reader/dmesg-101204.txt

dmesg|grep -2 hdc 

[    1.416847] hdb: UDMA/100 mode selected
[    1.417357] Probing IDE interface ide1...
[    2.089165] hdc: LITE-ON CD-ROM LTN-5291S, ATAPI CD/DVD-ROM drive
[    2.395008] hdd: WDC WD1600JB-00EVA0, ATA DISK drive
[    2.395666] hdc: host max PIO4 wanted PIO255(auto-tune) selected PIO4
[    2.395835] hdc: UDMA/33 mode selected
[    2.396473] hdd: host max PIO4 wanted PIO255(auto-tune) selected PIO4
[    2.397464] hdd: UDMA/100 mode selected
--
[    2.951543]  hdd: hdd1 hdd2 < hdd5 hdd6 hdd7 hdd8 >
[    3.046492] ide-cd driver 5.00
[    3.076761] ide-cd: hdc: ATAPI 52X CD-ROM drive, 96kB Cache
[    3.106578] Uniform CD-ROM driver Revision: 3.20
[    3.142316] Intel(R) PRO/1000 Network Driver - version 7.3.21-k5-NAPI

-------        ---------       ---=---       ---------      -------- 

Where should I see evidence of the device being created... some output
from udev I guess, but where to look for it and how to recognize what
is happening regarding the creation of the device.

I do collect a massive /var/log/debug.log by directing all syslog output
into it in syslog.conf... but I still would like a clue to grep for.

What I've found so far is massive quantities of lines like these:

,----
|  Dec 3 19:05:22 reader kernel: [14670.594825] hdc: status error:
|  status=0x00 { }
| 
|  Dec 3 19:05:22 reader kernel: [14670.594828] hdc: possibly failed
|  opcode: 0xa0
| 
|  Dec 3 19:05:22 reader kernel: [14670.594831] ide-atapi: hdc: Strange,
|  packet command initiated yet DRQ isn't asserted
`----

I think there are somekind of hardware problem with it since I cannot
open it even when booting and in the first few moments after the cdrom
light comes on.

Sounds like it tries to open... I'm too chicken to force it though I
have pried at it a bit, and stuck a wire in the hole.  Maybe not deep
enough but I haven't seen any good results of any of that yet.

I'm thinking somewhere there has been output that if I were a little
smarter I'd be able to tell what is happening when udev tries to
create a device ... or if it does.

I'm not even sure how that is supposed to work.