Ghost CD

[darkhelmetchris]

I sincerely thank the participants in this forum for a great solution to the "LG Bluebirds problem".

This solution no longer works for Ubuntu 10.10. From what I can tell, there no longer seems to be a hal service in Ubuntu 10.10 and so I am wondering... any ideas on how to apply a similar fix under Ubuntu 10.10?

[Krallus]

All you should have to do is upgrade the CD drive to the latest firmware: http://www.lg.com/us/support/product...lCode=GH22NS50

There's three listed, but if it were me, I'd do TN-03. I can't remember the exact steps I used, but I likely booted to Windows (yes I still hang on to a Windows partition, though it is very rarely used) and installed the firmware from there. You only have to run it on the drive once -- so you could even remove the drive and install it on a Windows machine in order to upgrade the firmware. If you don't want to do it yourself, if you bring the drive into a shop or your local Staples, I'm sure they could update the firmware for you.

[darkhelmetchris]

tee hee. I admit, that is one way, and I thank you for the response, Krallus.

However, I hesitate to remove the drive and flash it with someone's Windows (not that I wouldn't of course) but this is a Linux forum and I'm sure I'm not the only one to encounter this under some Linux distro. So, I would like to see a pure 'nix solution - both for the experience and the spirit of sharing the option with others. Also, I don't have any Windows installations here and disassembly of the workstation is undesirable due to the type of machine that it is. It is an oil-cooled aquarium computer, so disassembly is, not just more difficult, but also kind of messy. I will attach a pic to the post.

I was quite happy with the HAL blacklist, as it worked perfectly in the existing installation. I expect there is a way to duplicate this with some form of blacklist - perhaps with an automounter blacklist or the new equivalent to HAL which I am as yet unfamiliar.

Anyone for a pure Linux option?

[darkhelmetchris]

Okay, this thread has been dead for a bit, and so I'm wondering if anyone knows how to:
"blacklist a volume by label" in Ubuntu 10.10 (the old HAL solution from previous Ubuntu version no longer works, as there is no HAL in this version)

Since most of my computer is submerged in white oil, taking the LG-Bluebirds drive out to flash in some other Windows machine is - really quite undesirable, so I have been living with the ghost CD always appearing.

Someone know how to blacklist a volume by label?

[ischliky]

I found 1 solution that worked great for me, however im not really sure how 'safe' it is so use at your own risk.

i read a few pages about this, some of which saying crossover would allow this to work, so i figured that wine should work as well. however it was not really getting me anywhere.

then i decided that its quite possible i need to be running as root to have enough permissions to be able to flash the firmware.

long story short, this is what i did to fix it ( once again use at your own risk ) :

download TN01 - TN03 firmware, can find easily with google

open terminal

sudo su - <- this is the part that really isnt normally a good idea

make sure CD is shut to start

wine /home/{your_login}/Desktop/GH22N....exe

once loaded, you can up eject the CD and hit update. This shouldnt take but a few seconds and it should be all fixed and ready to go.


once again use this at your own risk, it worked great for me but i know that lots of people will say why doing the sudo su - is a bad idea. however im not that great with wine so i wasnt sure how to get it to use a prefix that root had permissions for to load up wine.

feel free to update this with a safer way if you need, however this worked 100% for me, with a standard 10.10 ubuntu setup.

[darkhelmetchris]

Thanks for the info, ischliky. I tried your solution and didn't have much luck. I can run wine, and applications in wine just fine. But, for some reason, this solution didn't work for me; I tried several settings to address the drive, but got stuck each time. The firmware update tool just hung and never updated the firmware in the drive, even after several tries with various settings. Each time I ran it under wine, I waited nearly an hour to see some indication of activity, but it never progressed. ...sadly.

In desperation, finally, I took the drive out of my aquarium, cleaned off the oil as best as I could (terrible mess, lol, but okay), plugged it into a friend's Windows box, and ran the firmware update tool. It wasn't an Ubuntu/Linux solution, though.

I am still interested in finding out if anyone knows how to blacklist a volume by name in more recent versions of Ubuntu. It would be handy to know, since there are a couple of USB volumes (not discs) that I insert that I wouldn't really like to appear until after I have performed other tasks with them. The details are not really important, except to say that I don't want to turn of auto-mount completely because I do like it, most of the time. If I had the ability to blacklist a volume by its name, that would make my life a little bit nicer when I am preparing certain volumes for use.