  CD-Writing HOWTO
  Winfried Trmper <winni@xpilot.org>
  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 Trmper 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 cdwrite-request@other.debian.org
  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 Jrg 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 Jrg 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 <doug@lathi.net>
        helped to improve the handling of newer kernels

     Kalle Andersson <kalle@sslug.dk>
        Howto write audio-cds directly from mp3.

     Alan Brown <alan@manawatu.net.nz>

     Rick Cochran <rick@msc.cornell.edu>
        hint about dis-/reconnect disabled by default in the ncr driver

     Robert Doolittle <bob.doolittle@sun.com>
        good arguments for dropping cdwrite from the HOWTO

     Markus Dickebohm <m.dickebohm@uni-koeln.de>

     Jos van Geffen <jos@tnj.phys.tue.nl>
        noted the problem in 4.9.

     Bernhard Gubanka <beg@ipp-garching.mpg.de>
        noticed the need of a recent version of mount to utilize the
        loopback device

     Stephen Harris <sweh@mpn.com>
        contributed hint about writing audio-CDs

     Janne Himanka <shem@oyt.oulu.fi>
        pointer to kernel patch to read Joliet CD-ROMs

     Stephan Noy <stnoy@mi.uni-koeln.de>
        information and experience about writing audio-CDs

     Don H. Olive <don@andromeda.campbellsvil.edu>
        URL of the mkhybrid tool

     Jesper Pedersen <jews@imada.ou.dk>

     Pierre Pfister <pp@uplift.fr>
        helped to develop the recipe on 1:1 copies.

     Daniel A. Quist <dquist@cs.nmt.edu>
        information about IDE-CD-R and newer kernel versions

     Martti.Rahkila@hut.fi
        Reported problem with pre-initialized writers when booting via
        loadlin.

     Dale Scheetz <dwarf@polaris.net>

     Joerg Schilling <schilling@fokus.gmd.de>
        information about cdrecord

     Martin Schulze <joey@Infodrom.North.DE>
        gave information about the cdwrite-mailinglist

     Gerald C Snyder <gcsnyd@loop.com>
        tested writing of an ext2 CD-ROM (see 4.4)

     Art Stone <stone@math.ubc.ca>
        had the idea to put non-ISO-9660 filesystems on a CD

     The Sheepy One <kero@escape.com>
        suggested using defective CD-ROMs as coasters for drinks

     Erwin Zoer <ezoer@wxs.nl>

  Futhermore, I would like to thank the following people for reporting
  spelling mistakes: Bartosz Maruszewski
  <B.Maruszewski@zsmeie.torun.pl>, Ian Stirling <ian@opus131.com>, Brian
  H. Toby.

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

