On Thursday 02 Sep 2004 00:23, Wayne Stallwood wrote:
On Wednesday 01 September 2004 10:12 pm, Joe Button wrote:
Of course it might be preferable if Suse either provided a package that worked better or forked it properly so Joerg didn't get the flak. But I find it hard to believe they're doing anything illegal by distributing a patched version, even though it might arguably be a bit disrespectful towards the author.
As far as I can tell (apart from the kernel issue with Audio CD's, that had nothing to do with SuSE's modifications to cdrecord) the package they provide does work properly. I have been using cdrecord in SuSE from 7.2 through to 9.1 and the recent kernel issue was the first time I had problems.
Obviously if he has been getting bombarded with email from people having issues specific to the SuSE package then there is a problem, but what it is I don't know.
Don't use SuSE so I don't really know, but the k3b website suggests the problem's related to the 2.6.8 kernel, but it showed up in SuSE, presumably 'cos it was the first big distro to use that kernel version (?).
As I understand it the issue is that the kernel fixed what could reasonably be seen as a bug, ie. that burners could be written to when opened read-only. Unfortunately various apps (presumably including cdrecord?) rely on this rather odd behaviour and consequently don't work with the latest kernel. From what I understand from the kernel mailing list, modifying apps to work with the new kernel should be trivial, and is something the maintainer could reasonably be expected to address.
Oh, there's also a memory leak that stops audio CDs writing properly, which is a bona fide kernel bug.
NB: if I sound like I know what I'm talking about it's just an illusion, my knowledge is very sketchy and I may well be completely wrong about everything.
I don't like the idea of a complete fork for the reasons stated in my recent post and because isn't that even more disrespectful to the original author ?
Depends what s/he wants. Schilling seems to be complaining about getting unwanted bug reports and "broken software that illegally claims to be cdrecord." Forking it would address both complaints, although I don't know if it would make him happy or not.
I should really stop gibbering on ALUG and get on with the funding proposal I need to get done by tomorrow morning...
Joe x