[CentOS] CD burning issues & questions

Thu Jan 1 06:32:40 UTC 2009
Michael A. Peters <mpeters at mac.com>

MHR wrote:
*snip*
> 
> Any ideas/suggestions?

I always just use the cli tool, and I always do the actual burn as root.

To make a CD/DVD image I use -

mkisofs -J -l -r -o foo.iso /path/to/some/directory

To burn - which I do as root - I insert the media, wait a few seconds, 
then -

cdrecord -dev=/dev/scd0 -speed=n -dao -pad -v foo.iso

For data CDs if I pick a speed below 24x it does 24x anyway - not sure 
why, didn't with my old burner (ATAPI) but does with my SATA burner.

With DVDs - I specify 4x. When burning AVI files to play on my DVD 
player (which supports divx on iso9660) if I burn at 8x - half the time 
the DVD player reports bad disk, but burn at 4x and it always works 
(DVD-R media)

Don't let the screensaver pop on during a burn - I've had that ruin 
burns. Also burn as root. When I try burning as a non privileged user, 
it often fails. You can set the suid bit on cdrecord and burn as 
standard user, but that gets undone next yum update (I suppose you could 
write a suid wrapper script and throw it in /usr/local/bin ...)

For audio CDs - last time I burned an audio CD was so long ago I don't 
remember, but I recall needing to make a TOC file and I think I used a 
different executable than cdrecord.

Also - if running BitTorrent - shut it off. I've had burns ruined 
because BitTorrent was running. That may have been because I don't have 
a dedicated disk for the CD/DVD images, so the disk arm moving to read 
and send torrent bits may have been too slow to keep the burner buffer 
happily filled.