Supported Media

Cdrecord supports to write the following media types:

CD-R

CD recordable, a write once CD medium.

CD-RW

CD read/write, a rewritable once CD medium.

DVD-R

DVD recordable, a write once DVD medium. This is the preferred single layer write once DVD medium type.

DVD-RW

DVD read/write, a rewritable DVD medium. This is the preferred single layer rewritable DVD medium type.

DVD+R

DVDplus recordable, a write once DVDplus medium.

DVD+RW

DVDplus read/write, a rewritable DVDplus medium.

DVD-R/DL

DVD Dual layer

DVD+R/DL

DVD Double layer This is the preferred dual layer DVD medium type as DVD+R/DL works on most writers and on almost all readers.

BD-R

Blu-Ray recordable a write once Blu-Ray medium. This includes multi layer support.

BD-RE

Blu-Ray rewritable a rewritable Blu-Ray medium. This includes multi layer support.

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

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 a fine grained privileges mechanism, such as the Solaris privileges(7) mechanism via exec_attr(5) or the Linux capabilities(7) mechanism via setcap(8) to allow cdrecord to be used as an ordinary user.

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.

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. The result of this firmware bugs is that in special with disks written with no pregap, the time is going backwards on the player or the disk will not continue with the next track. Since today, many CD writers are made by the Chinese manufacturer Lite-ON that is known for various firmware defects, it is recommended to write all audio CDs in raw 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. Because there are several CD writers with firmware bugs, this is the preferred mode to write audio CDs. 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:

-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 one to write all sub-channel data. The -raw16 option should only be used with drives that do not support to write in -raw96r mode.

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

cuefile=filename

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

defpregap=#

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

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

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

driver=name

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

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:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

debug=#, -d

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

kdebug=#, kd=#

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

-reset

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

-scanbus

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

scgopts=list

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

-silent, -s

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

timeout=#

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

ts=#

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

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

-V

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

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