GROWISOFS

NAME

SYNOPSIS

DESCRIPTION

OPTIONS

-Z /dev/dvd

Burn an initial session to the selected device. A special form of this option is recognized to support burning of pre-mastered images. See EXAMPLES section for further details.

-M /dev/dvd

Merge a new session to an existing one.

-version

Print version information and invoke mkisofs, also with -version option.

-dvd-compat

Provide maximum media compatibility with DVD-ROM/-Video. In write-once context (DVD+R and DVD-R) this results in unappendable recording (closed disk). In DVD+RW context it instructs the logical unit to explicitly burn [otherwise optional] lead-out.

-dry-run

At dry-run growisofs performs all the steps till, but not including the first write operation. Most notably check for "overburn" condition is performed, which implies that mkisofs is invoked and terminated prematurely.

-overburn

Normally DVD media can accommodate up to approximately 4.700.000.000 bytes (in marketing speech 4.7GB). In other words a DVD can contain about 4.377 GiB or 4482 MiB. Growisofs won't start without this option, if "overburn" condition appears to be unavoidable.

-speed=N

An option to control recording velocity. Most commonly you'll use -speed=1 with "no-name" media, if default speed settings messes up the media. Keep in mind that N essentially denotes speed closest to N*1385KBps among those offered by unit for currently mounted media. The list can be found in dvd+rw-mediainfo output.

<mkisofs-options>

More options can be found in the manpage for mkisofs.

There're several undocumented options commonly denoted with -use-the-force-luke prefix. Some of them serve debugging purposes. Some require certain knowledge about recording process or even OS kernel internals and as being such can induce confusing behaviour. Some are to be used in very specific situations better recognized by front-ends or automated scripts. Rationale behind leaving these options undocumented is that those few users who would actually need to use them directly can as well consult the source code or obtain specific instructions elsewhere.

DIFFERENCES WITH RUNNING MKISOFS DIRECTLY

EXAMPLES

To master and burn an ISO9660 volume with Joliet and Rock-Ridge extensions on a DVD:

        growisofs -Z /dev/dvd -R -J /some/files

To append more data to same DVD:

        growisofs -M /dev/dvd -R -J /more/files

Make sure to use the same options for both inital burning and following sessions.

To use growisofs to write a pre-mastered ISO-image to a DVD:

        growisofs -dvd-compat -Z /dev/dvd=image.iso

where image.iso represents an arbitrary object in the filesystem, such as file, named pipe or device entry. Nothing is growing here and command name is not intuitive in this context.

NOTES

        #!/bin/ksh
        unset SUDO_COMMAND
        export MKISOFS=/path/to/trusted/mkisofs
        exec growisofs "$@"

But note that the recommended alternative to the above "workaround" is actually to install growisofs set-root-uid, in which case it will drop privileges prior accessing data or executing mkisofs in order to preclude unauthorized access to the data.

If the media already carries isofs and growisofs is invoked with -Z option non-interactively, e.g. through cron, it shall fail with "FATAL: /dev/dvd already carries isofs!" Note that only ISO9660 is recognized, you can perfectly zap e.g. an UDF filesystem non-interactively. Recommendation is to prepare media for unattended usage by re-formatting or nullifying first 64KB in advance.

"Overburn" protection in pre-mastered image context works only with plain files and ISO9660 formatted volumes. E.g. [given that /dev/root is an ext2 formatted file system larger than 4.7GB] /dev/dvd=/dev/root is bound to produce corrupted recording.

Note that DVD+RW re-formatting procedure does not substitute for blanking. If you want to nullify the media, e.g. for privacy reasons, do it explicitly with 'growisofs -Z /dev/dvd=/dev/zero'.

Playback of re-writable DVD media, both DVD+RW and DVD-RW, might be limited in legacy DVD-ROM/-Video units. In most cases this is due to lower reflectivity of such media.

Even though growisofs supports it, playback of multi-session write-once DVD might be limited to the first session for two reasons:

*

not all DVD-ROM players are capable of multi-border DVD-R playback, even less are aware of DVD+R multi-sessioning, burner unit therefore might be the only one in your vicinity capable of accessing files written at different occasions;

*

OS might fail to mount multi-session DVD for various reasons;

The above is not applicable to DVD+RW, DVD-RW Restricted Overwrite or DVD-RAM, as volumes are grown within a single session.

SEE ALSO

The manpage for mkisofs.

AUTHORS

This manpage is currently maintained by Huub Reuver <h_reuver@mantell.xs4all.nl>.

LICENSE

Index

NAME

SYNOPSIS

DESCRIPTION

OPTIONS

DIFFERENCES WITH RUNNING MKISOFS DIRECTLY

EXAMPLES

NOTES

SEE ALSO

AUTHORS

LICENSE