Re: [gentoo-user] Re: DVD-cd usage

["Walter Dnes" <waltdnes@waltdnes.org>]

On Fri, Jul 22, 2005 at 06:13:46PM +0000, James wrote

> I need to learn how to use any simple cdrecording commands (syntax
> challeged user here) first. Then I can worry about all sorts of fancy
> file types/formats. I'd be better off downloading a know file to
> write to the device (ascii text?)  or something on the gentoo system,
> just to build a little confidence. I need a newbie 'how to cd burn'
> before I worry about the intricacies of audio recording files on CDs.
> 
> > 3) (Thanks for the idea, Dave Nebinger) Have you tried making an ISO
> > of all the audio files (unaltered) that you want to burn to CD, using
> > mkisofs, and then burning the ISO instead of the files?
> 
> 
> I'm going to read the cdrecord man pages. simple syntax examples
> or a link to a document to any cd burning software is what
> I need.

  A quick rundown...

  - audio CDs are generated by writing WAV files directly to CD.  The
    player reads them directly from the CD.  You do not mount audio CDs.

  - to get regular files onto CDs in a readable form, you first need to
    create an ISO9660 filesystem image file, using mkisofs (man mkisofs).
    Then burn the image file to a CD.  You can usually get away with
    piping output from mkisofs stdout to cdrecord stdin.

  - you need root privileges to properly use cdrecord; deal with it.  If
    you're scared of logging in as root, you can use sudoers.conf to give
    a regular user permission to run specific command and parameters.  I
    need root-level access in order to read system files for my bi-weekly
    backups, so cdrecord's need to be root was never an issue for me.

  Note; The following is all done as root (or root equivalent).

  The first thing you have to do is figure out your device numbers.
*YOUR SYSTEM CAN BE DIFFERENT FROM MINE*, so read the instructions
carefully.  Execute the command "cdrecord dev=ATAPI: -scanbus".  It can
take a few seconds to scan the system.  Ignore the warnings/disclaimers
The important part is at the end.  Here's that output for my system...

        0,0,0     0) 'SONY    ' 'CD-RW  CRX195E1 ' 'ZYS5' Removable CD-ROM
        0,1,0     1) 'SONY    ' 'DVD-ROM DDU1621 ' 'S1.5' Removable CD-ROM
        0,2,0     2) *
        0,3,0     3) *
        0,4,0     4) *
        0,5,0     5) *
        0,6,0     6) *
        0,7,0     7) *

  This indicates that my CD-RW is device 0,0,0.  mkisofs creates an
image of a specified directory, including subdirectories.  Soft links do
*NOT* work.  To save time, and avoid cluttering up my drive with temp
files, I pipe directly from mkisofs to cdrecord.  I make a tar.bz2 of
the files I want backed up, and move the file to directory "xfer".  The
following script does it all-in-one... 

#!/bin/sh
mkisofs -R -J xfer | cdrecord speed=8 -tao -v fs=8m -data dev=ATAPI:0,0,0 -

  The "-R -J" parameters should result in mkisofs output that's readable
by all linux and Windows machines.  The cdrecord parameters are...

speed=8 ...the burner on this machine can go up to 48x. But my emergency
        backup system is a 6-year-old Dell that can only read up to 12x.
        Oops.  This parameter slows down the burner so that the older
        machine can read its output.

-tao    "track at once".  This allows you to do multi-session CDs.

-v      I prefer some verbosity in the output.

fs=8m   The fifo buffer size.  The default is 4 megabytes, but I specify
        8 megabytes to play safe against under-runs.

-data   Straight out of the man page...
        -data  is  the default, if no other flag is present and the file
        does not appear to be of one of the well known audio file types.

        If  neither  -data  nor  -audio  have  been  specified, cdrecord
        defaults to -audio for all filenames that end in .au or .wav and
        to -data for all other files.

dev=ATAPI:0,0,0  This specifies the device.  The 3 numbers can be found
        by running "cdrecord dev=ATAPI: -scanbus"

-       The hyphen at the end specifies to use stdin as the source file.
        You will get a standard warning from cdrecord, because it can't
        know ahead of time whether the piped input will fit onto the CD.

-- 
Walter Dnes <waltdnes@waltdnes.org>
My musings on technology and security at http://tech_sec.blog.ca
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