How to use optical media (audio CDs and CDR, DVD, etc...) in qubes?

[Peter Funk]

Hello,

In the past I used the builtin SATA optical drive of my laptop
to play audio CDs from my collection or convert them into .ogg
or .mp3 files. This was before I migrated from Ubuntu to Qubes-OS.
Now I'm looking for a suitable way to use the application
sound-juicer which worked really nice in Ubuntu. After reading
the documentation here:
https://www.qubes-os.org/doc/how-to-use-optical-discs/
I'm now a little bit concerned that I might not be able to make
proper use of the Vendor: TSSTcorp Model: BDDVDW SN-506BB optical
drive built into my laptop.

Any advice how I can get around this? Or do I have to hope that
a future version von Qubes-OS/Xen might include a driver which will
allow to run sound-juicer in qube (guest)?

Best regards, Peter Funk
--
Peter Funk ✉:Oldenburger Str.86, 27777 Ganderkesee, Germany; 📱:+49-179-640-8878
homeoffice ☎:+49-4222-950270

[Demi Marie Obenour]

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA256

On Fri, Feb 25, 2022 at 05:54:17PM +0100, Peter Funk wrote:
> Hello,
>
> In the past I used the builtin SATA optical drive of my laptop
> to play audio CDs from my collection or convert them into .ogg
> or .mp3 files. This was before I migrated from Ubuntu to Qubes-OS.
> Now I'm looking for a suitable way to use the application
> sound-juicer which worked really nice in Ubuntu. After reading
> the documentation here:
> https://www.qubes-os.org/doc/how-to-use-optical-discs/
> I'm now a little bit concerned that I might not be able to make
> proper use of the Vendor: TSSTcorp Model: BDDVDW SN-506BB optical
> drive built into my laptop.
>
> Any advice how I can get around this? Or do I have to hope that
> a future version von Qubes-OS/Xen might include a driver which will
> allow to run sound-juicer in qube (guest)?

I wonder if scsifront/scsiback could do the job, were Qubes OS to have
support for it.

- --
Sincerely,
Demi Marie Obenour (she/her/hers)
Invisible Things Lab
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
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=Idd3
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

[awokd]

Peter Funk:

> https://www.qubes-os.org/doc/how-to-use-optical-discs/
> I'm now a little bit concerned that I might not be able to make
> proper use of the Vendor: TSSTcorp Model: BDDVDW SN-506BB optical
> drive built into my laptop.
>
> Any advice how I can get around this? Or do I have to hope that
> a future version von Qubes-OS/Xen might include a driver which will
> allow to run sound-juicer in qube (guest)?

Option #2 in the link may work with your laptop, but controller
passthrough is hit or miss and someone would have to have the same model
of laptop to say for sure if it would work.

--
- don't top post
Mailing list etiquette:
- trim quoted reply to only relevant portions
- when possible, copy and paste text instead of screenshots

[Peter Funk]

Hello,

Last weekend 05.03.2022 11:53 'awokd' replied via qubes-users :
> Peter Funk (that's me) :

>
> > https://www.qubes-os.org/doc/how-to-use-optical-discs/
> > I'm now a little bit concerned that I might not be able to make
> > proper use of the Vendor: TSSTcorp Model: BDDVDW SN-506BB optical
> > drive built into my laptop.
> >
> > Any advice how I can get around this? Or do I have to hope that
> > a future version von Qubes-OS/Xen might include a driver which will
> > allow to run sound-juicer in qube (guest)?
>
> Option #2 in the link may work with your laptop, but controller passthrough
> is hit or miss and someone would have to have the same model of laptop to
> say for sure if it would work.

The motherboard of my laptop has only one single SATA controller:
SATA controller: Intel Corporation 7 Series Chipset Family 6-port SATA Controller [AHCI mode] (rev 04)
If I try to use this as a passthrough device in the devices tab of the
settings of a certain qube then my Qubes-OS system freezes immediately
when I try to start this certain qube.

I think the Qube Manager should forbid this. If the situation
in dom0 is as follows (Shell-Pseudocode) then the Qube Manager
gui should stop users being as naive as I was:

if [ `lspci | grep SATA | wc -l` = 1 ] || [ selected_controller_is_SATA ]
then error "passthrough would stop system disk from working"
fi

So for the moment I've given up any hope that I could use my builtin
bluray drive of my laptop in Qubes-OS to work with any optical media.

The next thing I tried was to plug an external USB optical
drive into one of the USB ports.

This also appears fine in the device manager menu similar to the builtin
optical drive before when I put a audio media into that one.

I can assign this sys-usb:sr0 device to the qube with the gnome sound
juicer application installed.

However this will not work either, because the virtual block device
(/dev/xvdi in my case) appears not have some magical properties of
a real audio cdrom this application seems to expect.

Even creating symbolic links /dev/sr0 or /dev/cdrom pointing to
/dev/xvdi are not sufficient enough to trick the program into reading
the content of this device as audio cdrom tracks. The error message
"Sound Juicer could not find any CD-ROM drives to read." persists.

I've also tried other applications: K3B from KDE and clementine.
Same problem.

Best regards (Liebe Grüße), Peter Funk

[awokd]

Peter Funk:

> So for the moment I've given up any hope that I could use my builtin
> bluray drive of my laptop in Qubes-OS to work with any optical media.
>
> The next thing I tried was to plug an external USB optical
> drive into one of the USB ports.
>
> This also appears fine in the device manager menu similar to the builtin
> optical drive before when I put a audio media into that one.
>
> I can assign this sys-usb:sr0 device to the qube with the gnome sound
> juicer application installed.
>
> However this will not work either, because the virtual block device
> (/dev/xvdi in my case) appears not have some magical properties of
> a real audio cdrom this application seems to expect.

USB drive may be accessible to apps run within sys-usb, which is a bit
better than running them in dom0.

[Demi Marie Obenour]

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA256

On Sun, Mar 13, 2022 at 08:10:23PM +0000, 'awokd' via qubes-users wrote:
> Peter Funk:
>
> > So for the moment I've given up any hope that I could use my builtin
> > bluray drive of my laptop in Qubes-OS to work with any optical media.
> >
> > The next thing I tried was to plug an external USB optical
> > drive into one of the USB ports.
> >
> > This also appears fine in the device manager menu similar to the builtin
> > optical drive before when I put a audio media into that one.
> >
> > I can assign this sys-usb:sr0 device to the qube with the gnome sound
> > juicer application installed.
> >
> > However this will not work either, because the virtual block device
> > (/dev/xvdi in my case) appears not have some magical properties of
> > a real audio cdrom this application seems to expect.
>
> USB drive may be accessible to apps run within sys-usb, which is a bit
> better than running them in dom0.

You might also be able to use USB pass-through. That said, is there any
chance that SCSI pass-through could be supported, Marek?

- --
Sincerely,
Demi Marie Obenour (she/her/hers)
Invisible Things Lab
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----

iQIzBAEBCAAdFiEEdodNnxM2uiJZBxxxsoi1X/+cIsEFAmIuUIkACgkQsoi1X/+c
IsFLPBAAxB7TOWIODf5PVXScGPd+e7zimCrpmS+Js4D2Ips+rIDEIkSnYfe9wYVc
9yxC/9DrQ4YETLHnRFQrQl1SBC74McDHn8fHTD6P3ZD4AsBR2QdVlr9Tmi5nyx+v
hwiIiYRvYrhg+GzGKhAZEsSDQST+FUDu7QQ3hNaY/um39U/J6y4BsC9Go3Spxr56
6Xhpmh5feAuB2zTqGRX8CBPABryDB45nTWXIfdugQCisG7pMiN8t8QMDN9gHeQcm
pZJXRHi5wBN4GOnzKAybTV7QaEnpDefqMevRMiL8ZPZr4udEnCfXfBuX1X7IOKCK
9+T50q8Q3hGIcAMHcyEqPzMLL1Xv0rsCyqLLKEZ9OtjQORhYc/k6SEduvtlqVrEB
7amD02hFQvIRbgznk3EZiUn9C3sMJN+oinxrTGuhsPN13HMZpKgUG6BMOYKhIpBt
HHDGn6XavSLa32j/FrG4FciXaDZWw3CYTUx7BqjgV/RhV2QLsdEAJZ4oFqGRSnoi
TEqkkVqfd2baEYVxJp1ey7UncR8EowV92lcPG286YLLQNJR1HMGgwRKcACzbDKrW
B0OstPVRQ+fCoLgRBSwMo9bDQkgdRhFVk4hbHnrM8iHZQv61MyfXqX1eI3eAU5hL
TiPhBEqprOHmuAsp7mVQlOh4Tv3xsacC+y2BVvX2Mx4VK1tK2Qk=
=NHTL
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

[Andrew David Wong]

On 3/13/22 1:14 PM, Demi Marie Obenour wrote:
> On Sun, Mar 13, 2022 at 08:10:23PM +0000, 'awokd' via qubes-users wrote:
>> Peter Funk:
>
>>> So for the moment I've given up any hope that I could use my builtin
>>> bluray drive of my laptop in Qubes-OS to work with any optical media.
>>>
>>> The next thing I tried was to plug an external USB optical
>>> drive into one of the USB ports.
>>>
>>> This also appears fine in the device manager menu similar to the builtin
>>> optical drive before when I put a audio media into that one.
>>>
>>> I can assign this sys-usb:sr0 device to the qube with the gnome sound
>>> juicer application installed.
>>>
>>> However this will not work either, because the virtual block device
>>> (/dev/xvdi in my case) appears not have some magical properties of
>>> a real audio cdrom this application seems to expect.
>
>> USB drive may be accessible to apps run within sys-usb, which is a bit
>> better than running them in dom0.
>
> You might also be able to use USB pass-through. That said, is there any
> chance that SCSI pass-through could be supported, Marek?
>

Follow-up issue (for anyone following this thread):

https://github.com/QubesOS/qubes-issues/issues/7347

--
Andrew David Wong
Community Manager
The Qubes OS Project
https://www.qubes-os.org