MakeMKV can't read disks anymore and behaves weird

[xesegik]

Yesterday I was trying to handle a disc, which caused some problems. MakeMKV said it can't decrypt, it looked like an unknown-key problem or something. I was on v1.18.2.

So I upgraded the AACS database in ~/.config/aacs and upgraded to MakeMKV v1.18.3, because the release notes said something about AACS (so I thought it might help).

Since then nothing works anymore. MakeMKV can't even read disks now, even those I successfully handled a couple days ago. It just hangs and shows the spinning-disk animation forever. After a while the disk drive goes silent. I can even remove the disk. MakeMKV is still pretending to read a disk. The Problem remains, even after I downgraded to 1.18.2 again and restored the previous AACS database. I also have 2 processes which eating up a full CPU core each:

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[...]        7095 77.9  0.0 731372 44996 ?        Sl   09:36   1:12 /usr/bin/makemkvcon guiserver A0001+shm
[...]        7146 99.2  0.0 461592 44696 ?        Sl   09:36   1:03 /bin/makemkvcon guiserver A0001+std

Even when I close MakeMKV, those processes are still there.

When I kill them by force I have this:

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[...]        7146 98.4  0.0      0     0 ?        Z    09:36   6:38 [makemkvcon] <defunct>

... which is unkillable. I have to restart the computer to get rid of that one.

Something is fundamentally broken, and I don't know how to fix that. I could need some help.

[science-nerd]

You should try to isolate the cause.

First backup your configs, then wipe makemkv and do a fresh install, see if old known working discs are readable again.

Then you would know if newest makemkv works.

After that you can try the AACS update again to not run into problems with both at the same time

[xesegik]

Is there a list somewhere, about where MakeMKV puts its files? I only know about this one: ~/.MakeMKV

It would also help if I knew where to find log files or something. MakeMKV going crazy and hugging the CPU ... I would like to know what kind of trouble it has.

Aside from that, I already tried reinstalling. No luck so far. I assume, this problem must be driven by a configuration/data state.

I also read, that MakeMKV isn't using the ~/.config/aacs database. Is that true?

[16442496]

Backup your ./MakeMKV just in case and then delete the .MakeMKV derectory from you /home.
Open MakeMKV to see if that help.

"I also read, that MakeMKV isn't using the ~/.config/aacs database. Is that true?"

I think that AACS file (KEYDB.cfg) should be in .MakeMKV directory.

[angrod]

I had similar (but less severe) problems today after a while of not using MakeMKV. The specific symptom was that the program would do the initial read / index of the discs fine, but when I started the rip, it would sit there a while on each title (1-2 minutes) and then fail with an ambiguous message (in the UI) and a slightly less ambiguous but still not very useful message in the robot mode of makemkvcon. The backup mode worked fine, but if I then loaded the generated ISO, the same errors would crop up, albeit a bit faster since there was no optical I/O delay. The most specific error message I saw was:

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MSG:1002,32,1,"LIBMKV_TRACE: Exception: Error in p->FetchFrames(1,false)","LIBMKV_TRACE: %1","Exception: Error in p->FetchFrames(1,false)"

I also tried this with an ISO I generated (with the backup function) many months ago that previously worked and it had the same problem.

Since it had been a while since I had last rebuilt MakeMKV and I've done several OS updates in the interim, I tried rebuilding as a first troubleshooting step, but got the same result.

I then moved ~/.MakeMKV to a different path, which solved the problem. Afterward, I moved the only file in the old directory that I cared about, a profile xml file, back into the newly-generated ~/.MakeMKV, and happily that didn't reintroduce the problem. Given what I experienced, I can only conclude that something related to some change that happened along the way, corrupted one of the files in there. Whether that's an OS-level change or strictly confined to MakeMKV or some combination thereof, I couldn't say.

I only tried any of this with DVDs, but if I discover any similar problems with Blus, I may update this post to add more info. For now, I consider the problem resolved for me.

OS info in case it's helpful:

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OS: Arch Linux x86_64 
Kernel: 6.18.6-arch1-1