NAME¶
growisofs - combined genisoimage frontend/DVD recording program.
SYNOPSIS¶
growisofs [
-dry-run] [
-dvd-compat] [
-overburn] [
-speed=1] -[
Z|M]
/dev/dvd
<genisoimage-options>
DESCRIPTION¶
growisofs was originally designed as a frontend to
genisoimage to
facilitate appending of data to ISO9660 volumes residing on random-access
media such as DVD+RW, DVD-RAM, plain files, hard disk partitions. In the
course of development general purpose DVD recording support was implemented,
and as of now
growisofs supports not only random-access media, but even
mastering of multisession DVD media such as DVD+R and DVD-R/-RW, as well as
Blu-ray Disc. In addition
growisofs supports first-/single-session
recording of
arbitrary pre-mastered image (formatted as UDF, ISO9660 or
any other file system, if formatted at all) to all supported DVD media types.
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 genisoimage,
also with -version option.
- -dvd-compat
- Provide maximum media compatibility with DVD-ROM/-Video. In
write-once DVD+R or DVD-R context 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
genisoimage is invoked and terminated prematurely.
- -overburn
- Normally single layer 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. Same kind of
arithmetics applies to Blu-ray Disc capacity of 25.000.000.000 bytes.
Anyway, 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 setting messes up the media. Keep in mind that N essentially
denotes speed closest to N*1385KBps in DVD or N*4496KBps in Blu-ray
Disc case among those offered by unit for currently mounted media. The
list can be found in dvd+rw-mediainfo output. Note that Blu-ray
Disc recordings are commonly performed at ~1/2 of advertised speed,
because of defect management being in effect.
- <genisoimage-options>
- More options can be found in the manpage for
genisoimage.
There are 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 GENISOIMAGE DIRECTLY¶
When using growisofs you may not use the
-o option for an output file.
growisofs dumps the image directly to the media;
You don't have to specify the
-C option to create a higher level session
on a multisession disk,
growisofs will construct one for you;
Otherwise everything that applies to
[multisession] mastering with
genisoimage applies to
growisofs as well.
growisofs needs
at least
mkisofs version 1.14, version 2.0 is required for multisession
write-once recordings or
genisoimage.
EXAMPLES¶
Actual device names vary from one operating system to another. We use
/dev/dvd as a collective name or as symbolic link to the actual device
if you wish. Under Linux it will most likely be an ide-scsi device such as
"/dev/scd0." Under NetBSD/OpenBSD it has to be a
character
SCSI CD-ROM device such as "/dev/rcd0c." Under Solaris it also has
to be a
character SCSI/ATAPI CD-ROM device, e.g.
"/dev/rdsk/c0t1d0s2" or "/vol/dev/aliases/cdrom0." And
likewise in HP-UX, IRIX and Mac OS X...
To master and burn an ISO9660 volume with Joliet and Rock-Ridge extensions on a
DVD or Blu-ray Disc:
growisofs
-Z /dev/dvd
-R -J /some/files
To append more data to same media:
growisofs
-M /dev/dvd
-R -J /more/files
Make sure to use
the same options for both initial burning and when
appending data.
To finalize the multisession DVD maintaining maximum compatibility:
growisofs
-M /dev/dvd
=/dev/zero
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¶
If executed under
sudo(8) growisofs refuses to start. This is done for the
following reason. Naturally growisofs has to access the data set to be
recorded to optical media, either indirectly by letting genisoimage generate
ISO9660 layout on-the-fly or directly if a pre-mastered image is to be
recorded. Being executed under
sudo(8), growisofs effectively grants sudoers
read access to
any file in the file system. The situation is
intensified by the fact that growisofs parses GENISOIMAGE environment variable
in order to determine alternative path to genisoimage executable image. This
means that being executed under
sudo(8), growisofs effectively grants sudoers
right to execute program of their choice with elevated privileges. If you for
any reason still find the above acceptable and are willing to take the
consequences, then consider running following wrapper script under
sudo(8) in
place for real growisofs binary.
#!/bin/ksh
unset SUDO_COMMAND
export GENISOIMAGE=/path/to/trusted/genisoimage
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 genisoimage 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 multisession 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 multisessioning, burner unit
therefore might be the only one in your vicinity capable of accessing
files written at different occasions;
- •
- OS might fail to mount multisession DVD for various
reasons;
The above is not applicable to DVD+RW, DVD-RW Restricted Overwrite, DVD-RAM or
Blu-ray Disc, as volumes are grown within a single session.
When growisofs "runs into" blank Blu-ray Disc media, BD-RE or BD-R, it
gets pre-formatted with minimal spare area size of 256MB.
SEE ALSO¶
Most up-to-date information on dvd+rw-tools is available at
http://fy.chalmers.se/~appro/linux/DVD+RW/.
The manpage for
genisoimage.
AUTHORS¶
Andy Polyakov <appro@fy.chalmers.se> stands for programming and on-line
information.
This manpage is currently maintained by Huub Reuver
<h_reuver@mantell.xs4all.nl>.
LICENSE¶
growisofs is distributed under GNU GPL.