CDRECORD(1) Schily's USER COMMANDS CDRECORD(1)

NAME

cdrecord - record audio or data CD, DVD or BluRay

SYNOPSIS

cdrecord [ general options ][ dev=device ][ track options ]
track1...trackn

DESCRIPTION

Cdrecord is used to record data or audio Compact Discs on an Orange
Book CD-recorder, to write DVD media on a DVD-recorder or to write
BluRay media on a BluRay-recorder.

Device naming

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
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).

Constraints for running cdrecord

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 RBACs pfexec mechanism.

File to track mapping

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.

GENERAL OPTIONS

General options must be before any track file name or track option.

Informative options

-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.

Media write mode options

-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).

Cdrecord functional options

-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
TEAC drive 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.

SCSI options

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
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

-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.

TRACK OPTIONS

Track options may be mixed with track file names.

-audio If this flag is present, all subsequent tracks are written in
CD-DA (similar to Red Book) audio format. The file with data
for this tracks should contain stereo, 16-bit digital audio
with 44100 samples/s. The byte order should be the following:
MSB left, LSB left, MSB right, LSB right, MSB left and so on.
The track should be a multiple of 2352 bytes. It is not
possible to put the master image of an audio track on a raw
disk because data will be read in multiple of 2352 bytes
during the recording process.

If a filename ends in .au or .wav the file is considered to be
a structured audio data file. Cdrecord assumes that the file
in this case is a Sun audio file or a Microsoft .WAV file and
extracts the audio data from the files by skipping over the
non-audio header information. In all other cases, cdrecord
will only work correctly if the audio data stream does not
have any header. Because many structured audio files do not
have an integral number of blocks (1/75th second each) in
length, it is often necessary to specify the -pad option as
well. cdrecord recognizes that audio data in a .WAV file is
stored in Intel (little-endian) byte order, and will
automatically byte-swap the data if the CD-recorder requires
big-endian data. Cdrecord will reject any audio file that
does not match the Red Book requirements of 16-bit stereo
samples in PCM coding at 44100 samples/second.

Using other structured audio data formats as input to cdrecord
will usually work if the structure of the data is the
structure described above (raw pcm data in big-endian byte
order). However, if the data format includes a header, you
will hear a click at the start of the track.

If neither -data nor -audio have been specified, cdrecord
defaults to -audio for all filenames that end in .au or .wav
and to -data for all other files.

-cdi If this flag is present, the TOC type for the disk is set to
CDI. This only makes sense with XA disks.

-copy If this flag is present, all TOC entries for subsequent audio
tracks of the resulting CD will indicate that the audio data
has permission to be copied without limit. This option has no
effect on data tracks.

-data If this flag is present, all subsequent tracks are written in
CD-ROM mode 1 (Yellow Book) format. The data size is a
multiple of 2048 bytes. The file with track data should
contain an ISO-9660 or Rock Ridge filesystem image (see
mkisofs for more details). If the track data is an ufs
filesystem image, fragment size should be set to 2 KB or more
to allow CD-drives with 2 KB sector size to be used for
reading.

-data is the default, if no other flag is present and the file
does not appear to be of one of the well known audio file
types.

If neither -data nor -audio have been specified, cdrecord
defaults to -audio for all filenames that end in .au or .wav
and to -data for all other files.

index=list
Sets an index list for the next track. In index list is a
comma separated list of numbers that are counting from index
1. The first entry in this list must contain a 0, the
following numbers must be an ascending list of numbers
(counting in 1/75 seconds) that represent the start of the
indices. An index list in the form: 0,7500,15000 sets index 1
to the start of the track, index 2 100 seconds from the start
of the track and index 3 200 seconds from the start of the
track.

-isosize
Use the ISO-9660 file system size as the size of the next
track. This option is needed if you want cdrecord to directly
read the image of a track from a raw disk partition or from a
TAO master CD. In the first case the option -isosize is needed
to limit the size of the CD to the size of the ISO filesystem.
In the second case the option -isosize is needed to prevent
cdrecord from reading the two run-out blocks that are appended
by each CD-recorder in track-at-once mode. These two run-out
blocks cannot be read and would cause a buffer underrun that
would cause a defective copy.

Note that if this option is used on files created by mkisofs,
the padding data that was added by mkisofs is lost and
replaced by padding added by cdrecord. This may also change
the amount of padding.

In case cdrecord reads the track data from stdin, only the
first track may be used with the -isosize option.

If -isosize is used for a track, cdrecord will automatically
add padding for this track as if the -pad option had been used
but the amount of padding may be less than the padding written
by mkisofs. Note that if you use -isosize on a track that
contains Sparc boot information, the boot information will be
lost.

Note also that this option cannot be used to determine the
size of a file system if the -multi option is present.

isrc=ISRC_number
Set the International Standard Recording Number for the next
track to ISRC_number.

-mode2 If this flag is present, all subsequent tracks are written in
CD-ROM mode 2 format. The data size is a multiple of 2336
bytes.

-nocopy
If this flag is present, all TOC entries for subsequent audio
tracks of the resulting CD will indicate that the audio data
has permission to be copied only once for personal use - this
is the default.

-nopad Do not pad the following tracks - the default.

-nopreemp
If this flag is present, all TOC entries for subsequent audio
tracks will indicate that the audio data has been mastered
with linear data - this is the default.

-noshorttrack
Re-enforce the Red Book track length standard. Tracks must be
at least 4 seconds.

-pad If the track is a data track, 15 sectors of zeroed data will
be added to the end of this and each subsequent data track.
In this case, the -pad option is superseded by the padsize=
option. It will remain however as a shorthand for padsize=15s.
If the -pad option refers to an audio track, cdrecord will pad
the audio data to be a multiple of 2352 bytes. The audio data
padding is done with binary zeroes which is equal to absolute
silence.

-pad remains valid until disabled by -nopad.

padsize=#
Set the amount of data to be appended as padding to the next
track to #. Opposed to the behavior of the -pad option, the
value for padsize= is reset to zero for each new track.
Cdrecord assumes a sector size of 2048 bytes for the padsize=
option, independent from the real sector size and independent
from the write mode. The megabytes mentioned in the verbose
mode output however are counting the output sector size which
is e.g. 2448 bytes when writing in RAW/RAW96 mode. See the
fs= option for possible arguments. To pad the equivalent of
20 minutes on a CD, you may write padsize=20x60x75s. Use this
option if your CD-drive is not able to read the last sectors
of a track or if you want to be able to read the CD on a Linux
system with the ISO-9660 filesystem read-ahead bug. If an
empty file is used for track data, this option may be used to
create a disk that is entirely made of padding. This may e.g.
be used to find out how much overburning is possible with a
specific medium.

-preemp
If this flag is present, all TOC entries for subsequent audio
tracks will indicate that the audio data has been sampled with
50/15 microsec pre-emphasis. The data however is not modified
during the process of transferring from file to disk. This
option has no effect on data tracks.

pregap=#
Set the pre-gap size for the next track. This option
currently only makes sense with the TEAC drive when creating
track-at-once disks without the 2-second silence before each
track.
This option may go away in the future.

-scms If this flag is present, all TOC entries for subsequent audio
tracks of the resulting CD will indicate that the audio data
has no permission to be copied anymore.

-shorttrack
Allow all subsequent tracks to violate the Red Book track
length standard which requires a minimum track length of 4
seconds. This option is only useful when used in SAO or RAW
mode. Not all drives support this feature. The drive must
accept the resulting CUE sheet or support RAW writing.

-swab If this flag is present, audio data is assumed to be in byte-
swapped (little-endian) order. Some types of CD-writers e.g.
Yamaha, Sony and the new SCSI-3/mmc drives require audio data
to be presented in little-endian order, while other writers
require audio data to be presented in the big-endian (network)
byte order normally used by the SCSI protocol. Cdrecord knows
if a CD-recorder needs audio data in big- or little-endian
order, and corrects the byte order of the data stream to match
the needs of the recorder. You only need the -swab flag if
your data stream is in Intel (little-endian) byte order.

Note that the verbose output of cdrecord will show you if
swapping is necessary to make the byte order of the input data
fit the required byte order of the recorder. Cdrecord will
not show you if the -swab flag was actually present for a
track.

tsize=#
If the master image for the next track has been stored on a
raw disk, use this option to specify the valid amount of data
on this disk. If the image of the next track is stored in a
regular file, the size of that file is taken to determine the
length of this track. If the track contains an ISO-9660
filesystem image use the -isosize option to determine the
length of that filesystem image.
In Disk At Once mode and with some drives that use the TEAC
programming interface, even in Track At Once mode, cdrecord
needs to know the size of each track before starting to write
the disk. Cdrecord now checks this and aborts before starting
to write. If this happens you will need to run mkisofs
-print-size before and use the output (with `s' appended) as
an argument to the tsize= option of cdrecord (e.g.
tsize=250000s).
See fs= option for possible arguments.

-xa If this flag is present, all subsequent tracks are written in
CD-ROM XA mode 2 form 1 format. The data size is a multiple of
2048 bytes. The XA sector sub-headers will be created by the
drive. With this option, the write mode is the same as with
the -multi option.

-xa1 If this flag is present, all subsequent tracks are written in
CD-ROM XA mode 2 form 1 format. The data size is a multiple of
2056 bytes. The XA sector sub-headers are part of the user
data and have to be supplied by the application that prepares
the data to be written.

-xa2 If this flag is present, all subsequent tracks are written in
CD-ROM XA mode 2 form 2 format. The data is a multiple of 2324
bytes. The XA sector sub-headers will be created by the
drive.

-xamix If this flag is present, all subsequent tracks are written in
a way that allows a mix of CD-ROM XA mode 2 form 1/2 format.
The data size is a multiple of 2332 bytes. The XA sector sub-
headers are part of the user data and have to be supplied by
the application that prepares the data to be written. The CRC
and the P/Q parity ECC/EDC information (depending on the
sector type) have to be supplied by the application that
prepares the data to be written.

EXAMPLES

For all examples below, it will be assumed that the machine includes
two drives. The reader is assumed to be target 1 on the primary SCSI
bus. The CD/DVD/BluRay-recorder is assumed to be target 2 on the
primary SCSI bus of the machine.

If there is only one drive in the machine, the dev= option may be
omitted in the examples below, but in this case the examples for
replication without intermediate files do not apply.

Replicating an Audio CD

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.


Replicating a simple CD-ROM/DVD-ROM/BD-ROM
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


Replicating a CD-ROM in clone mode
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

Creating an Audio CD

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

Creating a mixed Audio-Data CD
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

Creating a CD-ROM/DVD-ROM/BD-ROM
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.

Setting drive options

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

ENVIRONMENT

CDR_DEVICE
This may either hold a device identifier that is suitable to
the open call of the SCSI transport library or a label in the
file /etc/default/cdrecord.

CDR_SPEED
Sets the default speed value for writing (see also -speed
option).

CDR_FIFOSIZE
Sets the default size of the FIFO (see also fs=# option).

CDR_FORCERAWSPEED
If this environment variable is set, cdrecord will allow you
to write at the full RAW encoding speed a single CPU supports.
This will create high potential of buffer underruns. Use with
care.

CDR_FORCESPEED
If this environment variable is set, cdrecord will allow you
to write at the full DMA speed the system supports. There is
no DMA reserve for reading the data that is to be written from
disk. This will create high potential of buffer underruns.
Use with care.

If this environment variable is set to the value any, cdrecord
allows to write at any speed even though it may fail later
with a buffer underrun.

RSH If the RSH environment is present, the remote connection will
not be created via rcmd(3) but by calling the program pointed
to by RSH. Use e.g. RSH=/usr/bin/ssh to create a secure
shell connection.

Note that this forces cdrecord to create a pipe to the rsh(1)
program and disallows cdrecord to directly access the network
socket to the remote server. This makes it impossible to set
up performance parameters and slows down the connection
compared to a root-initiated rcmd(3) connection.

RSCSI If the RSCSI environment is present, the remote SCSI server
will not be the program /opt/schily/sbin/rscsi but the program
pointed to by RSCSI. Note that the remote SCSI server program
name will be ignored if you log in using an account that has
been created with a remote SCSI server program as login shell.

FILES

/etc/default/cdrecord
Default values can be set for the following options in
/etc/default/cdrecord. For example: CDR_FIFOSIZE=8m or
CDR_SPEED=2

CDR_DEVICE
This may either hold a device identifier that is
suitable to the open call of the SCSI transport library
or a label in the file /etc/default/cdrecord that
allows to identify a specific drive on the system.

CDR_SPEED
Sets the default speed value for writing (see also
-speed option).

CDR_FIFOSIZE
Sets the default size of the FIFO (see also fs=#
option).

CDR_MAXFIFOSIZE
Sets the maximum size of the FIFO (see also fs=#
option).

Any other label
is an identifier for a specific drive on the system.
Such an identifier may not contain the characters ',',
'/', '@' or ':'.

Each line that follows a label contains a TAB separated
list of items. Currently, four items are recognized:
the SCSI ID of the drive, the default speed that should
be used for this drive, the default FIFO size that
should be used for this drive and drive specific
options. The values for speed and fifosize may be set
to -1 to tell cdrecord to use the global defaults. The
value for driveropts may be set to "" if no driveropts
are used. A typical line may look this way:

teac1= 0,5,0 4 8m ""

yamaha= 1,6,0 -1 -1 burnfree

This tells cdrecord that a drive named teac1 is at
scsibus 0, target 5, lun 0 and should be used with
speed 4 and a FIFO size of 8 MB. A second drive may be
found at scsibus 1, target 6, lun 0 and uses the
default speed and the default FIFO size.


*.inf The *.inf files are created by cdda2wav where * is replaced by
the actual audio file prefix. They are read and used by
cdrecord in case cdrecord was called with the -useinfo option.

There are three general types of parameters:

numerical parameters
A numerical parameter is a number and directly follows
the tag label without any quoting.

unquoted string type parameters
An unquoted parameter is make from one or more words
that directly follow the tag label. How many words
from the parameter list are used by cdrecord depends on
the tag label.

quoted string type parameters
A string type parameter is enclosed in single quotes.
The string starts after the first single quote
character that follows the tag label and ends before
the last single quote on the same line. It needs no
escape sequences in case that a single quote appears
inside the string. Any text to the right of the
rightmost single quote character is ignored.

The order of the tag labels in the file is not important.

The following tag labels may appear in a *.inf file:

CDINDEX_DISCID=
The cdindex disk ID is used by the musicbrainz CD-
database.

This tag label uses a quoted string type parameter.

This tag label is ignored by cdrecord.

CDDB_DISCID=
The cddb disk ID is used by the cddb and the freedb CD-
database.

This tag label uses a numerical parameter.

This tag label is ignored by cdrecord.

MCN= The Media Catalog Number (MCN) is a 13 digit number
that follows UPC/EAN-13 rules.

The data is used by cdrecord to create sub-channel
data.

ISRC= The International Standard Recording Code (ISRC) is a
12 byte string that is created from two uppercase
characters for the country code, followed by three
uppercase characters for the owner, followed by two
digits for the year of recording followed by five
digits for the recording serial number.

To increase the readability of the ISRC tag, there may
be a minus sign between every two fields of the ISRC
string.

The data is used by cdrecord to create sub-channel
data.

Albumtitle=
The Album Title is the name of the disk in the CD-Text
information.

This tag label uses a quoted string type parameter.

Tracktitle=
The Track Title is the name of the current track in the
CD-Text information.

This tag label uses a quoted string type parameter.

Albumperformer=
The Album Performer is the global name of the of the
performer of the disk in the CD-Text information.

This tag label uses a quoted string type parameter.

Performer=
The Performer is the name of the of the performer of
the current track in the CD-Text information.

This tag label uses a quoted string type parameter.

Albumsongwriter=
The Album Songwriter is the global name of the of the
songwriter of the disk in the CD-Text information.

This tag label uses a quoted string type parameter.

Songwriter=
The Songwriter is the name of the of the songwriter of
the current track in the CD-Text information.

This tag label uses a quoted string type parameter.

Albumcomposer=
The Album Composer is the global name of the of the
composer of the disk in the CD-Text information.

This tag label uses a quoted string type parameter.

Composer=
The Composer is the name of the of the composer of the
current track in the CD-Text information.

This tag label uses a quoted string type parameter.

Albumarranger=
The Album Arranger is the global name of the of the
arranger of the disk in the CD-Text information.

This tag label uses a quoted string type parameter.

Arranger=
The Arranger is the name of the of the arranger of the
current track in the CD-Text information.

This tag label uses a quoted string type parameter.

Albummessage=
The Album Message is the global message text of the
disk in the CD-Text information.

This tag label uses a quoted string type parameter.

Message=
The Message is the message text of the current track in
the CD-Text information.

This tag label uses a quoted string type parameter.

Albumclosed_info=
The Album Closed_info is the global closed info text of
the disk in the CD-Text information.

This tag label uses a quoted string type parameter.

Closed_info=
The Closed_info is the closed info text of the current
track in the CD-Text information.

This tag label uses a quoted string type parameter.

Track= The parameter contains the relative number of the
current track on the original disk. The first track
always has the track number 1, a hidden track uses
track number 0.

This tag label uses a numerical parameter.

This tag label is ignored by cdrecord except when
checking the the Trackstart for track #1.

Tracknumber=
The parameter contains the absolute number of the
current track, taken from the TOC on the original disk.
The first track on the original disk may have a number
greater than 1, a hidden track always uses track number
0.

This tag label uses a numerical parameter.

This tag label is currently ignored by cdrecord as
cdrecord assigns track numbers when compiling the disk
information.

Trackstart=
The parameter contains the track start offset in
sectors on the original disk. If the current track
becomes the first track on the new disk and if the
track was the first track on the original disk.
cdrecord uses this number to set up the offset for
index 1 on the new disk.

This tag label uses a numerical parameter.

Tracklength=
The parameter is used by cdrecord to set up the size of
the track on the new disk.

This tag label uses an unquoted string type parameter
in the form "sectors, samples".

This label is mandatory for cdrecord.

Pre-emphasis=
The pre-emphasis parameter controls whether the related
pre-emphasis bit in the sub-channel data is set by
cdrecord. Permitted values for this parameter are yes
and no.

This tag label uses an unquoted string type parameter.
Valid values are yes and no.

Channels=
The parameter of this tag is the number of channels on
the disk. All CD-audio disks use stereo recording and
thus a 2 is the correct parameter.

This tag label uses a numerical parameter.

This label is currently ignored by cdrecord.

Copy_permitted=
The parameter for this tag label contains information
about the copyright state of a track on the original
disk.

This tag label uses an unquoted string type parameter.
Valid values are:

yes The digital copy permitted bit is set in the TOC
and in the sub-channel data. If this bit is
set, the related track is not copyright
protected and may be copied infinitely.

no The digital copy permitted bit is not set in the
TOC. The digital copy permitted bit in the sub-
channel data alters with 9.375 Hz. This is
called Serial Copy Management System (SCMS).
The sense of this track state is to flag that
the creator of the CD does not have the
copyright permission to create copies of the
related track. The related track is copyright
protected and the creator of the CD thus is just
given the permission to create one single copy
from fair use rights and no further copies are
permitted from this source.

once The digital copy permitted bit is not set in the
TOC and in the sub-channel data. The sense of
this track state is to flag that the related
track is copyright protected and thus may not be
coped infinitely. One single copy from fair use
rights is permitted.

Note that many CDs sold by the music industry have SCMS
flagged for one or more tracks, signalling that the
related content company does not own the copyright to
make copies from this track.

Endianess=
The parameter for this tag is the byte order used in
the audio data file that was created for this track.

This tag label uses an unquoted string type parameter.
Valid values are little and big.

This label is ignored by cdrecord as the endianess is
retrieved from the audio file format.

Index= The parameter list for this tag is a list of numbers
that are sector numbers counting relatively to the
logical beginning of the track (which always is at
index #1). As any track needs to have an entry for
index #1, the first entry in the list is always 0. If
more entries are present for this tag, there are more
offset values that correspond to index values greater
than 1.

This tag label uses an unquoted string type parameter
that contains a list of space separated index offset
numbers.

Index0=
The parameter for this tag is a number that represents
the number of sectors relatively to the beginning
(index #1) of this track. This number identifies where
index #0 of the next track begins. It the parameter is
set to -1, the next track has no index #0, resulting in
pregap size 0 for the next track.

Note that cdrecord strictly follows the CD-standard
that defines that the logical beginning of a track is
at the location where index #1 starts in this track.
If index #0 for track n contains audio data, the
related audio data is a logical part of track n-1.

This tag label uses a numerical parameter.

MD5-offset=
The parameter for this tag is the byte offset where the
raw audio data begins in the related audio file.

This tag label uses a numerical parameter.

This label is ignored by cdrecord.

MD5-size=
The parameter for this tag is the number of bytes of
raw audio data in the related audio file.

This tag label uses a numerical parameter.

This label is ignored by cdrecord.

MD5-sum=
The parameter for this tag is the md5 sum for the raw
audio data in the related audio file.

This tag label uses a numerical parameter.

This label is ignored by cdrecord.


*.cue The *.cue files are CD-structure description files introduced
by CDRWIN. They are read and used by cdrecord in case
cdrecord was called with the cuefile=name.cue option.

The following commands are supported in CUE files:

ARRANGER arranger-string
This command is used to specify the name of a arranger
for a disk that includes CD-Text enhancements.

The parameter is the name of a arranger. If the string
contains any spaces, it must be enclosed in quotation
marks.

If the ARRANGER command appears before any TRACK
command, the string parameter will be encoded as the
arranger of the entire disk. If the ARRANGER command
appears after a TRACK command, the string parameter
will be encoded the the arranger of the current track.

This command is only accepted if the cdrecord specific
CUE extensions are permitted.

CATALOG media-catalog-number
This command is used to specify the disc's Media
Catalog Number. The media-catalog-number is a 13 digit
number that follows UPC/EAN-13 rules.

This command can appear only once in the CUE SHEET
file. It must appear before any TRACK command.

CDTEXTFILE filename
This command is used to specify the name of a file that
contains binary encoded CD-Text information. CDRWIN
only accepts headerless binary encoded CD-Text
information, but cdrecord also accepts binary encoded
CD-Text information with an MMC-compliant header. The
CD-Text information is ignored by cdrecord unless the
-text option is used.

If the filename contains spaces, it must be enclosed in
quotation marks.

COMPOSER composer-string
This command is used to specify the name of a composer
for a disk that includes CD-Text enhancements.

The parameter is the name of a composer. If the string
contains any spaces, it must be enclosed in quotation
marks.

If the COMPOSER command appears before any TRACK
command, the string parameter will be encoded as the
composer of the entire disk. If the COMPOSER command
appears after a TRACK command, the string parameter
will be encoded the the composer of the current track.

This command is only accepted if the cdrecord specific
CUE extensions are permitted.

FILE filename filetype
This command is used to specify a data or audio file
that contains data to be written to the medium.

If the filename contains spaces, it must be enclosed in
quotation marks.

The following values are allowed for the file type
parameter:

BINARY Intel binary file (LSB first)

MOTOTOLA Motorola binary file (MSB first)

AIFF Audio AIFF file

WAVE Audio WAVE file

MP3 Audio MP3 file

AU Audio AU file (only permitted if cdrecord
CUE extensions are enabled)

OGG Audio OGG file (only permitted if cdrecord
CUE extensions are enabled)

All audio files (WAVE, AIFF, MP3, AU and OGG) must be
in 44100 Hz 16 bit stereo format. MP3 and OGG is
currently unsupported.

If an audio file is not an exact multiple of a CDROM
sector (2352 bytes), then is is padded with zeroes to
fill up to the needed size.

All FILE commands need to be before a related TRACK
command and after the last INDEX command or POSTGAP
command for the previous track.

If the cdrecord specific CUE extensions are enabled,
then a FILE command may also appear between an INDEX 00
and an INDEX 01 command. This allows to let the create
one file per track where the file starts at INDEX 01 of
the track and enda after INDEX 00 of the following
track. In this case, no FILE command is allowed before
the related TRACK command.

FLAGS flags
This command is used to set special subcode flags
within a track.

The following flags are supported:

DCP Digital copy permitted

4CH Four channel audio

PRE Pre-emphasis enabled (audio tracks only)

SCMS Serial copy management system (not
supported by all recorders)

More than one flag type argument may appear after the
FLAGS command (e.g FLAGS DCP PRE).

The FLAGS command must appear after a TRACK command but
before any INDEX command. Only one FLAGS command is
allower per TRACK command.

The fourth subcode flag that marks data tracks is set
automatically for data tracks.

INDEX number mm:ss:ff
This command is used to specify indexes within a track.

The first parameter is the index number in the range
0-99.

The second parameter is a relative time in minutes,
seconds and frames (there are 75 frames/second).

All index numbers must be between 0 and 99 inclusive.
The first index for a track must be either 0 or 1 with
all indexes being sequential to the first one. The
first index for a file must start at 00:00.00.

INDEX 00 specifies the starting time of the pregap of
the track.

INDEX 01 specifies the starting time of the track.
This is the index that is stored in the table
of content for the disk as the track start.

INDEX > 1 specifies a subindex within a track.

ISRC recording code
This command is used to specify the International
Standard Recording Code (ISRC) of a track. This is a
code that should exist for all commercial audio tracks.

The ISRC code must be 12 characters in length. The
first two characters are characters that are from the
two character country code. The next three characters
are alphanumeric and describe the studio code. The
next two characters are the last two digits from the
recording year. The last 5 characters are digits that
form a serial number that is unique for the same studio
and year.

If cdrecord specific CUE extensions are permitted, the
four fields of the ISRC may be separated by a minus
sign.

If the ISRC command is used, it must appear after a
TRACK command but before any INDEX command.

MESSAGE message-string
This command is used to specify the test of a message
for a disk that includes CD-Text enhancements.

The parameter is the test of a message. If the string
contains any spaces, it must be enclosed in quotation
marks.

If the MESSAGE command appears before any TRACK
command, the string parameter will be encoded as the
message of the entire disk. If the MESSAGE command
appears after a TRACK command, the string parameter
will be encoded the the message of the current track.

This command is only accepted if the cdrecord specific
CUE extensions are permitted.

PERFORMER performer-string
This command is used to specify the name of a performer
for a disk that includes CD-Text enhancements.

The parameter is the name of the performer. If the
string contains any spaces, it must be enclosed in
quotation marks.

If the PERFORMER command appears before any TRACK
command, the string parameter will be encoded as the
performer of the entire disk. If the PERFORMER command
appears after a TRACK command, the string parameter
will be encoded the the performer of the current track.

POSTGAP mm:ss:ff
This command is used to specify the length of a postgap
at the end of a track. The postgap data is generated
internally by cdrecord. No data is consumed from the
current data file.

The parameter specifies the postgap length in minutes,
seconds and frames.

The POSTGAP command must appear after all INDEX
commands for the current track. Only one POSTGAP
command is allowed per track.

PREGAP mm:ss:ff
This command is used to specify the length of a pregap
at the beginning of a track. The pregap data is
generated internally by cdrecord. No data is consumed
from the current data file.

The parameter specifies the postgap length in minutes,
seconds and frames.

The PREGAP command must appear after a TRACK command
but before any INDEX command. Only one PREGAP command
is allowed per track.

REM comment
This command is used to put comments into a CUE file.

The text that appears in the line after a REM command
is usually ignored. There is an exception: The special
comment REM CDRTOOLS is used to enable cdrecord
specific CUE extensions in the parser.

SONGWRITER songwriter-string
This command is used to specify the name of a
songwriter for a disk that includes CD-Text
enhancements.

The parameter is the name of a songwriter. If the
string contains any spaces, it must be enclosed in
quotation marks.

If the SONGWRITER command appears before any TRACK
command, the string parameter will be encoded as the
songwriter of the entire disk. If the SONGWRITER
command appears after a TRACK command, the string
parameter will be encoded the the songwriter of the
current track.

TITLE title-string
This command is used to specify a title for a disk that
includes CD-Text enhancements.

The parameter is the title for a track or for the disk.
If the string contains any spaces, it must be enclosed
in quotation marks.

If the TITLE command appears before any TRACK command,
the string parameter will be encoded as the title of
the entire disk. If the TITLE command appears after a
TRACK command, the string parameter will be encoded the
the title of the current track.

TRACK number datatype
This command is used to start a new TRACK.

The first parameter is a track number in the range
1-99.

The second parameter specifies the track data type.

The following datatypes are permitted:

AUDIO Audio/Music (2352)

CDG Karaoke CD+G (2448)

MODE1/2048 CDROM Mode1 Data (cooked)

MODE1/2352 CDROM Mode1 Data (raw)

MODE2/2336 CDROM-XA Mode2 Data

MODE2/2352 CDROM-XA Mode2 Data

CDI/2336 CDI Mode2 Data

CDI/2352 CDI Mode2 Data

All track numbers must be between 1 and 99 inclusive.
The first track number can be greater than one, but all
track numbers after the first must be sequential.
There must be at least one track per file.

SEE ALSO

cdda2wav(1), readcd(1), scg(7), fbk(7), mkisofs(8), rcmd(3), ssh(1).

NOTES

Not all options described in this manual may be supported by the
OpenSource variant of cdrecord. Cdrecord issues a warning if an
attempt is made to use an option that has been disabled in the
OpenSource variant.

On Solaris before Solaris 10 Update 1, you need to stop the volume
management if you like to use the USCSI fallback SCSI transport code.
Even things like cdrecord -scanbus will not work if the volume
management is running.

Disks made in Track At Once mode are not suitable as a master for
direct mass production by CD-manufacturers. You will need the disk
at once option to record such disks. Nevertheless the disks made in
Track At Once will normally be read in all CD-players. Some old
audio CD-players however may produce a two second click between two
audio tracks.

The minimal size of a track is 4 seconds or 300 sectors. If you write
smaller tracks, the CD-recorder will add dummy blocks. This is not an
error, even though the SCSI-error message looks this way.

Cdrecord has been tested on an upgraded Philips CDD-521 recorder at
single and double speed on a SparcStation 20/502 with no problems,
slower computer systems should work also. The newer
Philips/HP/Plasmon/Grundig drives as well as Yamaha CDR-100 and
CDR-102 work also. The Plasmon RF-4100 works, but has not been tested
in multi-session. A Philips CDD-521 that has not been upgraded will
not work. The Sony CDU-924 has been tested, but does not support XA-
mode2 in hardware. The Sony therefore cannot create conforming
multi-session disks. The Ricoh RO-1420C works, but some people seem
to have problems to use them with speed=2, try speed=0 in this case.

The Yamaha CDR-400 and all new SCSI-3/mmc conforming drives are
supported in single and multi-session.

You should run several tests in all supported speeds of your drive
with the -dummy option turned on if you are using cdrecord on an
unknown system. Writing a CD is a real-time process. NFS will not
always deliver constantly the needed data rates. If you want to use
cdrecord with CD-images that are located on a NFS mounted filesystem,
be sure that the FIFO size is big enough. The author used cdrecord
with medium load on a SS20/502 and even at quad speed on a
Sparcstation-2 which was heavily loaded, but it is recommended to
leave the system as lightly loaded as possible while writing a CD.
If you want to make sure that buffer underruns are not caused by your
source disk, you may use the command

cdrecord -dummy dev=2,0 padsize=600m /dev/null

to create a disk that is entirely made of dummy data. Cdrecord needs
to run as root to get access to the /dev/scg? device nodes and to be
able to lock itself into memory.

If you don't want to allow users to become root on your system,
cdrecord may safely be installed suid root. This allows all users or
a group of users with no root privileges to use cdrecord. Cdrecord
in this case checks if the real user would have been able to read the
specified files. To give all users access to use cdrecord, enter:

chown root /opt/schily/bin/cdrecord
chmod 4711 /opt/schily/bin/cdrecord

To give a restricted group of users access to cdrecord enter:

chown root /opt/schily/bin/cdrecord
chgrp cdburners /opt/schily/bin/cdrecord
chmod 4710 /opt/schily/bin/cdrecord

and add a group cdburners on your system.

Never give write permissions for non root users to the /dev/scg?
devices unless you would allow anybody to read/write/format all your
disks.

You should not connect old drives that do not support
disconnect/reconnect to either the SCSI bus that is connected to the
CD-recorder or the source disk.

A Compact Disc can have no more than 99 tracks.

When creating a disc with both audio and data tracks, the data should
be on track 1 otherwise you should create a CDplus disk which is a
multi-session disk with the first session containing the audio tracks
and the following session containing the data track.

Many operating systems are not able to read more than a single data
track, or need special software to do so.

More information on the SCSI command set of a HP CD-recorder can be
found at:

http://www.hp.com/isgsupport/cdr/index.html

If you have more information or SCSI command manuals for currently
unsupported CD/DVD/BluRay-recorders please contact the author.

The Philips CDD 521 CD-recorder (even in the upgraded version) has
several firmware bugs. Some of them will force you to power cycle the
device or to reboot the machine.

When using cdrecord with the Linux SCSI generic driver, you should
note that cdrecord uses a layer, that tries to emulate the
functionality of the scg driver on top of the drives of the local
operating system. Unfortunately, the sg driver on Linux has several
flaws:

+o It cannot see if a SCSI command could not be sent at all.

+o It cannot get the SCSI status byte. Cdrecord for that reason
cannot report failing SCSI commands in some situations.

+o It cannot get real DMA count of transfer. Cdrecord cannot
tell you if there is a DMA residual count.

+o It cannot get number of bytes valid in auto sense data.
Cdrecord cannot tell you if device transfers no sense data at
all.

+o It fetches too few data in auto request sense
(CCS/SCSI-2/SCSI-3 needs >= 18).

The FIFO percent output is computed just after a block of data has
been written to the CD/DVD/BluRay-recorder. For this reason, there
will never be 100% FIFO fill ratio while the FIFO is in streaming
mode.

DIAGNOSTICS

You have 9 seconds to type ^C to abort cdrecord after you see the
message:

Starting to write CD at speed %d in %s mode for %s session.

A typical error message for a SCSI command looks like:

cdrecord: I/O error. test unit ready: scsi sendcmd: no error
CDB: 00 20 00 00 00 00
status: 0x2 (CHECK CONDITION)
Sense Bytes: 70 00 05 00 00 00 00 0A 00 00 00 00 25 00 00 00 00 00
Sense Key: 0x5 Illegal Request, Segment 0
Sense Code: 0x25 Qual 0x00 (logical unit not supported) Fru 0x0
Sense flags: Blk 0 (not valid)
cmd finished after 0.002s timeout 40s

The first line gives information about the transport of the command.
The text after the first colon gives the error text for the system
call from the view of the kernel. It usually is: I/O error unless
other problems happen. The next words contain a short description for
the SCSI command that fails. The rest of the line tells you if there
were any problems for the transport of the command over the SCSI bus.
fatal error means that it was not possible to transport the command
(i.e. no device present at the requested SCSI address).

The second line prints the SCSI command descriptor block for the
failed command.

The third line gives information on the SCSI status code returned by
the command, if the transport of the command succeeds. This is error
information from the SCSI device.

The fourth line is a hex dump of the auto request sense information
for the command.

The fifth line is the error text for the sense key if available,
followed by the segment number which is only valid if the command was
a copy command. If the error message is not directly related to the
current command, the text deferred error is appended.

The sixth line is the error text for the sense code and the sense
qualifier if available. If the type of the device is known, the
sense data is decoded from tables in scsierrs.c . The text is
followed by the error value for a field replaceable unit.

The seventh line prints the block number that is related to the
failed command and text for several error flags. The block number may
not be valid.

The eighth line reports the timeout set up for this command and the
time that the command really needed to complete.

The following message is not an error:

Track 01: Total bytes read/written: 2048/2048 (1 sectors).
cdrecord: I/O error. flush cache: scsi sendcmd: no error
CDB: 35 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00
status: 0x2 (CHECK CONDITION)
Sense Bytes: F0 00 05 80 00 00 27 0A 00 00 00 00 B5 00 00 00 00 00
Sense Key: 0x5 Illegal Request, Segment 0
Sense Code: 0xB5 Qual 0x00 (dummy data blocks added) Fru 0x0
Sense flags: Blk -2147483609 (valid)
cmd finished after 0.002s timeout 40s

It simply notifies that a track that is smaller than the minimum size
has been expanded to 300 sectors.

BUGS

Cdrecord has even more options than ls.

There should be a recover option to make disks usable, that have been
written during a power failure.

CREDITS

Bill Swartz (Bill_Swartz@twolf.com)
For helping me with the TEAC driver support

Aaron Newsome (aaron.d.newsome@wdc.com)
For letting me develop Sony support on his drive

Eric Youngdale (eric@andante.jic.com)
For supplying mkisofs

Gadi Oxman (gadio@netvision.net.il)
For tips on the ATAPI standard

Finn Arne Gangstad (finnag@guardian.no)
For the first FIFO implementation.

Dave Platt (dplatt@feghoot.ml.org)
For creating the experimental packet writing support,
the first implementation of CD-RW blanking support,
the first .wav file decoder and many nice discussions
on cdrecord.

Chris P. Ross (cross@eng.us.uu.net)
For the first implementation of a BSDI SCSI transport.

Grant R. Guenther (grant@torque.net)
For creating the first parallel port transport
implementation for Linux.

Kenneth D. Merry (ken@kdm.org)
for providing the CAM port for FreeBSD together with
Michael Smith (msmith@freebsd.org)

Heiko Eiszfeldt (heiko@hexco.de)
for making libedc_ecc available (needed to write RAW
data sectors).

MAILING LISTS

If you want to actively take part on the development of cdrecord, you
may join the developer mailing list via this URL:

https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/cdrtools-developers

AUTHOR

Joerg Schilling
Seestr. 110
D-13353 Berlin
Germany

Additional information can be found on:
http://cdrecord.org/private/cdrecord.html

If you have support questions, send them to:

cdrtools-support@lists.sourceforge.net

If you have definitely found a bug, send a mail to:

cdrtools-developers@lists.sourceforge.net
or joerg.schilling@fokus.fraunhofer.de

To subscribe, use:

https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/cdrtools-developers
or https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/cdrtools-support

INTERFACE STABILITY

The interfaces provided by cdrecord are designed for long term
stability. As cdrecord depends on interfaces provided by the
underlying operating system, the stability of the interfaces offered
by cdrecord depends on the interface stability of the OS interfaces.
Modified interfaces in the OS may enforce modified interfaces in
cdrecord.

Joerg Schilling Version 3.0 CDRECORD(1)