Ubuntu
dvd+rw-tools package

growisofs fails but reports good status

Bug #59506 reported by kornelix
2
Affects Status Importance Assigned to Milestone
dvd+rw-tools (Ubuntu)
Confirmed
Undecided
Unassigned

Bug Description

Binary package hint: dvd+rw-tools

This is a known bug in growisofs since May 2005.

See Debian bug #307660:
http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=307660

How to reproduce:
  - make a DVD+RW media sufficiently defective so that growisofs fails
    (score deeply with a knife)
  - run growisofs: $ growisofs -Z /dev/dvd some-huge-file
  - check that growisofs output messages indicate failure
    (message contains "failed" or "I/O error")
  - check status with "echo $?". It is zero.

I believe this is a serious problem that could result in user data loss.
It is also trivially easy to fix. If upstream will not fix, then Ubuntu should fix.

Thanks.

Revision history for this message
Paul Dufresne (paulduf) wrote :

Thank you for taking the time to report this bug and helping to make Ubuntu better. You reported this bug a while ago and there hasn't been any activity in it recently. We were wondering is this still an issue for you? Can you try with latest Ubuntu release? Thanks in advance.

Changed in dvd+rw-tools:
assignee: nobody → dufresnep
status: New → Incomplete
Revision history for this message
kornelix (mikecorn-deactivatedaccount) wrote : Re: [Bug 59506] Re: growisofs fails but reports good status

Paul,

Thanks for writing. Yes, the bug is still there in Ubuntu 7.10.

I never understood the "incomplete" status since I feel I provided
enough information to verify the bug.

I have characterized it a bit more: growisofs takes output from mkisofs
or genisoimage and writes to the DVD. The problem is that if mkisofs or
genisoimage terminate with a bad status, then growisofs also terminates
and reports a good status.

Try the following: use growisofs to copy a few big files (10+ MB) to a
DVD. When growisofs begins the first file, delete the last file in the
list before growisofs gets to it. mkisofs or genisoimage (whichever is
being used) will abort with an error message like "cannot open xxxx".
growisofs will terminate with a good status.

I tried also the forked growisofs project called wodim, but it has other
problems that force me to stay with growisofs for now.

thanks
Mike

Paul Dufresne wrote:
> Thank you for taking the time to report this bug and helping to make
> Ubuntu better. You reported this bug a while ago and there hasn't been
> any activity in it recently. We were wondering is this still an issue
> for you? Can you try with latest Ubuntu release? Thanks in advance.
>
> ** Changed in: dvd+rw-tools (Ubuntu)
> Assignee: (unassigned) => Paul Dufresne (dufresnep)
> Status: New => Incomplete
>

Revision history for this message
Paul Dufresne (paulduf) wrote :

Thank you for these new information.
Confirming then, as this is still a problem at least in Gutsy.

Changed in dvd+rw-tools:
assignee: dufresnep → nobody
status: Incomplete → Confirmed
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