CD-Writing HOWTO

CD-Writing HOWTO
Winfried Tr�mper <[email protected]>
v2.8.2, 7 August 1999

This document explains how to write CD-ROMs under Linux.
______________________________________________________________________

Table of Contents

1. Introduction

1.1 Copyright, license and terms of usage
1.2 Suggested readings
1.3 Terminology ... lasers at maximum ... fire!
1.4 Supported CD-Writers
1.5 Supported "features"
1.6 Mailinglists
1.7 Availability

2. Setup the Linux-system for writing CD-ROMs

2.1 Set up the Linux-kernel
2.1.1 Special hints up to kernel version 2.2.9
2.1.2 Special hints with kernel version 2.2.10 and later
2.1.3 Special hints for the 2.0-series
2.2 Hardware and devicefiles
2.2.1 IDE/ATAPI CD-writers
2.2.2 SCSI CD-Writers
2.2.2.1 Generic SCSI devices
2.2.3 CD-Writers for the parallel port
2.3 Get the user-software for burning CD-Rs
2.3.1 Command line utilities
2.3.2 Graphical user interfaces (optional)

3. Burning CD-Rs

3.1 Writing CD-ROMs (pure data)
3.1.1 Creating an image of the later CD-ROM
3.1.2 Test the CD-image
3.1.3 Write the CD-image to a CD
3.2 Writing audio CDs
3.2.1 DAO
3.3 Mixed mode CD-ROMs

4. Dear Winfried,...

4.1 How sensitive is the burning process?
4.2 Has fragmentation a bad impact on the throughput?
4.3 Is it possible to store the CD-image on an UMSDOS-filesystem?
4.4 Isn't there some way to get around the ISO-9660 limitations?
4.5 How to read the tracks from audio CDs?
4.6 How to probe for SCSI-devices after boot?
4.7 Is it possible to make a 1:1 copy of a data CD?
4.8 Can Linux read Joliet CD-ROMs?
4.9 How do I read/mount CD-ROMs with the CD-writer?
4.10 How to put even more data on the CD-R?
4.11 How to make bootable CD-ROMs?
4.12 How to make CD-ROMs writable somehow?
4.13 Is it possible to use several writers at once?
4.14 Which media is the best?
4.15 What about Solaris, *BSD, AIX, HP-UX, etc.?
4.16 Where to store the local configuration permanently?
4.17 How can the CD-info be retrieved?
4.18 What about re-writing
4.19 How to create a multi-session CD?

5. Troubleshooting

5.1 It doesn't work: under Linux
5.2 Error-message: No read access for 'dev=0,6,0'.
5.3 It doesn't work: under DOS and friends
5.4 SCSI errors during the burning phase

6. Credits

______________________________________________________________________

1. Introduction

Many people use Linux to burn CD-ROMs, because it is reliable and
easy. No bluescreens while burning and no headaches about getting the
right combination of hard- and software. It just works once properly
set up. The CD-writing HOWTO explains the setup, how to put data on
the media and gives some interesting applications kindly submitted by
the readers.

1.1. Copyright, license and terms of usage

Copyright Winfried Tr�mper 1996,1997,1998,1999. All rights reserved.

Redistribution and use, with or without modification, are permitted
provided that the name of the author may not be used to endorse or
promote products derived from this software without specific prior
written permission.

The author disclaims all warranties with regard to this document,
including all implied warranties of merchantability and fitness for a
certain purpose; in no event shall the author be liable for any
special, indirect or consequential damages or any damages whatsoever
resulting from loss of use, data or profits, whether in an action of
contract, negligence or other tortious action, arising out of or in
connection with the use of this document.

Short: read and use at your own risk. No money-back guarantee.

1.2. Suggested readings

The CD-R FAQ <http://www.fadden.com/cdrfaq/> is a general FAQ about
compact-disk recordables (CD-R), CD-writers and the required software.

As most CD-writers can be used to read CD-ROMs, too, you may want to
read the Linux CD-ROM HOWTO, the Linux SCSI HOWTO and the Linux Kernel
HOWTO.

1.3. Terminology ... lasers at maximum ... fire!

CD-ROM stands for Compact Disc Read Only Memory, a storage medium
utilizing an optical laser to sense microscopic pits on a silver
shimmering disk. The silver shimmering comes from an aluminized layer
which is the carrier. The pits represent the bits of the information
(in some way) and are so petite that some billions of them fit on the
disc. Thus a CD is a mass-storage medium.

The term CD-R is a short form of CD-ROM recordable and refers to a CD
that doesn't have those "microscopic pits" on its surface. Thus its
empty. Instead of the silver aluminium layer a CD-R has a special film
(colored) into which "microscopic pits" can be burned in. This is done
by giving the laser which normally only senses the pits a little bit
more power so he burns the pits. This action can only be taken once on
a CD-R, although you can leave out some areas for later writing,
creating a so called multi-session CD.

The CD-ROM rewritable (short: CD-RW) was developed to come around the
limitation of CD-R media. Here the laser can not even burn pits into
the media, but it can also melt the media back into its original
state. This is possible, because the laser does not really burn holes
into the media - you do not see a puff of smoke while burning and no
voice from above tells you "target destroyed". What the laser really
does is to trigger a phase change, thus the name "phase change
devices" for CD-RW-writers. An example for a very similar technique
used in daily life is the cleaning car (called Zamboni) in an ice-
hockey stadion: during the pauses of the game, the car drives over the
ice and fills the scratches in the ice (-> bits containing some sort
of information about the game) with melted splinter.

This HOWTO deals with the task of writing CD-Rs and CD-RWs. Welcome
on board, captain.

1.4. Supported CD-Writers

You can assume that all newer IDE/ATAPI- and SCSI-writers work under
Linux. Newer drives are mostly MMC-compliant and thus supported.
However, some people want to get a warm and fuzzy feeling by reading
the exakt model of their writer in some sort of compatibilty list and
that is the reason why I didn't threw the following out of the HOWTO:

Here is a comprehensive summary of drives reported to work with
cdrecord:

Acer: CDRW 6206A
BTC: BCE 621E (IDE)
Compro: CW-7502, CW-7502B
Creative: RW 4224E, MK 4211
Dysan: CRW-1622
Elite: Elite b444.41
Grundig: CDR 100 IPW
Guillemot: Maxi CD-R 4X/8X
HP: SureStore 4020i, SureStore 6020i,
C4324, C4325
CD-Writer+ 7100, CD-Writer+ 7200i, CD-Writer+ 7500e,
CD-Writer+ 8100i, CD-Writer+ 8110i,
Hi-Val: CDD 2242, CDD-3610,
JVC: XR-W2001, XR-W2010, XR-W2042, R-2626
Kodak: PCD 200, PCD 225, PCD 260, PCD 600
Matsushita: CW-7502
Memorex: CRW-620, CRW-1622, CRW-2224
Microboards: PlayWrite 2000, PlayWrite 4000RW, PlayWrite 4001RW
MicroNet: MasterCD Plus 4x4, MasterCD Plus 4x6
Mitsubishi: CDRW-226
Mitsumi: CR-2401-TS, CR-2600 TE, CR-2801 TE,
CR-4801 TE, CR-4802 TE
Nomai: 680.RW
OTI: CDRW 965
Olympus: CDS 615E, CDS 620E
Optima: DisKovery 650 CD-R
OTI: CDRW 965
Panasonic: CW-7502, CW-7582
Philips: CDD-521/10, CDD-522
CDD-2000, CDD-2600, CDD-3600, CDD-3610
Omniwriter 26, Omniwriter 26A
Plasmon: CDR 480, CDR 4220, RF-4100, RF-4102, CDR 4400
Plextor: CDR PX-24 CS, PX-412 C, PX-R412 C
PX-R810Ti, PleXwriter 412C
Procom: PCDR 4
Ricoh: RO-1420C+, MP 1420C, MP 6200S, MP 6201S, MP 7040A
Sanyo: CRD-R24S
Smart and
Friendly: CD-RW226, CD-R1002, CD-R1002/PRO, CD-R1004,
CD-R2004, CD-R2006 PLUS, CD-R2006 PRO,
CD-R4000, CD-R4006, CD-R4012
Sony: CDU 920S, CDU 924, CDU 926S, CDU-928E,
CDU 948S, CDRX 100E, CDRX 120E
Taiyo Yuden: EW-50
TEAC: CD-R50S, CD-R55S, CDR-55S, CDR-56S-400
Traxdata: CRW 2260, CDR 4120, CDR 4120 Pro, CDRW 4260,
Turtle Beach: 2040R
WPI (Wearnes): CDRW-622, CDR-632P
YAMAHA: CDR-100, CDR 102, CDR-200, CDR-200t, CDR-200tx
CDR-400, CDR-400c, CDR-400t, CDR-400tx, CDR-400Atx
CRW-2260, CRW-2260t,
CRW-4250tx, CRW-4260 t, CRW-4260 tx, CRW-4261,
CRW-4416 S

The detailed list of models which have been reported to work or not to
work under various Unix-like operating systems is available online
from <http://www.guug.de:8080/cgi-bin/winni/lsc.pl>.

If your hardware isn't supported you can still use Linux to create an
image of the CD. You may wish to do so because most DOS-software
cannot deal with RockRidge-Extensions. In a second step, you use DOS-
or Macintosh-software to write the image to the CD-R.

1.5. Supported "features"

There are two classes of utilities for writing CD-Rs: the hardware-
drivers and the data-formatters. The hardware drivers support the
following features:

Supported Feature cdwrite-2.1 cdrecord-1.6 cdrdao
----------------------------------------------------------
IDE/ATAPI no yes yes
Parallel Port no yes yes
CD-RW no yes yes
Audio CD yes yes yes
Data CD-ROM yes yes partial
Multisession partial yes no
TAO (Track at once) yes yes yes
DAO (Disk at once) no no yes

cdwrite is an old software only referenced for completeness. Please
use cdrecord instead, as it supports a wider range of hardware and has
significantly more features. The main purpose of cdrdao is to create
audio CDs without two seconds of silence between the tracks (writing
in disk-at-once mode).

The data-formatters organise the data on the media ("put a filesystem
on it").

Feature mkisofs mkhybrid
--------------------------------------------
ISO 9660 yes yes
RockRidge yes yes
El Torito yes yes
HFS no yes
Joliet yes yes
Multisession yes yes

The most obvious difference of the ISO 9660 filesystem compared to the
Extended-2 filesystem is, that you can't modify files once they are
written to the media. The limitations of the ISO-9660-filesystem are:

� only 8 levels of sub-directories allowed (counted from the top-
level directory of the CD) (use RockRidge Extensions to enlarge
this number)

� maximum length for filenames: 32 characters

� 650 MB capacity

RockRidge is an extension to allow longer filenames and a deeper
directory hierarchy for the ISO-9660 filesystem. These extensions are
not available when reading the CD-ROM under DOS or the Windows-family
of operating systems. When reading a CD-ROM with RockRidge extensions
under Linux, all the known properties of files like owner, group,
permissions, symbolic links appear.
El Torito can be used to produce bootable CD-ROMs. The BIOS of your PC
must support this feature, too. Roughly speaking, the first 1.44 Mbyte
of the CD-ROM contain a floppy-disk image supplied by you. This image
is treated like a floppy by the BIOS and booted from.

HFS lets a Macintosh read the CD-ROM as if it were an HFS volume (the
native filesystem for MacOS).

Joliet brings long filenames (among other things) to newer variants of
Windows (95, 98, NT). The author knows of no tool to have long
filenames under plain DOS or Windows 3.11.

Section 2.8 lists the availability of the mentioned software.

1.6. Mailinglists

If you want to join the development team (with the intention to
actively help them), send e-mail to [email protected]
and put the word subscribe in body of the message.

1.7. Availability

The newest version of this document is always available from
<http://www.guug.de/~winni/linux/>.

2. Setup the Linux-system for writing CD-ROMs

If you succeed setting up your hardware and the rest of your Linux-
system, the command cdrecord -scanbus shows you a list of devices
available for writing. The goal of this chapter is to guide you in
setting up your Linux-system, so that you finally end up seeing
something like:

shell> cdrecord -scanbus
Cdrecord release 1.7a1 Copyright (C) 1995-1998 J�rg Schilling
scsibus0:
0) 'Quantum ' 'XP34300 ' 'F76D' Disk
1) 'SEAGATE ' 'ST11200N ' '8334' Disk
2) *
3) 'TOSHIBA ' 'MK537FB/ ' '6258' Disk
4) 'WANGTEK ' '5150ES SCSI-36 ' 'ESB6' Removable Tape
5) 'EXABYTE ' 'EXB-8500-85QUE ' '0428' Removable Tape
6) 'TOSHIBA ' 'XM-3401TASUNSLCD' '3593' Removable CD-ROM
7) *
scsibus1:
100) 'Quantum ' 'XP31070W ' 'L912' Disk
101) *
102) *
103) 'TEAC ' 'CD-R55S ' '1.0H' Removable CD-ROM
104) 'MATSHITA' 'CD-R CW-7502 ' '4.02' Removable CD-ROM
105) *
106) 'YAMAHA ' 'CDR400t ' '1.0d' Removable CD-ROM
107) *

The example was provided by J�rg Schilling and shows a total of four
CD-writers. Please note that -scanbus also reports other devices, e.g.
regular CD-ROMs and harddisk drives. The last column gives the SCSI
description of the device, from which you cannot distinguish ordinary
CD-ROM drives from those with burning capability. But the product
identification often has hints about the feature in form of a R, -R or
-RW.

Don't worry about the keyword "scsibus". If you don't have one, you
just read the following about how to load the Linux kernel-module to
emulate a SCSI hostadaptor. Same is goes for owners of a writer
working over the parallel port. As ATAPI means "speak the SCSI
protocol over the IDE-bus", it is more or less straightforward to make
IDE/ATAPI-devices appear as if they were real SCSI-devices. But once
you access your writer as a SCSI-device with the CD-writing software,
you must also access your writer as a SCSI-device, when you use it as
a regular CD-ROM. Usally mounting of filesystems or playing audio CDs
will go through /dev/scd0 then.

2.1. Set up the Linux-kernel

The Linux-kernel can be equipped with drivers for various features.
You can compile the drivers into the kernel-image statically or you
can compile them as a module for on-demand loading. The last method is
preferred for drivers not essential for bringing your Linux-system
into life, because your kernel will be smaller and faster then.
However, some drivers are essential for the system to come up and you
can't compile them as a module. Example: if your system lives on a
IDE-harddisk, you must have the driver for IDE-harddisks in the kernel
- not as a module.

There are three different types of CD-writers: SCSI, IDE/ATAPI and
external writers for the parallel port. Table 4 shows how to configure
the Linux-kernel for those hardware types. The first column of the
table is the section of the kernel configuration menu, where you can
find the setting. The second column is the description of the feature
(taken from the kernel configuration menu, too). The third column
gives the name of the resulting module. The columns named SCSI, IDE
and PP contain the necessary options for the associated hardware (PP =
parallel port).

Sect. Description Module SCSI IDE PP
------------------------------------------------------------
BLOCK Enhanced IDE/MFM/RLL... Y
BLOCK IDE/ATAPI CDROM ide-cd M
BLOCK SCSI hostadaptor emulation ide-scsi M
BLOCK Loopback device loop M M M

PARIDE Parallel port IDE device paride Y/M
PARIDE Parallel port ATAPI CD-ROMs M
PARIDE Parallel port generic ATAPI M
PARIDE (select a low-level driver) Y

SCSI SCSI support scsi_mod Y/M Y/M
SCSI SCSI CD-ROM support sr_mod Y/M Y/M
SCSI Enable vendor-specific Y Y
SCSI SCSI generic support sg Y/M Y/M
SCSI (select a low-level driver) Y

FS ISO 9660 CDROM filesystem iso9660 Y Y Y
FS Microsoft Joliet cdrom... joliet M M M

Y stands for yes and means you should put the beast into the kernel.
M stands for module and means you should or must compile this feature
as a module. Y/M gives you the option to decide between both (order
indicates choices with less potential problems). Empty settings don't
need to be modified and not changing them increases the chance that
the resulting kernel will work for you (if it did before...).

The loopback device is an optional feature, which helps you to test
the image before writing it to the media. If you want to be able to
read CD-ROMs, you need support for the ISO 9660 filesystem. This
driver automatically includes RockRidge Extensions. If you want to
have MS Joliet cdrom extensions, compile them as a module and load
them. In any case, you need a low-level driver for your hardware.
Low-level refers to the driver, which interacts directly with the
hardware. For SCSI and the parallel port, there are a lot of low-
level drivers available.

Especially in environments, where SCSI- and ATAPI-devices are mixed,
you better build most things as modules. To make your life with
modules easier, you can add the following lines to /etc/conf.modules:

alias scd0 sr_mod # load sr_mod upon access of scd0
alias scsi_hostadapter ide-scsi # SCSI hostadaptor emulation
options ide-cd ignore=hdb # if /dev/hdb is your CD-writer

The aliases provide alternate names for the same module and are not
essential. The options provide a way to make options for module
loading permanent. To learn about different options for different
modules read on.

Description command
-------------------------------------------------
Show active drivers cat /proc/devices
List active modules cat /proc/modules
List available modules modprobe -l
Load a precompiled module modprobe
Remove a module modprobe -r

If you need a module not available on your system, you must recompile
and reinstall the kernel. Please read the Kernel-HOWTO for more
information upon this. The most recent information about handling of
kernel-modules can be read in the Module-HOWTO. If you have success in
building or finding the required modules, either add their names to
/etc/modules or let an automatic facility (kmod, kerneld) load them.
Consult the documentation of your Linux-distribution if you are
unsure.

If you are lucky, then just install a package called "Linux Kernel
source", which was shipped with your distribution. Afterwards issue
the following commands:

cd /usr/src/linux
make menuconfig # follow instructions and menu
make dep
make zImage # or "make bzImage"
# insert a floppy-disk before proceding
dd if=arch/i386/boot/zImage of=/dev/fd0
make modules
make modules_install

This will produce a bootable floppy disk. If you are really clueless
about this whole stuff, you better get help from a friend before you
completely mess up your system. Remember the kernel is the heart of
the system.

2.1.1. Special hints up to kernel version 2.2.9

Owners of ATAPI-CD-writers please head up: if your kernel detects your
writer as an ATAPI-device during system startup, you have no chance of
getting it to work as a CD-writer under Linux. Once the IDE/ATAPI-
driver grabs the device, the SCSI-driver can no longer do so. Please
recompile a kernel with the CD-ROM-stuff as a module like it is shown
in the table above.

With 2.2 and above, you can control the greediness of the ide-cd
driver with the parameter ignore=. The driver won't grab the specified
device, so it will be available when the SCSI-hostadapotr emulation is
activated. Example: use "modprobe ide-cd ignore=hdb", if your ATAPI-
writer is hdb and you want the ide-scsi-driver to treat hdb as a scsi-
device (usally sr0). There is no way to specify this on the kernel-
commandline (like in 2.0).

Up to kernel-version 2.2.9, don't enable CONFIG_SCSI_MULTI_LUN ('probe
for multiple luns') and ide-scsi support at the same time, there is
an ide-scsi bug that prevents this.

Some users reported conflicts with pre-compiled binaries and the
2.2-release. This is a problem of the Linux-kernel. Solutions:

� It may go away if you recompile cdrecord so that it adopts to the
actual values in linux/include/scsi/sg.h. These values must be the
values of the runing kernel due to the dumb sg user interface.

� It may be caused by a loabdable sg driver which cannot get enough
memory that is suitable for DMA (Kernel releases up to 2.2.5).

2.1.2. Special hints with kernel version 2.2.10 and later

It was reported to me, that 2.2.10 provides you with both, the option
from the 2.0-series, and the option from the series before 2.2.9.
Personally the author prefers the more positive strategie of telling
the kernel which device should be managed by the ide-scsi driver like
it is done in 2.0.37.

2.1.3. Special hints for the 2.0-series

Kernels prior to 2.0.31 have several bugs and can't read the last file
on a CD-ROM. Please upgrade to 2.0.37. For this version, the
misleading feature name "SCSI emulation" has been renamed into "SCSI
hostadaptor emulation", which is more accurate.

With 2.0.36 and above, you can select which driver (IDE or SCSI) to
use for which ATAPI-device. To be more precise, you can add the
feature "SCSI emulation" to your kernel and activate the emulation for
specific devices on the kernel commandline (before/while booting). For
example, if your CD-writer has the devicefile /dev/hdb, then add the
statement hdb=ide-scsi. Compared to the 2.2 series, this is a more
positive way of thinking.

image=/boot/zImage-2.0.37
label=Linux
read-only
append="hdb=ide-scsi"

linux "Linux 2.0.37" {
image=/boot/zImage-2.0.37
cmdline= root=/dev/hda5 readonly hdb=ide-scsi
}

Please note that this is different from 2.2, where you can only pass
the options while loading the modules.

2.2. Hardware and devicefiles

After you have installed all necessary drivers, boot the new kernel.
It should have all the features you need for the following sections.

[Users of devfs need not to care about the following steps of manually
setting up device files. If you use devfs, everything will
automacigally appear on the right place.]

Goto the /dev-directory and check for loopback devices. Its not
critical if you don't have those devices, but its convenient if you do
(see 3.5). If you already have them, the ls-command should show
loop0-loop7:

shell> cd /dev
shell> ls loop*
loop0 loop1 loop2 loop3 loop4 loop5 loop6 loop7

If you don't have those device-files, then create them by using the
/dev/MAKEDEV-script:

shell> cd /dev/
shell> modprobe loop # load the module called "loop"
shell> ./MAKEDEV loop

The last command only succeeds if you have the loop-module in your
kernel. What you read so far about handling of loop-devicefiles can be
applied to all other devicefiles (sg*, pg*, hd*, ...) and is not
explicitely mentioned in the following.

In case your Linux-distribution misses the script /dev/MAKEDEV, then
create the devices manually with this loop:

for i in 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7
do
mknod /dev/loop$i c 7 $i
done

2.2.1. IDE/ATAPI CD-writers

ATAPI means "SCSI-commands over the IDE-bus". In other words, your
IDE/ATAPI-drives speak the SCSI-protocol (with some limitations) and
thus can act as if they were SCSI-drives.

Under Linux you can make your IDE-writer appear as a SCSI-devices
using the kernel-features "SCSI (hostadaptor) emulation". So activate
the associated kernel module ide-scsi like described above and proceed
as if you had a SCSI-writer.

2.2.2. SCSI CD-Writers

Please make sure that your writer is recognized by the BIOS of your
computer. It makes no sense to proceed if your computer does not
accept the hardware (the fact that it doesn't spit it out should not
be interpreted as a sign of confirmation; a message on the screen is
required).

If you plan to connect your SCSI-drive to your parallel port (not to
confuse with the IDE-drives for the parallel port), you need a special
active cable and a special kernel-driver. Read read
<http://www.torque.net/parport/parscsi.html> to learn more about this
option.

2.2.2.1. Generic SCSI devices

The devicefiles /dev/sd* and /dev/sr* for accessing SCSI harddisks and
SCSI CD-ROM drives are limited to block-oriented data transfer. This
makes them so fast and idealy suited for data storage. Driving the
laser of a CD-writer is a more complicated task and requires more than
block-oriented data transfer. To keep the sd* and sr* devices clean
and fast, a new type of SCSI-devices was introduced, the so called
generic SCSI-devices. As everthing can be done to SCSI-hardware
through the generic devices they are not fixed to a certain purpose -
therefore the name generic.
As true for other devices, you should find them in the /dev directory
(by convention):

shell> cd /dev
shell> ls sg*
sg0 sg1 sg2 sg3 sg4 sg5 sg6 sg7

If you don't have those device-files then create them by using the
/dev/MAKEDEV-script:

shell> cd /dev/
shell> ./MAKEDEV sg

If your Linux-distribution misses the script /dev/MAKEDEV, then create
the devices manually with this loop:

for i in 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7
do
mknod /dev/sg$i c 21 $i
done

2.2.3. CD-Writers for the parallel port

I have no clue about this, sorry. Please read
<http://www.torque.net/parport/paride.html> or your local file
/usr/src/linux/Documentation/paride.txt.

2.3. Get the user-software for burning CD-Rs

A more detailed survey of tools related to produce CD-ROMs is
available from
<http://www.fokus.gmd.de/research/cc/glone/employees/joerg.schilling/private/cdb.html>.

2.3.1. Command line utilities

One of the following packages are required to generate images of CD-Rs
(only required for data CD-ROMs):

<ftp://tsx-11.mit.edu/pub/linux/packages/mkisofs/> (mkisofs)

<ftp://ftp.ge.ucl.ac.uk/pub/mkhfs> (mkhybrid)

To write images to the CD-R, you need one of the following software
packages:

<ftp://ftp.fokus.gmd.de/pub/unix/cdrecord/> (cdrecord)

<http://www.ping.de/sites/daneb/cdrdao.html> (cdrdao)

Don't trust the man-page of (old) mkisofs which states you need
version 1.5 of cdwrite. Just use cdrecord and you are fine. Please
note that use the mkisofs shipped with cdrecord has a few extensions
(referenced in the documentation of cdrecord).

2.3.2. Graphical user interfaces (optional)

Front-ends are really front-ends under Linux. That means, you still
have to install the command-line utilities, but you access them in a
better looking manner.

X-CD-Roast is a program-package dedicated to easy CD creation under
Linux. It combines command line tools like cdrecord and mkisofs into a
nice graphical user interface.

<http://www.fh-muenchen.de/home/ze/rz/services/pro�
jects/xcdroast/e_overview.html>

BurnIT is a JAVA front-end to cdrecord, mksiofs and cdda2wav-0.95
making it a complete package for burning CD's on the Unix platform.
Its available from

<http://sunsite.auc.dk/BurnIT/>

XDaodio

This is a graphical frontend for cdrdao. Its main purpose is to make
1:1-copies of audio CDs.

<http://www.lrz-muenchen.de/~MarkusTschan/>

3. Burning CD-Rs

"If to smoke you turn I shall not cease to fiddle while you
burn." (Roman emperor Nero about burning his own classic-
CDs, AD64. He misunderstood it completely.)

Writing CD-ROMs consists of two steps under Linux:

� packaging the desired data (files, music or both) into files with
special formats
� writing the data from the files to the CD-R with the utility
cdrecord

This chapter describes the steps for data- and audio-CDs in greater
detail.

3.1. Writing CD-ROMs (pure data)

t Note that collecting the software usually takes up longer than one
expects. Consider that missing files cannot be added once the CD is
written and fixated.

Also keep in mind that a certain amount of the free space of a CD is
used for storing the information of the ISO-9660-filesystem (usually a
few MB). 620 MB data will always fit on a 650 MB CD-R.

3.1.1. Creating an image of the later CD-ROM

Before any storage medium (e.g. floppy disk, harddisk or CD) can be
used, it must get a filesystem (DOS speak: get formatted). The
filesystem is responsible for organizing and incorporating the files
that should be stored on the medium.

The usal utilities for creating filesystems on harddisk partitions
write an empty filesystem onto them, which is then mounted and filled
with files by the user as he needs it. A writable CD is only writable
once so if we would write an empty filesystem to it, it would get
formated - but remain completely empty forever. This is also true for
rewritable media, as you cannot change arbritary sectors, but you must
erase their whole content.

So what we need is a tool that creates the filesystem while copying
the files to the CD. This tool is called mkisofs. A sample usage
looks as follows:

mkisofs -r -o cd_image private_collection/
`---------' `-----------------'
| |
write output to take directory as input

The option '-r' sets the permissions of all files to be public
readable on the CD and enables Rock Ridge extensions. That is what one
usually wants and use of this option is recommended until you know
what you're doing (hint: without '-r' the mount-point gets the
permissions of private_collection!).

mkisofs will try to map all filenames to the 8.3-format used by DOS to
ensure highest possible compatibility. In case of naming conflicts
(different files have the same 8.3-name), numbers are used in the
filenames and information about the chosen filename is printed via
STDERR (usually the screen). Don't panic: Under Linux you will never
see these 8.3 filenames because Linux makes use of the Rock Ridge
extensions which contain the original file-information (permissions,
filename, etc.).

Now you may wonder why the output of mkisofs is not directly sent to
the writer-device. This has two reasons:
� mkisofs knows nothing about driving CD-writers.

� You may want to test the image before burning it.

� On slow machines it would not be reliable (see section 4.).

The method to write a CD-R in one go will be described below.

One also could think of creating an extra partition and writing the
image to that partition instead to a file. I vote against such a
strategy because if you write to the wrong partition (due to a typo),
you can lose your complete Linux-system (read: that happened to
me...). Furthermore, its a waste of disk-space because the CD-image
is temporary data that can be deleted after writing the CD. However,
using raw partitions saves you the time for deleting files of 650 MB
size. (If you have enough disk-space, an extra partition may save you
the time of deleting the image.)

3.1.2. Test the CD-image

Linux has the ability to mount files as if they were disk-partitions.
This feature is useful to check that the directory layout and file
access permissions of the CD-image matches your wishes. Although media
is very cheap today, the writing process is still time-consuming, and
you may at least want to save your time by doing a quick test.

To mount the file cd_image created above on the directory /cdrom, give
the command

mount -t iso9660 -o ro,loop=/dev/loop0 cd_image /cdrom

Now you can inspect the files under /cdrom - they appear exactly as
they were on a real CD. To umount the CD-image, just say umount
/cdrom. (Warning: On Linux-kernels prior to 2.0.31 the last file on
/cdrom may not be fully readable. Please use more recent kernels like
2.0.36. The option -pad for cdrecord applies to audio-CDs only and the
optional option -pad for mkisofs requires a patch, which is as much
work to apply than to upgrade to a bug-free Linux-kernel.)

Note:

some ancient versions of mount are not able to deal with
loopback-devices. If you have such an old version of mount
it is a hint to upgrade your Linux-system.

Several people already suggested to put information about
how to get the newest mount-utilities into this HOWTO. I
always refuse this. If your Linux-Distribution ships with
an ancient mount: report it as a bug. If your Linux-
Distribution is not easily upgradable: report it as a bug.

If I had included all the information that is necessary to
work around bugs in bad designed Linux-Distributions, this
HOWTO would be a lot bigger and harder to read.

3.1.3. Write the CD-image to a CD

Not much more left to do. If you didn't already tried, its a good time
for the command

cdrecord -scanbus

This will tell you to which SCSI-device your CD-writer is attached to.
All other methods of guessing the information printed so nicely by
cdrecord have been removed from the HOWTO (especially the somewhat
dangerous naming scheme for generic SCSI devices).

Before showing you the last command, let me warn you that CD-writers
want to be fed with a constant stream of data because they have only
small data-buffers. So the process of writing the CD-image to the CD
must not be interupted or a corrupt CD will be the result. Its easy to
interrupt the data-stream by deleting a very large file. Example: if
you delete a previous image of 650 Mbyte size, the kernel must update
information about 650.000 blocks on the harddisk (assuming you have a
blocksize of 1 Kbyte for your filesystem). That takes some time and is
very likely to slow down disk-activity long enough for the data stream
to pause a few seconds. However, reading mail, browsing the web or
even compiling a kernel generally do not affect the writing process on
modern machines.

Please note that no writer can re-position its laser and can't
continue at the original spot on the CD when it gets disturbed.
Therefore any strong vibrations or other mechanical shocks will
probably destroy the CD you are writing.

When you are mentally prepared, dress up in a black robe, multiply the
SCSI-id of the CD-writer with its SCSI-revision and light as many
candles, speak two verses of the ASR-FAQ (newsgroup
alt.sysadmin.recovery) and finally type:

shell> SCSI_BUS=0 # taken from listing 1 "scsibus0:"
shell> SCSI_ID=6 # taken from listing 1 "TOSHIBA XM-3401"
shell> SCSI_LUN=0
shell> cdrecord -v speed=2 dev=$SCSI_BUS,$SCSI_ID,$SCSI_LUN \
-data cd_image

# same as above, but shorter:
shell> cdrecord -v speed=2 dev=0,6,0 -data cd_image

For better readability, the coordinates of the writer are stored in
three environment variables with speaking names: SCSI_BUS, SCSI_ID,
SCSI_LUN. The option -data is non-mandatory but is given to make the
commandline comparable to the one used for writing audio-CDs.

If you use cdrecord to overwrite a CD-RW, you must add the option
"blank=..." to erase the old content. Please read the man-page to
learn more about the various methods to blank the CD-RW.

In times where everybody except me owns a 400 Mhz machine, people feed
the output of mkisofs directly into cdrecord:

shell> IMG_SIZE=`mkisofs -R -q -print-size private_collection/ 2>&1 \
| sed -e "s/.* = //"`
shell> echo $IMG_SIZE
shell> [ "0$IMG_SIZE" -ne 0 ] && mkisofs -r private_collection/ \
|cdrecord speed=2 dev=0,6,0
tsize=${IMG_SIZE}s -data -
# don't forget the s --^ ^-- read data from STDIN

The first command is an empty run to determine the size of the image
(you need the mkisofs from the cdrecord-distribution for this to
work). Maybe your writer does not need to know the size of the image
to be written, so you can leave this out. The printed sized must be
passed as a tsize-parameter to cdrecord (its stored in the enviroment
variable IMG_SIZE). The second command is a sequence of mkisofs and
cdrecord, coupled via a pipe.

3.2. Writing audio CDs

To write audio-CDs is very similar compared to the steps described
above. The two main differences are, that the audio-CD consists of
audio-tracks, which are organized in separate images. So if you want
to have ten tracks on your CD, you have to make ten images. The other
differnce is, that the format of the images is not ISO-9660 (or
whatever filesystem you prefer), but it is "16 bit stereo samples in
PCM coding at 44100 samples/second (44.1 kHz)".

One utility to convert your soundfiles into the required format is
sox. Its usage is straightforward:

shell> sox killing-my-software.wav killing-my-software.cdr

This command would convert the song killing-my-software from the WAV-
format into the CDR-audio-format. See the man-page for sox for more
details about formats and filename-extensions sox recognizes. Because
the conversion takes up much diskspace, it was made a built-in feature
of cdrecord for the formats WAV and AU. So as long as your soundfiles
have the extensions .wav or .au (and the samplerate "stereo, 16 bit,
44.1 kHz"), you can use them as images without manual conversion.

Cdrecord writes the images as audio-tracks, if the option -audio is
specified. The other options are identical to those used for writing
data-CDs (unless you have very special requirements). Three examples
all doing the same, but reading the tracks from different soundfile-
formats:

shell> cdrecord -v speed=2 dev=0,6,0 -audio track1.cdr track2.cdr...
shell> cdrecord -v speed=2 dev=0,6,0 -audio track1.wav track2.wav...
shell> cdrecord -v speed=2 dev=0,6,0 -audio track1.au track2.au...

A special case are the MPEG3-files, which can be converted to the
required format with the command "mpg123 -s track1.mp3 > track1.cdr".
(Warning: this creates a file with a byte order, which needs to be
reversed by using the option -swab to cdrecord.) The other direction
can be done with "8hz-mp3" for WAV-files (extract the track with
cdda2wav from the audio CD and encode it into MP3 with 8hz-mp3). To
create a CD-R from a whole bunch of MP3-files, you can use the
following command sequence:

for I in *.mp3
do
mpg123 -s $I | cdrecord -audio -pad -swab -nofix -
done
cdrecord -fix

Depending on the speed of your machine, you may want to slow down
writing to "speed=1" (cdrecord-Option). If you use "speed=4", your
machine must be able to play the MP3-file at quadruple speed. mpg123
consumes much CPU-time! If you are in doubt, try an empty run with
-dummy (keeps the laser switched off). Currently you will produce an
audio-CD, which has a 2 seconds pause between two audio tracks.

3.2.1. DAO

If you want to get rid of the pauses between the audio tracks, you
have to use disk-at-once (DAO) recording in opposite to the
(individual) track-at-once (TAO) recording described above. Support
for DAO is currently most advanced in cdrdao. Please see it's homepage
for details.

Using the parameter read-cd, you are even able to produce 1:1 copies
of audio CDs.

3.3. Mixed mode CD-ROMs

Not much left to say. Just indicate the type of the (subsequent)
images with the options -data and -audio. Example:

cdrecord -v dev=0,6,0 -data cd_image -audio track*.cdr

4. Dear Winfried,...

In other words, this is the section usally known as "frequently asked
questions with answers". If you have a problem with your partner, kids
or dog, just send it in, as long as it is related to writing CD-Rs or
is otherwise entertaining.

4.1. How sensitive is the burning process?

Test it. Use the option -dummy to do an empty run of cdrecord. Do
everything you would do otherwise and watch if the burning process
survives.

If you feed cdrecord directly from mkisofs, then disk intensive
processes such as updating the locate-database lower the maximum flow-
rate and may corrupt the CD. You better check such processes are not
started via cron, at or anacron while you burn CD-Rs.

4.2. Has fragmentation a bad impact on the throughput?

Fragmentation is usually so low that its impact isn't noticed.
However, you can easily construct pathological cases of fragmentation,
which lower the throughput of your harddisks under 100 kbyte/second.
So don't do that. :-)

Yes, files on a harddisk get fragmented over the years. The faster,
the fuller the filesystem is. Always leave 10% or 20% free space, and
you should run fine with respect to writing CD-Rs.

If you're uncertain then look at the messages printed while booting,
the percentage of fragmentation is reported while checking the
filesystems. You can check for this value with the very dangerous
command

shell> e2fsck -n /dev/sda5 # '-n' is important!
[stuff deleted - ignore any errors]
/dev/sda5: 73/12288 files (12.3% non-contiguous)

In this example the fragmentation seems to be very high - but there
are only 73 very small files on this filesystem (used as /tmp) so the
value is _not_ alarming.

There is an experimental utility called e2defrag to defragment
extended-2 filesystems. The current version does not work reliable
enough yet, to use it even for private environments. If you really
want to defragment your filesystem, make a backup copy (better: two
copies), practise restoring the data, then create a new filesystem
(will destroy the old) and restore the data. In a few words, this is
currently the safest technique.

4.3. Is it possible to store the CD-image on an UMSDOS-filesystem?

Yes. The only filesystem that isn't reliable and fast enough for
writing CD-ROMs from is the network filesystem (NFS).

I used UMSDOS myself to share the disk-space between Linux and DOS/Win
on a PC (486/66) dedicated for writing CD-ROMs.

4.4. Isn't there some way to get around the ISO-9660 limitations?

Yes. You can put any filesystem you like on the CD. But other
operating systems than Linux won't be able to deal with this CD.

Here goes the recipe:

� Create an empty file of 650MB size.

dd if=/dev/zero of="empty_file" bs=1024k count=650

� Create an extended-2 filesystem on this file

shell> /sbin/mke2fs -b 2048 empty_file
empty_file is not a block special device.
Proceed anyway? (y,n) y

� Mount this empty file through the loopback-devices

mount -t ext2 -o loop=/dev/loop1 empty_file /mnt

� Copy files to /mnt and umount it afterwards.

� Use cdrecord on empty_file (which is no longer empty) as if it were
an ISO-9660-image.

If you want to make an entry in /etc/fstab for such a CD, disable the
checking of it, e.g.:

/dev/cdrom /cdrom ext2 defaults,ro 0 0

The first 0 means "don't include in dumps", the second (=important)
one means "don't check for errors on startup" (fsck will fail to check
the CD for errors).

4.5. How to read the tracks from audio CDs?

There are several software packages available. The newest one is
"cdpranoia" and can be downloaded from

<http://www.mit.edu/afs/sipb/user/xiphmont/cdpara�
noia/index.html>

Or you want to try the combination of "cdda2wav" and "sox", available
from sunsite and its mirrors:
<ftp://sun�
site.unc.edu/pub/Linux/apps/sound/cdrom/cdda2wav0.71.src.tar.gz>

<ftp://sunsite.unc.edu/pub/Linux/apps/sound/convert/sox-11gamma-
cb3.tar.gz>

cdda2wav enables you to get a specific interval (or a whole track)
from your audio CD and converts it into a .wav-file. sox converts the
wav-files back into the (audio-CD) cdda-format so it can be written to
the CD-R using cdrecord. You don't necessarily need sox if you use a
recent version of cdrecord, because it has built-in support for .au
and .wav files.

4.6. How to probe for SCSI-devices after boot?

The file drivers/scsi/scsi.c contains the information

/*
* Usage: echo "scsi add-single-device 0 1 2 3" >/proc/scsi/scsi
* with "0 1 2 3" replaced by your "Host Channel Id Lun".
* Consider this feature BETA.
* CAUTION: This is not for hotplugging your peripherals. As
* SCSI was not designed for this you could damage your
* hardware !
* However perhaps it is legal to switch on an
* already connected device. It is perhaps not
* guaranteed this device doesn't corrupt an ongoing data transfer.
*/

Please note that this should only be used if your add SCSI-devices at
the end of the chain. Inserting new SCSI-devices into an existing
chain disturbs the naming of devices (directory /dev) and may destroy
the complete content of your harddisk.

4.7. Is it possible to make a 1:1 copy of a data CD?

Yes. But you should be aware of the fact that any errors while reading
the original (due to dust or scratches) will result in a defective
copy.

First case: you have a CD-writer and a separate CD-ROM drive. By
issuing the command

cdrecord -v dev=0,6,0 speed=2 -isosize /dev/scd0

you read the data stream from the CD-ROM drive attached as /dev/scd0
and write it directly to the CD-writer.

Second case: you don't have a separate CD-ROM drive. In this case you
have to use the CD-writer to read out the CD-ROM first:

dd if=/dev/scd0 of=cdimage

If you are running a recent version of cdrecord, then use the tool
"readcd" (found under misc/). Both commands are equivalent to the
result of mkisofs, so you should procede as described in chapter 3.
Please note that this method will fail on audio CDs! You have to use
cdrdao or cdda2wav on audio CDs.

4.8. Can Linux read Joliet CD-ROMs?

Yes. Newer Kernels (2.0.36 and the upcoming 2.2) have built-in support
for the joliet format. Remember you have to use both options in your
/etc/fstab: the keywords iso9660 and joliet (later is really an
extension). For more details, see <http://www-
plateau.cs.berkeley.edu/people/chaffee/joliet.html>.

4.9. How do I read/mount CD-ROMs with the CD-writer?

Just as you do with regular CD-ROM drives. No tricks at all. Note that
you have to use the scd-devices (SCSI CD-ROM) to mount CD-ROMs for
reading, even if you have an ATAPI CD-ROM (remember you configured
your ATAPI-devices to act like SCSI). Example-entry for /etc/fstab:

/dev/scd0 /cdrom iso9660 ro,user,noauto 0 0

4.10. How to put even more data on the CD-R?

Use bzip2 instead of any other compressor like gzip or pkzip. It will
save you up to 30% of disk-space for larger (>100kb) files. You can
download it from

<http://www.muraroa.demon.co.uk/>

Instead of writing a true audio-CD, you can optionally convert your
wav-audio-files into mp3-audio-files and store them on a ISO-9660
filesystem as regular files. Usually MPEG III give you a compression
of 1:10. Of course, most CD-players are not able to read files... this
is the drawback. On the other hand, why not running the music for your
next party from harddisk? 18 Gbyte are enough for 3000-4000 titles.
:-)

A software MPEG III-encoder is available from

<http://www.stud.ifi.uio.no/~larsi/other/8hz-
mp3-cheng.tar.gz>

A MPEG III-player is available from

<http://homepages.uni-tuebingen.de/stu�
dent/michael.hipp/mpg123/>

For recorded speech, you may want to try to reduce its size using
shorten or "GSM lossy speech compression":

<ftp://svr-ftp.eng.cam.ac.uk/pub/comp.speech/>

<http://kbs.cs.tu-berlin.de/~jutta/toast.html>

4.11. How to make bootable CD-ROMs?

You must have an 1.44 MB bootable floppy-disk. Create an exact image
of this floppy-disk by issuing the command

dd if=/dev/fd0 of=boot.img bs=18k

Place this floppy-image into the directory holding the collection of
your files (or into a subdirectory of it, just as you like). Tell
mkisofs about this file with the option '-b' and also use '-c'. For
details read the file README.eltorito in the mkisofs-distribution.

An interesting application for a custom bootable CD is as a virus-safe
DOS- or Windows-system. It saves you the money for the harddisks (if
you have a network and use samba to put the user-data on a
fileserver). However, this is purely theoretical as nobody reported an
actual recipe to me.

Some details about the bootable RedHat CD-ROM is available from
<http://www.channel1.com/users/rodsmith/rhjol-technical.html>.

4.12. How to make CD-ROMs writable somehow?

There is an overlay-filesystem available for Linux, which is mounted
over the CD-ROM and intercepts all writing operations. New and
modified files are stored elsewhere, but for the user it looks like
the CD-ROM is modified. For more information, see
<http://home.att.net/~artnaseef/ovlfs/ovlfs.html>.

If that is not enough for your needs: wait for the UDF-filesystem to
be supported by Linux or help developing it (see
<http://trylinux.com/projects/udf/>.

4.13. Is it possible to use several writers at once?

Yes. However, it has been only tested with two writers yet. You need
either a recent version of the Linux kernel (2.2.10 as of writing) or
a a kernel patch for more buffers in the SCSI-generic driver (
<ftp://ftp.fokus.gmd.de/pub/unix/cdrecord/alpha>; works up to 2.2.5).
4.14. Which media is the best?

The german computer magazine "c't" had a list of tips regarding the
blank CD-Rs in their november 1996 issue:

� "No-name" discs are generally not of highest quality and should
better not be used.

� If a recordable CD is defective, this is likely to apply to the
whole batch (if you bought more than one at a time); maybe you are
lucky and can at least use the first 500MB of such CD-Rs ...

� Don't touch the CD-Rs at their shimmering side before writing.

4.15. What about Solaris, *BSD, AIX, HP-UX, etc.?

Only chapter 2 is Linux-specific. You can apply chapter 3 and 4 even
if you run another family of operating systems than Linux. Please see
the files README.NetBSD, README.aix, README.hpux, README.next,
README.solaris, README.sunos, README.vms or README.xxxBSD from the
cdrecord-distribution.

4.16. Where to store the local configuration permanently?

You have two options. Either you use the built-in configuration file
for cdrecord, or you use a shell-wrapper like the one shown below.
This shell-script reads a configuration file, which lists the options
and parameters for cdrecord line by line. The names are exactly the
same as on the commandline, but without the leading -. Comments are
allowed. Example:

# be verbose
v
# set the speed of the writer
speed=2
# the device-coordinates in the form BUS,ID,LUN
dev=0,6,0

The configuration files for the wrapper belong into /etc/cdrecord and
must be referenced on the commandline. Example: if you want to refer
to the configuration /etc/cdrecord/mywriter.cfg, then you can issue
the command "cdrecord.sh mywriter.cfg -audio track1...". Everthing
after mywrite.cfg is passed to cdrecord.

#! /bin/bash

CFGDIR="/etc/cdrecord"

CFG="$1"
shift
ARGS_LEFT="$@"

if [ ! -f "$CFGDIR/$CFG" ]
then
echo "Configuration file $CFGDIR/$CFG not found. Exiting."
exit 1
fi

while read LINE
do
case $LINE in
\#*|"") continue;;
esac
old_IFS="$IFS"
IFS="$IFS="
set -- $LINE
IFS="$old_IFS"
O_NAME="$1"
O_VALUE=""
while shift
do
case $1 in
"") continue;;
esac
O_VALUE="$1"
done

if [ -z "$O_VALUE" ]
then
O_CDRECORD="$O_CDRECORD -$O_NAME "
continue
fi
O_CDRECORD="$O_CDRECORD $O_NAME=$O_VALUE "

done < "$CFGDIR/$CFG"

set -x #DEBUG
exec cdrecord $O_CDRECORD $ARGS_LEFT
echo "Execution of cdrecord failed."

4.17. How can the CD-info be retrieved?

Somewhere behind the first 32 k on the CD, a block with information
about the CD is located. You can extract the information with the
following shell-script:

#! /bin/bash

RD=/dev/cdrom
for i in 32768,7 32776,32 32808,32 32958,128 33086,128 33214,128 \
33342,128 33470,32 33581,16 33598,16 33615,16 33632,16
do
old_IFS="$IFS"
IFS=","
set -- $i
IFS="$old_IFS"
OFFSET=$1
LENGTH=$2
echo "*`dd if=$RD bs=1 skip=$OFFSET count=$LENGTH 2> /dev/null`#"
done

4.18. What about re-writing

When overwriting CD-RW media, specify the parameter blank=fast to
cdrecord. That's all. See the man-page of cdrecord for details about
this parameter.

4.19. How to create a multi-session CD?

First of all, the image for a multi-session CD must be formatted using
the ISO-9660-filesystem using RockRidge-Extensions. And you must use
the option -multi for cdrecord as long as you want to add further
sessions. So at least for the first session, you must use -multi.

The images for the second and subsequent sessions are a little bit
more complicated to generate. Mkisofs must know where the free space
on the CD-R begins. That information can be gathered by using the
option -msinfo on cdrecord (see example below).

shell> NEXT_TRACK=`cdrecord -msinfo dev=0,6,0`
shell> echo $NEXT_TRACK
shell> mkisofs -R -o cd_image2 -C $NEXT_TRACK -M /dev/scd5
private_collection/ \

For more information, please read the file README.multi, which is
distributed with cdrecord.

5. Troubleshooting

Always remember, that you can still use corrupt CD-ROMs as coasters.
:-)

5.1. It doesn't work: under Linux

Please check first, that the writer works under the software it is
shipped with (=under another operating system). Concretely:

� Does the controller recognize the writer as a SCSI device?

� Does the driver software recognize the writer?

� Is it possible to make a CD using the accompanied software?

If "it doesn't even work" with the accompanied software you have a
hardware conflict or defective hardware. If it works and you use
loadlin to boot Linux, then that is your problem. Loadlin makes a
warm-boot with most of the hardware already initialized and that can
confuse the Linux-kernel.

5.2. Error-message: No read access for 'dev=0,6,0'.

Under Linux, some versions of the C-library are incompatible (buggy),
so that an application linked against one version will not work with
another. An example for an error triggered by pre-compiled binaries is
the following:

[root@Blue /dev]# cdrecord -eject dev=0,6,0
cdrecord: No such file or directory. No read access for 'dev=0,6,0'.

5.3. It doesn't work: under DOS and friends

Try to use Linux. Installation and configuration of SCSI-drivers for
DOS is the hell. Linux is too complicated? Ha!

5.4. SCSI errors during the burning phase

Most likely those errors are caused by

� missing dis-/reconnect feature on the SCSI bus

� insufficiently cooled hardware

� defective hardware (should be detected by 5.1.)

Under various circumstances SCSI devices dis- and reconnect themselves
(electronically) from the SCSI bus. If this feature is not available
(check controller and kernel parameters) some writers run into trouble
during burning or fixating the CD-R.

Especially the NCR 53c7,8xx SCSI driver has the feature disabled by
default, so you might want to check it first:

NCR53c7,8xx SCSI support [N/y/m/?] y
always negotiate synchronous transfers [N/y/?] (NEW) n
allow FAST-SCSI [10MHz] [N/y/?] (NEW) y
allow DISCONNECT [N/y/?] (NEW) y

6. Credits

Many thanks go to the readers of this HOWTO, who contributed actively
to its contents. As I don't have access to a cd-writer myself, reports
about real-live setups and experience have always been of great value
to me.

Doug Alcorn <[email protected]>
helped to improve the handling of newer kernels

Kalle Andersson <[email protected]>
Howto write audio-cds directly from mp3.

Alan Brown <[email protected]>

Rick Cochran <[email protected]>
hint about dis-/reconnect disabled by default in the ncr driver

Robert Doolittle <[email protected]>
good arguments for dropping cdwrite from the HOWTO

Markus Dickebohm <[email protected]>

Jos van Geffen <[email protected]>
noted the problem in 4.9.

Bernhard Gubanka <[email protected]>
noticed the need of a recent version of mount to utilize the
loopback device

Stephen Harris <[email protected]>
contributed hint about writing audio-CDs

Janne Himanka <[email protected]>
pointer to kernel patch to read Joliet CD-ROMs

Stephan Noy <[email protected]>
information and experience about writing audio-CDs

Don H. Olive <[email protected]>
URL of the mkhybrid tool

Jesper Pedersen <[email protected]>

Pierre Pfister <[email protected]>
helped to develop the recipe on 1:1 copies.

Daniel A. Quist <[email protected]>
information about IDE-CD-R and newer kernel versions

[email protected]
Reported problem with pre-initialized writers when booting via
loadlin.

Dale Scheetz <[email protected]>

Joerg Schilling <[email protected]>
information about cdrecord

Martin Schulze <[email protected]>
gave information about the cdwrite-mailinglist

Gerald C Snyder <[email protected]>
tested writing of an ext2 CD-ROM (see 4.4)

Art Stone <[email protected]>
had the idea to put non-ISO-9660 filesystems on a CD

The Sheepy One <[email protected]>
suggested using defective CD-ROMs as coasters for drinks

Erwin Zoer <[email protected]>

Futhermore, I would like to thank the following people for reporting
spelling mistakes: Bartosz Maruszewski
<[email protected]>, Ian Stirling <[email protected]>, Brian
H. Toby.

End of the Linux CD-Writing HOWTO. (You can stop reading here.)