Does Nero make bad LiveCDs?

jessicavampirehunter · Posted: Mon Jul 25, 2005 8:22 am Post subject: Does Nero make bad LiveCDs?

So I was installing Gentoo, and everything seemed to go well, except that it keeps getting confused about ext3 and mounting it as ext2. I rebooted near the end of the installation procss, and it got to the grub splash screen (which is very pretty, thank you to whoever made it!) and when I selected my kernel, it gave me the error:

Booting 'Gentoo Linux 2.6.12-gentoo-r6 '

root (hd0,0)
Filesystem type is ext2fs, partition type 0x83
kernel /kernel-2.6.12-gentoo-r6 root=/dev/ram0 init=/linuxrc ramdisk=8192 real_root=/dev/hda3 udev

Error 15: File not found

Press any key to continue...

Again, a scary error, but it turns out that the grub troubleshooting documentation has this exact problem. It says there should be a typo in grub.conf, and I need to boot from a LiveCD and fix it. So I try to use my minimal install CD as a LiveCD so I can do that. When I try to boot from my minimal CD, though, it fails partway through. Specifically, it does hardware detection and looks like it's just about done (the last thing it tries to display is a bunch of instructions for the user) and then I get a million repetitions of:

end_request: I/O error, dev hdc, sector **** (the sector number varies)
hdc: media error (bad sector): status=0x51 { DriveReady SeekComplete Error }
hdc: media error (bad sector): status=0x34 { AbortedCommand LastFailedSense=0x03 }
ide: failed opcode was: unknown

This sounds to me like something or other is corrupted. The thing is, I didn't know I had an hdc. I've got the default partitioning scheme suggested in the install docs (boot partition in hda1, swap in hda2, and root in hda3). Does hdc refer to my RAM or something peculiar? Does that mean my RAM is broken and needs to be replaced? Or does it mean that my minimal install CD is corrupted?

I was hoping it wasn't, so I downloaded and burned a universal install CD with Nero 6. However, when I tried to boot into it, a very strange thing happened. It dumped me into Caldera DR-DOS! I thought "ah, something failed and this is the backup." However, when I examined it, the bootup messages don't mention Gentoo at all! I checked the file I burned, and it's definitely the universal install ISO for Gentoo. I find this deeply weird.

My next step was to run around the forums like a chicken with its RAM removed, trying to find others in my plight. Lo, behold, I did! One thing I thought was very interesting about the three or four threads I could find was that all of them tried to burn the CD with Nero. Usually Nero is amazing and wonderful and does my bidding with competence and finesse, but maybe there is a problem with the CD burning program itself that...causes it to...burn Caldera when...I ask it to burn Gentoo? So my question on this is threefold - a) is it possible that there's a problem with Nero?, b) what is this peculiar DR-DOS thing, and what is it doing in my operating system?, and c) does anyone else know any particularly good CD burning programs besides Nero? Trying to compete with Nero is like trying to compete with the iPod, so I haven't been able to find anything amazing and free.

I'm sorry if this is in the wrong forum - I figured what with grub not being able to find the kernel, and problems with LiveCDs, this was probably right.
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She's a fluffy psychic physicist with a deep-seated love of David Bowie. Her girlfriend's a semi-devout pagan linguistics major who loves sex like whoa. They fight crime!

markkuk · Guru Joined: 29 Nov 2002 Posts: 446

oumpah-pah · Posted: Mon Jul 25, 2005 9:37 am Post subject:

I can't help you with your very strange liveCD problem. It seems to me that you burned the wrong ISO. Did you check it with md5 or gpg? And did you get it from a trusted location?

What I can tell you for sure is that /dev/hdc is not your RAM, so do not thow it away! It is most probably your cdrom drive. Linux names IDE devices like this:

jessicavampirehunter · Posted: Mon Jul 25, 2005 5:32 pm Post subject:

a) I burned the wrong type of CD? Interesting. Does DR-DOS live in Gentoo, then, or is it some bizarre firmware thing? And if it's part of Gentoo, why not use bash instead? It just seems peculiar that Linux would use a non-*sh variant command line.
b) Oh, I know about k3b.

I love it to death. Sadly, I don't really have the option of using it, because I'm using my brother's Windows box and compiling from source is kind of complicated on Windows.
c) I know the general hd* syntax...and I figured it was almost certainly not my RAM because there's no reason to mount RAM, but then I do only have *one* hard drive, so there shouldn't be anything called hdc at all. But my CD-ROM? Does that really count as a hard drive?
_________________
She's a fluffy psychic physicist with a deep-seated love of David Bowie. Her girlfriend's a semi-devout pagan linguistics major who loves sex like whoa. They fight crime!

oumpah-pah · Posted: Mon Jul 25, 2005 7:00 pm Post subject:

markkuk · Guru Joined: 29 Nov 2002 Posts: 446