Bsrgvty

I'm running Xubuntu 18.04.2 on a Mac Mini. Because the internal DVD-RW drive is dead, I bought an external USB CD-RW and DVD read drive. When I put in a blank CD-R, the blank disk shows on the desktop. But my burning program Xfburn won't recognize the drive or write to it. The attached graphic shows what my Disks program shows for the drive:

Based on similar posts in other forums, I pulled up the following info from command prompts. Does anyone have any idea how I can activate the write function for the device so it can burn CD's? (I know this drive can't write DVD's as the info says.) Thanks!

msgeek@Navi2:~$ cat /etc/os-release
NAME="Ubuntu"
VERSION="18.04.2 LTS (Bionic Beaver)"
ID=ubuntu
ID_LIKE=debian
PRETTY_NAME="Ubuntu 18.04.2 LTS"
VERSION_ID="18.04"
HOME_URL="https://www.ubuntu.com/"
SUPPORT_URL="https://help.ubuntu.com/"
BUG_REPORT_URL="https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/"
PRIVACY_POLICY_URL="https://www.ubuntu.com/legal/terms-and-policies/privacy-policy"
VERSION_CODENAME=bionic
UBUNTU_CODENAME=bionic

msgeek@Navi2:~$ cdrecord -prcap
wodim: Operation not permitted. Warning: Cannot raise RLIMIT_MEMLOCK limits.
Device was not specified. Trying to find an appropriate drive...
Detected CD-R drive: /dev/cdrw
Using /dev/cdrom of unknown capabilities
Device type : Removable CD-ROM
Version : 0
Response Format: 2
Capabilities : 
Vendor_info : 'Optiarc '
Identification : 'CDRWDVD CRX890A '
Revision : 'PH03'
Device seems to be: Generic mmc2 DVD-ROM.

Drive capabilities, per MMC-3 page 2A:

 Does read CD-R media
 Does write CD-R media
 Does read CD-RW media
 Does write CD-RW media
 Does read DVD-ROM media
 Does read DVD-R media
 Does not write DVD-R media
 Does read DVD-RAM media
 Does not write DVD-RAM media
 Does support test writing

 Does read Mode 2 Form 1 blocks
 Does read Mode 2 Form 2 blocks
 Does read digital audio blocks
 Does restart non-streamed digital audio reads accurately
 Does support Buffer-Underrun-Free recording
 Does read multi-session CDs
 Does read fixed-packet CD media using Method 2
 Does not read CD bar code
 Does read R-W subcode information
 Does not return R-W subcode de-interleaved and error-corrected
 Does read raw P-W subcode data from lead in
 Does return CD media catalog number
 Does return CD ISRC information
 Does support C2 error pointers
 Does not deliver composite A/V data

 Does play audio CDs
 Number of volume control levels: 256
 Does support individual volume control setting for each channel
 Does support independent mute setting for each channel
 Does not support digital output on port 1
 Does not support digital output on port 2

 Loading mechanism type: tray
 Does support ejection of CD via START/STOP command
 Does not lock media on power up via prevent jumper
 Does allow media to be locked in the drive via PREVENT/ALLOW command
 Is not currently in a media-locked state
 Does not support changing side of disk
 Does not have load-empty-slot-in-changer feature
 Does not support Individual Disk Present feature

 Maximum read speed: 4234 kB/s (CD 24x, DVD 3x)
 Current read speed: 4234 kB/s (CD 24x, DVD 3x)
 Maximum write speed: 4234 kB/s (CD 24x, DVD 3x)
 Current write speed: 4234 kB/s (CD 24x, DVD 3x)
 Rotational control selected: CLV/PCAV
 Buffer size in KB: 2048
 Copy management revision supported: 1
 Number of supported write speeds: 4
 Write speed # 0: 4234 kB/s CLV/PCAV (CD 24x, DVD 3x)
 Write speed # 1: 3528 kB/s CLV/PCAV (CD 20x, DVD 2x)
 Write speed # 2: 2822 kB/s CLV/PCAV (CD 16x, DVD 2x)
 Write speed # 3: 1764 kB/s CLV/PCAV (CD 10x, DVD 1x)

Supported CD-RW media types according to MMC-4 feature 0x37:
 Does write multi speed CD-RW media
 Does write high speed CD-RW media
 Does write ultra high speed CD-RW media
 Does write ultra high speed+ CD-RW media


msgeek@Navi2:~$ inxi -d
Drives: HDD Total Size: 532.3GB (38.9% used)
 ID-1: /dev/sda model: TOSHIBA_MQ01ABF0 size: 500.1GB
 ID-2: USB /dev/sdb model: v150w size: 32.2GB
 Optical-1: /dev/sr0 model: N/A dev-links: cdrom,cdrw,dvd
 Features: speed: 24x multisession: yes
 audio: yes dvd: yes rw: cd-r,cd-rw

------UPDATE 7/13/2019:

The user who operates Xfburn needs effective read-write permission for the device file of the burner (here /dev/sr0). Your screenshot says "Read-Only". The drive must be able to recognize the medium. Your screenshot says "Media --". Xfburn uses libburn, not cdrecord. Inspection proposal for a libburn program, with blank medium inserted: cdrskin -v dev=/dev/sr0 -toc Please post the result. – Thomas Schmitt yesterday

I tried to run cdrskin, and got this message:
Command 'cdrskin' not found, but can be installed with:

 sudo apt install cdrskin

I did so. It installed cdrskin. The Disks program still shows /dev/sr0 (Read-Only). Then I did:

 msgeek@Navi2:~$ cdrskin -v dev=/dev/sr0 -toc
 cdrskin 1.4.8 : limited cdrecord compatibility wrapper for libburn
 cdrskin: verbosity level : 1
 cdrskin: NOTE : greying out all drives besides given dev='/dev/sr0'
 cdrskin: scanning for devices ...
 cdrskin: ... scanning for devices done
 cdrskin: pseudo-atip on drive 0
 cdrskin: status 1 burn_disc_blank "The drive holds a blank disc"
 scsidev: '4,0,0'
 Device type : Removable CD-ROM
 Vendor_info : 'Optiarc'
 Identifikation : 'CDRWDVD CRX890A'
 Revision : 'PH03'
 Drive id : '30651360 1599125 '
 Driver flags : BURNFREE
 Supported modes: TAO SAO
 cdrskin: burn_drive_get_write_speed = 4234 (24.0x)
 Current: CD-R
 Profile: 0x0010 (DVD-ROM)
 Profile: 0x0008 (CD-ROM)
 Profile: 0x0009 (CD-R) (current)
 Profile: 0x000A (CD-RW)
 ATIP info from disk:
 Is not erasable
 ATIP start of lead in: -11634 (97:26/66)
 ATIP start of lead out: 359846 (79:59/71)
 1T speed low: 10 1T speed high: 24
 Product Id: 97m26s66f/79m59s71f
 Producer: CMC Magnetics Corporation
 Manufacturer: CMC Magnetics Corporation
 Media summary: 0 sessions, 0 tracks, blank CD-R

Please edit your question and add the output of the command groups. Chances are you might be missing the cdrom group from your account. – Terrance yesterday

I did this, and got this result:
msgeek adm dialout fax cdrom floppy tape sudo audio dip video plugdev netdev lpadmin scanner pulse pulse-access sambashare

So, I don't have a group for cdrom. How do I add it? Meanwhile...

The output of ls -l /dev/sr0, of getfacl /dev/sr0, and of whoami would further help to clarify the permission situation. – Thomas Schmitt yesterday

 msgeek@Navi2:~$ ls -l /dev/sr0, of getfacl /dev/sr0
 ls: cannot access '/dev/sr0,': No such file or directory
 ls: cannot access 'of': No such file or directory
 ls: cannot access 'getfacl': No such file or directory
 brw-rw----+ 1 root cdrom 11, 0 Jul 13 21:27 /dev/sr0

 whoami gives the result msgeek - the person who set up the computer for me.

I am very new to Linux, so hopefully you can provide some advice about where to go from here. Thanks in advance!

------UPDATE 7/15/2019:
The permission situation looks ok. ("of" was meant as textual "or" and "getfacl" is a command to get ACLs. Whatever, membership in group "cdrom" gives you the permission to open the drive read-write.) cdrskin would be willing to burn the CD-R. So should be Xfburn. What happens if you choose action "Burn Image" ? Does the menu window show your burner's name under "Burning device" ? ("Optiarc CDRWDVD CRX890A") If so, then you are just mistaken by the display of "Composition" actions. If not, then i am out of ideas. – Thomas Schmitt yesterday

I understand. I make typos too. Well, inasmuch as I don't have group cdrom and nobody has told me how to create it or install it, I need more info there.

So I did this:
msgeek@Navi2:~$ getfacl /dev/sr0
getfacl: Removing leading '/' from absolute path names
# file: dev/sr0
# owner: root
# group: cdrom
user::rw-
user:msgeek:rw-
group::rw-
mask::rw-
other::---
So this command suggests that I DO have the group cdrom on my system. So I ran the command groups again and I got...

 msgeek adm dialout fax cdrom floppy tape sudo audio dip video plugdev netdev lpadmin scanner pulse pulse-access sambashare

So now I have cdrom in my groups. The Disks display shows no write capability still. I went back and ran:

 msgeek@Navi2:~$ getfacl /dev/sr0
 getfacl: Removing leading '/' from absolute path names
 # file: dev/sr0
 # owner: root
 # group: cdrom
 user::rw-
 user:msgeek:rw-
 group::rw-
 mask::rw-
 other::---

Clear as mud. Running the command cdrskin -v dev=/dev/sr0 -toc provides the same result. I entered in the command burn image and got this:

 msgeek@Navi2:~$ burn image

 Command 'burn' not found, but can be installed with:

 sudo apt install burn

So I went ahead and installed it. Now I try the command burn image and...

 msgeek@Navi2:~$ burn image
 Traceback (most recent call last):
 File "<string>", line 1, in <module>
 File "/usr/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/burnlib/burn.py", line 42, in <module>
 import audio
 File "/usr/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/burnlib/audio.py", line 28, in <module>
 import eyeD3
 ImportError: No module named eyeD3

So, I run the Disks program and it shows some things slightly different, but still shows "read only" for the disk.

I thank you for your help, Thomas. I'm as confounded as ever, even though perhaps progress has been made. (I don't know what these installs did to my system but it still seems to be working.) Any other advice from you or the other helpers here would be appreciated. I'll give you my recipe for Sour Cream Coffee Cake if you can get the drive to write, I swear!