Man1 - cdrecord.1

Most users do not need to care about device naming at all. If no dev= option was specified, cdrecord implements auto target support and automagically finds the drive in case that exactly one CD-ROM type drive is available in the system. In case that more than one CD-ROM type drive exists on the system, a list of possible device name parameters may be retrieved with “cdrecord -scanbus or from the target example from the output of cdrecord dev=help, then the dev= parameter may be set based on the device listing.

The device parameter to the dev= option explained below refers to the SCSI CAM standard notation for scsibus///target///lun of the CD/DVD/BluRay-recorder. If a file /etc/default/cdrecord exists, the parameter to the dev= option may also be a drive name label in said file (see FILES section).

On SVr4 compliant systems, cdrecord uses the real-time class to get the highest scheduling priority that is possible (higher than all kernel processes). On systems with POSIX real-time scheduling cdrecord uses real-time scheduling too, but may not be able to gain a priority that is higher than all kernel processes.

In order to be able to use the SCSI transport subsystem of the OS, run at highest priority and lock itself into core cdrecord either needs to be run as root, needs to be installed suid root or must be called via a fine grained privileges mechanism, such as the Solaris *privileges*(5) mechanism via *exec_attr*(4) or the Linux *capabilities*(7) mechanism via *setcap*(8) to allow cdrecord to be used as an ordinary user.

In Track At Once mode, each track corresponds to a single file that contains the prepared data for that track. If the argument is `*-’, standard input is used for that track. Only one track may be taken from stdin. In the other write modes, the direct file to track relation may not be implemented. In *-clone mode, a single file contains all data for the whole disk. To allow DVD writing on platforms that do not implement large file support, cdrecord concatenates all file arguments to a single track when writing to DVD media.

-help

display version information for cdrecord on standard output.

-version

Print version information and exit.

-v

Increment the level of general verbosity by one. This is used e.g. to display the progress of the writing process.

-dummy

The -dummy option modifies the current write strategy. The CD/DVD/BluRay-recorder will go through all steps of the recording process, but the laser is turned off during this procedure. It is recommended to run several tests before actually writing to a Compact Disk or Digital Versatile Disk, if the timing and load response of the current system is not yet known.

The -dummy option does not work with all media and write modes. DVD+ media and BluRay media does not support dummy writes and most CD-recorders do not support dummy writes in raw mode.

-multi

Allow multi-session CDs or multi-border DVDs to be made. This flag needs to be present on all sessions of a multi-session or multi-border disk, except you want to create a session on a CD that will be the last session on the CD-media.

For CD-media, the fixation will be done in a way that allows the CD/DVD/BluRay-recorder to append additional sessions later. This is done by generating a TOC with a link to the next program area. The so generated media is not 100% compatible to manufactured CDs (except for CDplus). Use only for recording of multi-session CDs. If this option is present, the default track type is CD-ROM XA mode 2 form 1 and the sector size is 2048 bytes. The XA sector subheaders will be created by the drive. The Sony drives have no hardware support for CD-ROM XA mode 2 form 1. You have to specify the -data option in order to create multi-session disks on these drives. If you like to record a multi-session disk in SAO mode, you need to force CD-ROM sectors by including the -data option. Not all drives allow multi-session CDs in SAO mode.

For DVD media, -multi switches the write mode to incremental packet recording. There is currently no way to prevent the ability to append further sessions and there is currently only support for DVD-R/DVD-RW media. To reuse a DVD-RW that has previously been written in incremental packet recording mode for different write modes, you need to blank the entire media before.

-dao

-sao

Set “SAO (Session At Once) mode which is usually called Disk At Once *mode. This currently only works with MMC drives that support *“Session At Once mode. Note that cdrecord needs to know the size of each track in advance for this mode (see the mkisofs -print-size option and the EXAMPLES section for more information).

There are several CD writers with bad firmware that result in broken disks when writing in TAO or SAO mode. If you find any problems with the layout of a disk or with subchannel content (e.g. wrong times on the display when playing the CD) and your drive supports to write in -raw96r or -raw16 mode, you should give it a try.

-tao

Set “TAO (Track At Once) writing mode. This is the default write mode in previous cdrecord versions. With most drives, this write mode is required for multi-session recording.

There are several CD writers with bad firmware that result in broken disks when writing in TAO or SAO mode. If you find any problems with the layout of a disk or with subchannel content (e.g. wrong times on the display when playing the CD) and your drive supports to write in -raw96r or -raw16 mode, you should give it a try.

-raw

Set “RAW writing mode. Using this option defaults to -raw96r. Note that cdrecord needs to know the size of each track in advance for this mode (see the mkisofs -print-size option and the EXAMPLES section for more information).

-raw96r

Set “RAW writing mode with 2352 byte sectors plus 96 bytes of raw P-W sub-channel data resulting in a sector size of 2448 bytes. This is the preferred raw writing mode as it gives best control over the CD-writing process. Writing data disks in raw mode needs significantly more CPU time than other write modes. If your CPU is too slow, this may result in buffer underruns. Note that cdrecord needs to know the size of each track in advance for this mode (see the mkisofs -print-size option and the EXAMPLES section for more information).

-raw96p

Set “RAW writing mode with 2352 byte sectors plus 96 bytes of packed P-W sub-channel data resulting in a sector size of 2448 bytes. This is the less preferred raw writing mode as only a few recorders support it and some of these recorders have bugs in the firmware implementation. Don’t use this mode if your recorder supports -raw96r or -raw16. Writing data disks in raw mode needs significantly more CPU time than other write modes. If your CPU is too slow, this may result in buffer underruns. Note that cdrecord needs to know the size of each track in advance for this mode (see the mkisofs -print-size option and the EXAMPLES section for more information).

-raw16

Set “RAW writing mode with 2352 byte sectors plus 16 bytes of P-Q sub-channel data resulting in a sector size of 2368 bytes. If a recorder does not support -raw96r, this is the preferred raw writing mode. It does not allow to write CD-Text or CD+Graphics but it is the only raw writing mode in cheap CD-writers, as these cheap writers in most cases do not support -dao mode. Don’t use this mode if your recorder supports -raw96r. Writing data disks in raw mode needs significantly more CPU time than other write modes. If your CPU is too slow, this may result in buffer underruns. Note that cdrecord needs to know the size of each track in advance for this mode (see the mkisofs -print-size option and the EXAMPLES section for more information).

-abort

Try to send an abort sequence to the drive. If you use cdrecord only, this should never be needed; but other software may leave a drive in an unusable condition. Calling “cdrecord -reset may be needed if a previous write has been interrupted and the software did not tell the drive that it will not continue to write.

-atip

Retrieve and print out the ATIP (Absolute Time In Pre-groove) info of a CD/DVD/BluRay recordable or CD/DVD/BluRay re-writable media. With this option, cdrecord will try to retrieve the ATIP info. If the actual drive does not support to read the ATIP info, it may be that only a reduced set of information records or even nothing is displayed. Only a limited number of MMC-compliant drives support to read the ATIP info.

If cdrecord is able to retrieve the lead-in start time for the first session, it will try to decode and print the manufacturer info from the media. DVD media does not have ATIP information but there is equivalent prerecorded information that is read out and printed.

*blank=*/type/

Blank a CD-RW and exit or blank a CD-RW before writing. The blanking type may be one of:

help

Display a list of possible blanking types.

all

Blank the entire disk. This may take a long time.

fast

Minimally blank the disk. This results in erasing the PMA, the TOC and the pregap.

track

Blank the last track.

unreserve

Unreserve a reserved track.

trtail

Blank the tail of a track.

unclose

Unclose last session.

session

Blank the last session.

Not all drives support all blanking types. It may be necessary to use “blank=all if a drive reports a specified command as being invalid. If used together with the -force flag, this option may be used to blank CD-RW disks that otherwise cannot be blanked. Note that you may need to specify blank=*/all/ because some drives will not continue with certain types of bad CD-RW disks. Note also that *cdrecord does its best if the -force flag is used but it finally depends on the drive’s firmware whether the blanking operation will succeed or not.

-checkdrive

Checks if a driver for the current drive is present and exit. If the drive is a known drive, cdrecord uses exit code 0.

-clone

Tells cdrecord to handle images created by readcd -clone. The -clone write mode may only be used in conjunction with the -raw96r or -raw16 option. Using -clone together with -raw96r is preferred as it allows to write all sub-channel data. The -raw16 option should only be used with drives that do not support to write in -raw96r mode.

Note that copying in clone mode disables certain levels of error correction and thus always results in a quality degradation. Avoid copying audio CDs in clone mode for this reason.

*cuefile=*/filename/

Take all recording-related information from a CDRWIN-compliant “CUE sheet file. No track-file arguments to cdrecord are allowed when this option is present and one of the following options: -dao, -sao, -raw, -raw16, -raw96r is needed in addition.

*defpregap=*#

Set the default pre-gap size for all tracks except track number 1. This option currently only makes sense with the following drives:

Teac CD-R50S, Teac CD-R55S, JVC XR-W2010, Pinnacle RCD-5020

when creating track-at-once disks without the 2-second silence before each track.
This option may go away in the future.

*driver=*/name/

Allows the user to manually select a driver for the device. The reason for the existence of the driver=*/name/ option is to allow users to use *cdrecord with drives that are similar to supported drives but not known directly by cdrecord. All drives made after 1997 should be MMC-standard-compliant and thus supported by one of the MMC drivers. It is most unlikely that cdrecord is unable to find the right driver automatically. Use this option with extreme care. If a wrong driver is used for a device, the possibility of creating corrupted disks is high. The minimum problem related to a wrong driver is that the -speed or -dummy will not work.

The following driver names are supported:

help

To get a list of possible drivers together with a short description.

mmc_bd

The generic SCSI-3/mmc BluRay driver is auto-selected whenever cdrecord finds an MMC-compliant drive that does support to write BluRay media or a multi system that contains a BluRay disk as the current medium. This driver tries to close the tray, checks the medium found in the tray and then branches to the driver that matches the current medium.

mmc_bdr

The generic SCSI-3/mmc BluRay driver is auto-selected whenever cdrecord finds an MMC-compliant drive that does support to write BluRay BD-R media or a multi system that contains a BluRay BD-R disk as the current medium.

mmc_bdre

The generic SCSI-3/mmc BluRay driver is auto-selected whenever cdrecord finds an MMC-compliant drive that does support to write BluRay BD-RE media or a multi system that contains a BluRay BD-RE disk as the current medium.

mmc_cd

The generic SCSI-3/mmc CD-ROM driver is auto-selected whenever cdrecord finds an MMC-compliant drive that does not identify itself to support writing at all, or that only identifies to support media or write modes not implemented in cdrecord.

mmc_cd_dvd

The generic SCSI-3/mmc CD/DVD/BluRay driver is auto-selected whenever cdrecord finds an MMC-2 or MMC-3-compliant drive that seems to support more than one medium type and the tray is open or no medium could be found to select the right driver. This driver tries to close the tray, checks the medium found in the tray and then branches to the driver that matches the current medium.

mmc_cdr

The generic SCSI-3/mmc CD-R/CD-RW driver is auto-selected whenever cdrecord finds an MMC-compliant drive that only supports to write CDs or a multi system drive that contains a CD as the current medium.

mmc_cdr_sony

The generic SCSI-3/mmc CD-R/CD-RW driver is auto-selected whenever cdrecord would otherwise select the mmc_cdr driver but the device seems to be made by Sony. The mmc_cdr_sony is definitely needed for the Sony CDU 928 as this drive does not completely implement the MMC standard and some of the MMC SCSI commands have to be replaced by Sony proprietary commands. It seems that all Sony drives (even newer ones) still implement the Sony proprietary SCSI commands so it has not yet become a problem to use this driver for all Sony drives. If you find a newer Sony drive that does not work with this driver, please report.

mmc_dvd

The generic SCSI-3/mmc-2 DVD-R/DVD-RW driver is auto-selected whenever cdrecord finds an MMC-2 or MMC-3-compliant drive that supports to write DVDs and an appropriate medium is loaded. There is no Track At Once mode for DVD writers.

mmc_dvdplus

The generic SCSI-3/mmc-3 DVD+R/DVD+RW driver is auto-selected whenever one of the DVD+ media types that are incompatible to each other is found. It checks media and then branches to the driver that matches the current medium.

mmc_dvdplusr

The generic SCSI-3/mmc-3 DVD+R driver is auto-selected whenever a DVD+R medium is found in an appropriate writer. Note that for unknown reason, the DVD+RW Alliance does not like that there is a simulation mode for DVD+R media. The author of cdrecord tries to convince manufacturers to implement a simulation mode for DVD+R and implement support. DVD+R only supports one write mode that is somewhere between Track At Once and Packet writing; this mode is selected in cdrecord via the -dao*/-sao* option.

mmc_dvdplusrw

The generic SCSI-3/mmc-3 DVD+RW driver is auto-selected whenever a DVD+RW medium is found in an appropriate writer. As DVD+RW media need to be formatted before their first use, cdrecord auto-detects this medium state and performs a format before it starts to write. Note that for unknown reason, the DVD+RW Alliance does not like that there is a simulation mode nor a way to erase DVD+RW media. DVD+RW only supports one write mode that is close to Packet writing; this mode is selected in cdrecord via the -dao*/-sao* option.

cw_7501

The driver for Matsushita/Panasonic CW-7501 is auto-selected when cdrecord finds this old pre-MMC drive. Cdrecord supports all write modes for this drive type.

kodak_pcd_600

The driver for Kodak PCD-600 is auto-selected when cdrecord finds this old pre-MMC drive which has been the first high speed (6x) CD-writer for a long time. This drive behaves similarly to the Philips CDD-521 drive.

philips_cdd521

The driver for Philips CDD-521 is auto-selected when cdrecord finds a Philips CDD-521 drive (which is the first CD-writer ever made) or one of the other drives that are known to behave similarly to this drive. All Philips CDD-521 or similar drives (see other drivers in this list) do not support Session At Once recording.

philips_cdd521_old

The driver for Philips old CDD-521 is auto-selected when cdrecord finds a Philips CDD-521 with very old firmware which has some known limitations.

philips_cdd522

The driver for Philips CDD-522 is auto-selected when cdrecord finds a Philips CDD-522 which is the successor of the 521 or one of its variants with Kodak label. Cdrecord does not support Session At Once recording with these drives.

philips_dumb

The driver for Philips CDD-521 with pessimistic assumptions is never auto-selected. It may be used by hand with drives that behave similarly to the Philips CDD-521.

pioneer_dws114x

The driver for Pioneer DW-S114X is auto-selected when cdrecord finds one of the old non-MMC CD-writers from Pioneer.

plasmon_rf4100

The driver for Plasmon RF 4100 is auto-selected when cdrecord finds this specific variant of the Philips CDD-521.

ricoh_ro1060c

The driver for Ricoh RO-1060C is auto-selected when cdrecord finds this drive. There is no real support for this drive yet.

ricoh_ro1420c

The driver for Ricoh RO-1420C is auto-selected when cdrecord finds a drive with this specific variant of the Philips CDD-521 command set.

scsi2_cd

The generic SCSI-2 CD-ROM driver is auto-selected whenever cdrecord finds a pre-MMC drive that does not support writing or a pre-MMC writer that is not supported by cdrecord.

sony_cdu924

The driver for Sony CDU-924 / CDU-948 is auto-selected whenever cdrecord finds one of the old pre-MMC CD-writers from Sony.

teac_cdr50

The driver for Teac CD-R50S, Teac CD-R55S, JVC XR-W2010, Pinnacle RCD-5020 is auto-selected whenever one of the drives is found that is known to use the non-MMC command set used by TEAC and JVC. Note that many drives from JVC will not work because they do not correctly implement the documented command set and JVC has been unwilling to fix or document the bugs. There is no support for the Session At Once write mode yet.

tyuden_ew50

The driver for Taiyo Yuden EW-50 is auto-selected when cdrecord finds a drive with this specific variant of the Philips CDD-521 command set.

yamaha_cdr100

The driver for Yamaha CDR-100 / CDR-102 is auto-selected when cdrecord finds one of the old pre-MMC CD-writers from Yamaha. There is no support for the Session At Once write mode yet.

bd_simul

The simulation BluRay driver allows to run timing and speed tests with parameters that match the behavior of BluRay writers.

cdr_simul

The simulation CD-R driver allows to run timing and speed tests with parameters that match the behavior of CD-writers.

dvd_simul

The simulation DVD-R driver allows to run timing and speed tests with parameters that match the behavior of DVD writers.

There are two special driver entries in the list: cdr_simul and dvd_simul. These driver entries are designed to make timing tests at any speed or timing tests for drives that do not support the -dummy option. The simulation drivers implement a drive with a buffer size of 1 MB that can be changed via the CDR_SIMUL_BUFSIZE environment variable. The simulation driver correctly simulates even a buffer underrun condition. If the -dummy option is present, the simulation is not aborted in case of a buffer underrun.

*driveropts=*/option list/

Set driver specific options. The options are specified as a comma separated list. To get a list of valid options use driveropts=*/help/ together with the -checkdrive option. If you like to set driver options without running a typical *cdrecord task, you need to use the -setdropts option in addition, otherwise the command line parser in cdrecord will complain. Currently implemented driver options are:

burnfree

Turn the support for Buffer Underrun Free writing on. This only works for drives that support Buffer Underrun Free technology. This may be called: Sanyo BURN-Proof, Ricoh Just-Link, Yamaha Lossless-Link or similar.

The default is to turn BURN-Free off, regardless of the defaults of the drive.

noburnfree

Turn the support for Buffer Underrun Free writing off.

*varirec=*/value/

Turn on the Plextor VariRec writing mode. The mandatory parameter value is the laser power offset and currently may be selected from -2, -1, 0, 1, 2. In addition, you need to set the write speed to 4 in order to allow VariRec to work.

*gigarec=*/value/

Manage the Plextor GigaRec writing mode. The mandatory parameter value is the disk capacity ratio compared to normal recording and currently may be selected from 0.6, 0.7, 0.8, 0.9, 1.0, 1,1, 1.2, 1.3, 1.4. If values < 1.0 are used, then the effect is similar to the Yamaha Audio Master Q. R. feature. If values > 1.0 are used, then the disk capacity is increased.

Not all drives support all GigaRec values. When a drive uses the GigaRec feature, the write speed is limited to 8x.

audiomaster

Turn on the Yamaha Audio Master Q. R. feature which usually should result in high quality CDs that have less reading problems in Hi-Fi players. As this is implemented as a variant of the Session At Once write mode, it will only work if you select SAO write mode and there is no need to turn it off. The Audio Master mode will work with a limited speed but may also be used with data CDs. In Audio Master mode, the pits on the CD will be written larger than usual so the capacity of the medium is reduced when turning this feature on. A 74-minute CD will only have a capacity of 63 minutes if Audio Master is active and the capacity of a 80-minute CD will be reduced to 68 minutes, the capacity in will be reduced to 85% of the original capacity. On newer Plextor drives, this feature is also present but the capacity will be reduced to 86.66% of the original capacity. For other factors on Plextor drives, see the gigarec option above.

forcespeed

Normally, modern drives know the highest possible speed for different media and may reduce the speed in order to grant best write quality. This technology may be called: Plextor PowerRec, Ricoh Just-Speed, Yamaha Optimum Write Speed Control or similar. Some drives (e.g. Plextor, Ricoh and Yamaha) allow to force the drive to use the selected speed even if the medium is so bad that the write quality would be poor. This option tells such a drive to force to use the selected speed regardless of the medium quality.

Use this option with extreme care and note that the drive should know better which medium will work at full speed. The default is to turn forcespeed off, regardless of the defaults of the drive.

noforcespeed

Turn off the “force speed feature.

speedread

Some ultra high speed drives such as 48x and faster drives from Plextor limit the read speed for unknown media to e.g. 40x in order to avoid damaged disks and drives. Using this option tells the drive to read any media as fast as possible. Be very careful as this may cause the media to break in the drive while reading, resulting in damaged media and drive!

nospeedread

Turn off unlimited read speed.

singlesession

Turn the drive into a single-session only drive. This allows to read defective or non-compliant (illegal) media with extremely non-standard additional (broken/illegal) TOC entries in the TOC from the second or higher session. Some of these disks become usable if only the information from the first session is used. You need to enable Single Session mode before you insert the defective disk!

nosinglesession

Turn off single-session mode. The drive will again behave as usual.

hidecdr

Hide the fact that a medium might be a recordable medium. This allows to make CD-Rs look like CD-ROMs and applications believe that the media in the drive is not a CD-R.

nohidecdr

Turn off hiding CD-R media.

tattooinfo

Use this option together with -checkdrive to retrieve the image size information for the “Yamaha DiskT@2 feature. The images always have a line length of 3744 pixels. Line number 0 (radius 0) is mapped to the center of the disk. If you know the inner and outer radii you will be able to create a pre distorted image that later may appear undistorted on the disk.

*tattoofile=*/name/

Use this option together with -checkdrive to write an image prepared for the “Yamaha DiskT@2 feature to the medium. The file must be a file with raw image B&W data (one byte per pixel) in a size as retrieved by a previous call to tattooinfo. If the size of the image equals the maximum possible size (3744 x 320 pixels), cdrecord will use the first part of the file. This first part then will be written to the leftover space on the CD.

Note that the image must be mirrored to be readable from the pick up side of the CD.

layerbreak

Switch a drive with DVD-R/DL medium into “layer jump recording recording mode and use automatic layer-break position setup.

By default, DVD-R/DL media is written in “sequential recording mode that completely fills up both layers.

*layerbreak=*/value/

Set up a manual layer-break value for DVD-R/DL and DVD+R/DL. The specified layer-break value must not be set to less than half of the recorded data size and must not be set to more than the remaining “Layer 0 size of the medium. The manual layer-break value needs to be a multiple of the ECC sector size which is 16 logical 2048 byte sectors in case of DVD media and 32 logical 2048 byte sectors in case of HD-DVD or BD media.

Cdrecord does not allow to write DL media in case that the total amount of data is less then the “Layer 0 size of the medium except when a manual layer-break has been specified by using the *layerbreak=*/value/ option.

-eject

Eject disk after doing the work. Some devices (e.g. Philips) need to eject the medium before creating a new disk. Doing a -dummy test and immediately creating a real disk would not work on these devices.

-fix

The disk will only be fixated (i.e. a TOC for a CD-reader will be written). This may be used, if for some reason the disk has been written but not fixated. This option currently does not work with old TEAC drives (CD-R50S and CD-R55S).

-force

Force to continue on some errors. Be careful when using this option. Cdrecord implements several checks that prevent you from doing unwanted things like damaging CD-RW media by improper drives. Many of the sanity checks are disabled when the -force option is used.

This option also implements some tricks that will allow you to blank bad CD-RW disks.

-format

Format a CD-RW/DVD-RW/DVD+RW/BD-RE disc. Formatting is currently only implemented for DVD+RW and BD-RE media. A ’maiden’ DVD+RW or BD-RE medium needs to be formatted before you may write to it. However, as cdrecord autodetects the need for formatting in this case and auto formats the medium before it starts writing, the -format option is only needed if you like to forcibly reformat a DVD+RW or BD-RE medium.

*fs=*#

Set the FIFO (ring buffer) size to #. You may use the same syntax as in dd*(1), *sdd*(1) or *star*(1). The number representing the size is taken in bytes unless otherwise specified. If a number is followed directly by the letter `b’, `k’, `m’, `s’ or `f’, the size is multiplied by 512, 1024, 1024*1024, 2048 or 2352. If the size consists of numbers separated by `x’ or `’, multiplication of the two numbers is performed. Thus “fs=10x63k will specify a FIFO size of 630 kBytes.

The size specified by the fs= argument includes the shared memory that is needed for administration. This is at least one page of memory. If no /fs/= option is present, cdrecord will try to get the FIFO size value from the CDR_FIFOSIZE environment. The default FIFO size is currently 4 MB.

The FIFO is used to increase buffering for the real-time writing process. It allows to run a pipe from mkisofs directly into cdrecord. If the FIFO is active and a pipe from mkisofs into cdrecord is used to create a CD, cdrecord will abort prior to do any modifications on the disk if mkisofs dies before writing starts. The recommended FIFO size is between 4 and 128 MBytes. As a rule of thumb, the FIFO size should be at least equal to the size of the internal buffer of the CD/DVD/BluRay-recorder and no more than half of the physical amount of RAM available in the machine. If the FIFO size is big enough, the FIFO statistics will print a FIFO empty count of zero and a FIFO min fill not below 20%. It is not wise to use too much space for the FIFO. If you need more than 8 MB to write a CD at a speed less than 20x from an image on a local file system on an idle machine, your machine is either underpowered, has hardware problems or is mis-configured. If you like to write DVDs or to write CDs at higher speed, it makes sense to use at least 16 MB for the FIFO.

On old and small machines, you need to be more careful with the FIFO size. If your machine has less than 256 MB of physical RAM, you should not set up a FIFO size that is more than 32 MB. The sun4c architecture (e.g. a Sparcstation-2) has only MMU page table entries for 16 MBytes per process. Using more than 14 MBytes for the FIFO may cause the operating system in this case to spend much time to constantly reload the MMU tables. Newer machines from Sun do not have this MMU hardware problem. The author has no information on PC hardware reflecting this problem.

Old Linux systems for non-x86 platforms have broken definitions for the shared memory size. You need to fix them and rebuild the kernel or manually tell cdrecord to use a smaller FIFO.

If you have buffer underruns or similar problems (like a constantly empty drive-buffer) and observe a zero fifo empty count, you have hardware problems that prevent the data from flowing fast enough from the kernel memory to the drive. The FIFO size in this case is sufficient, but you should check for a working DMA setup.

*gracetime=*/#/

Set the grace time before starting to write to #“seconds. Values below 3 seconds are not allowed in order to prevent the volume management from interrupting the write process.

-ignsize

Ignore the known size of the medium. This option should be used with extreme care, it exists only for debugging purposes so do not use it for other reasons. It is not needed to write disks with more than the nominal capacity. This option implies -overburn.

-immed

Tell cdrecord to set the SCSI IMMED flag in certain commands (load, eject, blank, close_track, close_session). This can be useful on broken systems with ATAPI hard-disk and CD/DVD/BluRay writer on the same bus or with SCSI systems that do not use disconnect/reconnect. These systems will freeze while blanking or fixating a CD/DVD/BluRay or while a DVD writer is filling up a session to the minimum amount (approx. 800 MB). Setting the -immed flag will request the command to return immediately while the operation proceeds in background, making the bus usable for the other devices and avoiding the system freeze. This is an experimental feature which may work or not, depending on the model of the CD/DVD/BluRay writer. A correct solution would be to set up a correct cabling but there seem to be notebooks around that have been set up the wrong way by the manufacturer. As it is impossible to fix this problem in notebooks, the -immed option has been added.

A second experimental feature of the -immed flag is to tell cdrecord to try to wait short times while writing to the media. This is expected to free the IDE bus if the CD/DVD/BluRay writer and the data source are connected to the same IDE cable. In this case, the CD/DVD/BluRay writer would otherwise usually block the IDE bus for nearly all the time making it impossible to fetch data from the source drive. See also the minbuf= and -v options.

Use both features at your own risk. If it turns out that it would make sense to have a separate option for the wait feature, write to the author and convince him.

-inq

Do an inquiry for the drive, print the inquiry info for the drive and exit.

-load

Load the media and exit. This only works with a tray-loading mechanism but seems to be useful when using the Kodak disk transporter.

-lock

Load the media, lock the door and exit. This only works with a tray-loading mechanism but seems to be useful when using the Kodak disk transporter.

*mcn=*/med_cat_nr/

Set the “Media Catalog Number of the CD to med_cat_nr.

*minbuf=*/value/

The minbuf= option allows to define the minimum drive-buffer fill ratio for the experimental ATAPI wait mode that is intended to free the IDE bus to allow hard disk and CD/DVD/BluRay writer to be on the same IDE cable. As the wait mode currently only works when the verbose option -v has been specified, cdrecord implies the verbose option in case the -immed or minbuf= option has been specified. Valid values for minbuf= are between 25 and 95 for 25%. . .95% minimum drive-buffer fill ratio.

-media-info

-minfo

Retrieve and print information about the state of the medium. This option currently only works for MMC-compliant drives.

-msinfo

Retrieve multi-session info in a form suitable for mkisofs-1.10 or later.

This option makes only sense with a CD that contains at least one closed session and is appendable (not finally closed yet). Some drives create error messages if you try to get the multi-session info for a disk that is not suitable for this operation.

-noclose

Do not close the current track, useful only when in packet writing mode. This is an experimental interface.

-nofix

Do not fixate the disk after writing the tracks. This may be used to create an audio disk in steps. An un-fixated disk can usually not be used on a non CD-writer type drive but there are audio CD-players that will be able to play such a disk.

-overburn

Allow cdrecord to write more than the official size of a medium. This feature is usually called overburning and depends on the fact that most blank media may hold more space than the official size. As the official size of the lead-out area on the disk is 90 seconds (6750 sectors) and a disk usually works if there are at least 150 sectors of lead out, all media may be overburned by at least 88 seconds (6600 sectors). Most CD-recorders only do overburning in SAO or RAW mode. Known exceptions are TEAC CD-R50S, TEAC CD-R55S and the Panasonic CW-7502. Some drives do not allow to overburn as much as you might like and limit the size of a CD to e.g. 76 minutes. This problem may be circumvented by writing the CD in RAW mode because this way the drive has no chance to find the size before starting to burn. There is no guarantee that your drive supports overburning at all. Make a test to check if your drive implements the feature.

-packet

Set “Packet writing mode. This is an experimental interface.

*pktsize=*#

Set the packet size to #, forces fixed packet mode. This is an experimental interface.

-prcap

Print the drive capabilities for SCSI-3/mmc-compliant drives as obtained from mode page 0x2A. Values marked with kB use 1000 bytes as kilo-byte, values marked with KB use 1024 bytes as Kilo-byte.

-setdropts

Set the driveropts specified by driveropts=*/option list/,* the speed of the drive and the dummy flag and exit. This allows cdrecord to set drive specific parameters that are not directly used by cdrecord like e.g. single session mode, hide cdr and similar. It is needed in case that driveropts=*/option list/ should be called without planning to run a typical *cdrecord task.

*speed=*#

Set the speed factor of the writing process to #. # is an integer, representing a multiple of what has been defined as single speed for the medium.

For CD-media, single speed is the audio playback speed. This is about 150 KB/s for CD-ROM and about 172 KB/s for CD-Audio. Single speed is about 1385 kB/s for DVD media and about 4496 kB/s for BluRay media.

If no speed option is present, cdrecord will try to get a drive specific speed value from the file /etc/default/cdrecord and if it cannot find one, it will try to get the speed value from the CDR_SPEED environment and later from the CDR_SPEED= entry in /etc/default/cdrecord. If no speed value could be found, cdrecord uses a drive specific default speed. The default for all new (MMC-compliant) drives is to use the maximum supported by the drive. If you use speed=0 with a MMC-compliant drive, cdrecord will switch to the lowest possible speed for drive and medium. If you are using an old (non-MMC) drive that has problems with speed=2 or speed=4, you should try speed=0.

-text

Write CD-Text information based on information taken from a file that contains ascii information for the text strings. Cdrecord supports CD-Text information based on the content of the “.inf* files created by cdda2wav and CD-Text information based on the content from a “CUE sheet file. If a “CUE sheet file contains both (binary CDTEXTFILE and text based SONGWRITER) entries, then the information based on the CDTEXTFILE entry will win.

You need to use the -useinfo option in addition in order to tell cdrecord to read the “.inf* files or cuefile=*/filename/ in order to tell *cdrecord to read a “CUE sheet file in addition. If you like to write your own CD-Text information, edit the “.inf* files or the “CUE sheet file with a text editor and change the fields that are relevant for CD-Text.

*textfile=*/filename/

Write CD-Text based on information found in the binary file filename. This file must contain information in a data format defined in the SCSI-3 MMC-2 standard and in the Red Book. The four-byte-sized header that is defined in the SCSI standard is optional and allows to make the recognition of correct data less ambiguous. This is the best option to be used to copy CD-Text data from existing CDs that already carry CD-Text information. To get data in a format suitable for this option use cdrecord -vv -toc to extract the information from disk. If both, textfile=*/filename/ and CD-Text information from *“.inf* or “.cue* files are present, *textfile=*/filename/ will overwrite the other information.

-toc

Retrieve and print out the table of contents or PMA of a CD. With this option, cdrecord will work with CD-R drives and with CD-ROM drives.

-waiti

Wait for input to become available on standard input before trying to open the SCSI driver. This allows cdrecord to read its input from a pipe even when writing additional sessions to a multi-session disk. When writing another session to a multi-session disk, mkisofs needs to read the old session from the device before writing output. This cannot be done if cdrecord opens the SCSI driver at the same time.

-useinfo

Use “.inf* files to overwrite audio options. If this option is used, the pregap size information, the index information, the pre-emphasis information and the CD-Text information is read from the “.inf* file that is associated with the file that contains the audio data for a track.

If used together with the -audio option, cdrecord may be used to write audio CDs from a pipe from cdda2wav if you call cdrecord with the “.inf* files as track parameter list instead of using audio files. The audio data is read from stdin in this case. See EXAMPLES section below. Cdrecord first verifies that stdin is not connected to a terminal and runs some heuristic consistency checks on the “.inf* files and then sets the track lengths from the information in the “.inf* files.

If you like to write from stdin, make sure that cdrecord is called with a large enough FIFO size, reduce the write speed to a value below the read speed of the source drive and switch the burn-free option for the recording drive on.

*dev=*/target/

Set the SCSI target for the CD/DVD/BluRay-recorder, see notes above. A typical target device specification is *dev=*/1,6,0/ . If a filename must be provided together with the numerical target specification, the filename is implementation specific. The correct filename in this case can be found in the system specific manuals of the target operating system. On a FreeBSD system without CAM support, you need to use the control device (e.g. /dev/rcd0.ctl). A correct device specification in this case may be *dev=*//dev/rcd0.ctl:@/ .

General SCSI addressing
The target device to the dev= option refers to the SCSI CAM standard notation for scsibus///target///lun of the CD/DVD/BluRay-recorder. Communication on SunOS is done with the SCSI general driver scg. Other operating systems are using a library simulation of this driver. Possible syntax is: dev= scsibus,/target/,/lun/ or dev= target,/lun/. In the latter case, the CD/DVD/BluRay-recorder has to be connected to the default SCSI bus of the machine. Scsibus, target and lun are integer numbers. Some operating systems or SCSI transport implementations may require to specify a filename in addition. In this case the correct syntax for the device is: dev= devicename:/scsibus/,/target/,/lun/ or dev= devicename:/target/,/lun/. If the name of the device node that has been specified on such a system refers to exactly one SCSI device, a shorthand in the form dev= devicename:/@/ or dev= devicename:/@/,/lun/ may be used instead of dev= devicename:/scsibus/,/target/,/lun/.

Remote SCSI addressing
To access remote SCSI devices, you need to prepend the SCSI device name by a remote device indicator. The remote device indicator is either *REMOTE:*/user@host:/ or *REMOTE:*/host:/ A valid remote SCSI device name may be: *REMOTE:*/user@host:/ to allow remote SCSI bus scanning or *REMOTE:*/user@host:1,0,0/ to access the SCSI device at host connected to SCSI bus # 1,target 0, lun 0. In order to allow remote access to a specific host, the *rscsi*(1) program needs to be present and configured on the host.

Alternate SCSI transports
Cdrecord is completely based on SCSI commands but this is no problem as all CD/DVD/BluRay writers ever made use SCSI commands for the communication. Even ATAPI drives are just SCSI drives that inherently use the “ATA packet interface as SCSI command transport layer build into the IDE (ATA) transport. You may need to specify an alternate transport layer on the command line if your OS does not implement a fully integrated kernel driver subsystem that allows to access any drive using SCSI commands via a single unique user interface.

To access SCSI devices via alternate transport layers, you need to prepend the SCSI device name by a transport layer indicator. The transport layer indicator may be something like USCSI: or ATAPI:. To get a list of supported transport layers for your platform, use dev= HELP:

Portability Background
To make cdrecord portable to all UNIX platforms, the syntax dev= devicename:/scsibus/,/target/,/lun/ is preferred as it hides OS specific knowledge about device names from the user. A specific OS may not necessarily support a way to specify a real device file name nor a way to specify scsibus,/target/,/lun/.

Scsibus 0 is the default SCSI bus on the machine. Watch the boot messages for more information or look into /var/adm/messages for more information about the SCSI configuration of your machine. If you have problems to figure out what values for scsibus,/target/,/lun/ should be used, try the -scanbus option of cdrecord described below.

Using logical names for devices
If no dev option is present, cdrecord will try to get the device from the CDR_DEVICE environment.

If a file etc/default/cdrecord exists, and if the argument to the dev= option or the CDR_DEVICE environment does not contain the characters ’,’, ’’, ’@’ or ’:’, it is interpreted as a device label name that was defined in the file /etc/default/cdrecord (see FILES section).

Autotarget Mode
If no dev= option and no CDR_DEVICE environment is present, or if it only contains a transport specifier but no address notation, cdrecord tries to scan the SCSI address space for CD-ROM drives. If exactly one is found, this is used by default.

debug=*/#, /-d*

Set the misc debug value to # (with debug=#) or increment the misc debug level by one (with -d). If you specify -dd, this equals to debug=*/2./ This may help to find problems while opening a driver for libscg as well as with sector sizes and sector types. Using *-debug slows down the process and may be the reason for a buffer underrun.

*kdebug=*#, *kd=*#

Tell the scg-driver to modify the kernel debug value while SCSI commands are running.

-reset

Try to reset the SCSI bus where the CD-recorder is located. This does not work on all operating systems.

-scanbus

Scan all SCSI devices on all SCSI busses and print the inquiry strings. This option may be used to find SCSI address of the CD/DVD/BluRay-recorder on a system. The numbers printed out as labels are computed by: “bus * 100 + target

*scgopts=*/list/

A comma separated list of SCSI options that are handled by libscg. The implemented options may be uptated indepentendly from applications. Currently, one option: ignore-resid is supported to work around a Linux kernel bug.

-silent, -s

Do not print out a status report for failed SCSI commands.

*timeout=*/#/

Set the default SCSI command timeout value to #“seconds. The default SCSI command timeout is the minimum timeout used for sending SCSI commands. If a SCSI command fails due to a timeout, you may try to raise the default SCSI command timeout above the timeout value of the failed command. If the command runs correctly with a raised command timeout, please report the better timeout value and the corresponding command to the author of the program. If no timeout= option is present, a default timeout of 40 seconds is used.

*ts=*#

Set the maximum transfer size for a single SCSI command to #. The syntax for the ts= option is the same as for cdrecord fs=# or sdd bs=#.

If no ts= option has been specified, cdrecord defaults to a transfer size of 63 kB. If libscg gets lower values from the operating system, the value is reduced to the maximum value that is possible with the current operating system. Sometimes, it may help to further reduce the transfer size or to enhance it, but note that it may take a long time to find a better value by experimenting with the ts= option.

-V

Increment the verbose level in respect of SCSI command transport by one. This helps to debug problems during the writing process, that occur in the CD/DVD/BluRay-recorder. If you get incomprehensible error messages you should use this flag to get more detailed output. -VV will show data buffer content in addition. Using -V or -VV slows down the process and may be the reason for a buffer underrun.

To copy an audio CD in the most accurate way, first run

cdda2wav dev=1,0 paraopts=proof -vall cddb=0 -B -Owav

and then run

cdrecord dev=2,0 -v -dao -useinfo -text *.wav

This will try to copy track indices and to read CD-Text information from disk. If there is no CD-Text information, cdda2wav will try to get the information from freedb.org instead.

To copy an audio CD from a pipe (without intermediate files), first run

cdda2wav dev=1,0 -vall cddb=0 -info-only

and then run

cdda2wav dev=1,0 -no-infofile -B -Oraw - | \\\ cdrecord dev=2,0 -v -dao -audio -useinfo -text *.inf

This will get all information (including track size info) from the “.inf* files and then read the audio data from stdin.

If you like to write from stdin, make sure that cdrecord is called with a large enough FIFO size (e.g. fs=128m), reduce the write speed to a value below the read speed of the source drive (e.g. speed=12), and switch the burn-free option for the recording drive on by adding driveropts=burnfree. For the same reason, it is not recommended to extract the audio data in paranoia mode in this case.

To copy a simple disk, first read the master using:

readcd dev=1,0 f=somefile

Then write the disk using:

cdrecord dev=2,0 -v somefile

To copy a CD in clone mode, first read the master CD using:

readcd dev=1,0 -clone f=somefile

or (in case the CD contains many sectors that are unreadable by intention) by calling:

readcd dev=1,0 -clone -nocorr f=somefile

This will create the files somefile and somefile.toc. Then write the CD using:

cdrecord dev=2,0 -raw96r -clone -v somefile

To record a pure CD-DA (audio) at single speed, with each track contained in files named track01.cdaudio, track02.cdaudio, etc.:

cdrecord -v speed=1 dev=2,0 -dao -audio track*.cdaudio

To check if it will be OK to use double speed for the example above, use the dummy write option:

cdrecord -v -dummy speed=2 dev=2,0 -dao -audio track*.cdaudio

To record a mixed-mode CD with an ISO-9660 filesystem from cdimage.raw on the first track, the other tracks being audio tracks from the files track01.cdaudio, track02.cdaudio, etc.:

cdrecord -v dev=2,0 -dao cdimage.raw -audio track*.cdaudio

To record a pure disk at double speed, using data from the file cdimage.raw:

cdrecord -v speed=2 dev=2,0 -dao cdimage.raw

To create an image for an ISO-9660 filesystem with Rock Ridge extensions:

mkisofs -R -o cdimage.raw /home/joerg/master/tree

To check the resulting file before writing to disk on Solaris:

mount -r -F fbk -o type=hsfs /dev/fbk0:cdimage.raw /mnt

The fbk driver first appeared in 1988.

Solaris 9 or newer comes with a variant of the original fbk idea called lofi. The command for the lofi variant is:

mount -r -F hsfs ` lofiadm -a /tmp/cdimage.raw ` /mnt

Note that lofiadm needs absolute path names.

On Linux:

mount cdimage.raw -r -t iso9660 -o loop /mnt

Go on with:
ls -lR /mnt
umount /mnt

If the overall speed of the system is sufficient and the structure of the filesystem is not too complex, cdrecord will run without creating an image of the ISO-9660 filesystem. Simply run the pipeline:

mkisofs -R /master/tree | cdrecord -v -dao fs=6m speed=2 dev=2,0 -

The recommended minimum FIFO size for running this pipeline is 4 MBytes. As the default FIFO size is 4 MB, the fs= option needs to be present only if you want to use a different FIFO size. If your system is loaded, you should run mkisofs in the real-time class too. To raise the priority of mkisofs replace the command

mkisofs -R /master/tree
by
priocntl -e -c RT -p 59 mkisofs -R /master/tree

on Solaris and by

nice –18 mkisofs -R /master/tree

on systems that do not have UNIX International-compliant real-time scheduling.

Cdrecord runs at priority 59 on Solaris, you should run mkisofs at no more than priority 58. On other systems, you should run mkisofs at no less than nice –18.

Creating a CD-ROM without file system image on disk has been tested on a Sparcstation-2 with a Yamaha CDR-400. It did work up to quad speed when the machine was not loaded. A faster machine may be able to handle quad speed also in the loaded case.

To handle drives that need to know the size of a track before starting to write, first run

mkisofs -R -quiet -print-size /master/tree

and then run

mkisofs -R /master/tree | cdrecord -v -dao speed=2 dev=2,0 tsize=XXXs -

where XXX is replaced by the output of the previous run of mkisofs.

To set drive options without writing a disk (e.g. to switch a drive to single-session mode), run

cdrecord dev=2,0 -setdropts driveropts=singlesession

If you like to do this when no disk is in the drive, call

cdrecord dev=2,0 -force -setdropts driveropts=singlesession