GROWISOFS(1) General Commands Manual GROWISOFS(1)
NAME
growisofs - combined genisoimage frontend/DVD recording program.
SYNOPSIS
growisofs [-dry-run] [-dvd-compat] [-overburn] [-speed=1] -[Z|M]
/dev/dvd <genisoimage-options>
DESCRIPTION
growisofs was originally designed as a frontend to genisoimage to fa-
cilitate appending of data to ISO9660 volumes residing on random-access
media such as DVD+RW, DVD-RAM, plain files, hard disk partitions. In
the course of development general purpose DVD recording support was im-
plemented, and as of now growisofs supports not only random-access me-
dia, but even mastering of multisession DVD media such as DVD+R and
DVD-R/-RW, as well as Blu-ray Disc. In addition growisofs supports
first-/single-session recording of arbitrary pre-mastered image (for-
matted as UDF, ISO9660 or any other file system, if formatted at all)
to all supported DVD media types.
OPTIONS
-Z /dev/dvd
Burn an initial session to the selected device. A special form
of this option is recognized to support burning of pre-mastered
images. See EXAMPLES section for further details.
-M /dev/dvd
Merge a new session to an existing one.
-version
Print version information and invoke genisoimage, also with
-version option.
-dvd-compat
Provide maximum media compatibility with DVD-ROM/-Video. In
write-once DVD+R or DVD-R context this results in unappendable
recording (closed disk). In DVD+RW context it instructs the log-
ical unit to explicitly burn [otherwise optional] lead-out.
-dry-run
At dry-run growisofs performs all the steps till, but not in-
cluding the first write operation. Most notably check for "over-
burn" condition is performed, which implies that genisoimage is
invoked and terminated prematurely.
-overburn
Normally single layer DVD media can accommodate up to approxi-
mately 4.700.000.000 bytes (in marketing speech 4.7GB). In other
words a DVD can contain about 4.377 GiB or 4482 MiB. Same kind
of arithmetics applies to Blu-ray Disc capacity of
25.000.000.000 bytes. Anyway, growisofs won't start without this
option, if "overburn" condition appears to be unavoidable.
-speed=N
An option to control recording velocity. Most commonly you'll
use -speed=1 with "no-name" media, if default speed setting
messes up the media. Keep in mind that N essentially denotes
speed closest to N*1385KBps in DVD or N*4496KBps in Blu-ray Disc
case among those offered by unit for currently mounted media.
The list can be found in dvd+rw-mediainfo output. Note that
Blu-ray Disc recordings are commonly performed at ~1/2 of adver-
tised speed, because of defect management being in effect.
<genisoimage-options>
More options can be found in the manpage for genisoimage.
There are several undocumented options commonly denoted with
-use-the-force-luke prefix. Some of them serve debugging purposes. Some
require certain knowledge about recording process or even OS kernel in-
ternals and as being such can induce confusing behaviour. Some are to
be used in very specific situations better recognized by front-ends or
automated scripts. Rationale behind leaving these options undocumented
is that those few users who would actually need to use them directly
can as well consult the source code or obtain specific instructions
elsewhere.
DIFFERENCES WITH RUNNING GENISOIMAGE DIRECTLY
When using growisofs you may not use the -o option for an output file.
growisofs dumps the image directly to the media;
You don't have to specify the -C option to create a higher level ses-
sion on a multisession disk, growisofs will construct one for you;
Otherwise everything that applies to [multisession] mastering with
genisoimage applies to growisofs as well. growisofs needs at least mk-
isofs version 1.14, version 2.0 is required for multisession write-once
recordings or genisoimage.
EXAMPLES
Actual device names vary from one operating system to another. We use
/dev/dvd as a collective name or as symbolic link to the actual device
if you wish. Under Linux it will most likely be an ide-scsi device
such as "/dev/scd0." Under NetBSD/OpenBSD it has to be a character SCSI
CD-ROM device such as "/dev/rcd0c." Under Solaris it also has to be a
character SCSI/ATAPI CD-ROM device, e.g. "/dev/rdsk/c0t1d0s2" or
"/vol/dev/aliases/cdrom0." And likewise in HP-UX, IRIX and Mac OS X...
To master and burn an ISO9660 volume with Joliet and Rock-Ridge exten-
sions on a DVD or Blu-ray Disc:
growisofs -Z /dev/dvd -R -J /some/files
To append more data to same media:
growisofs -M /dev/dvd -R -J /more/files
Make sure to use the same options for both initial burning and when ap-
pending data.
To finalize the multisession DVD maintaining maximum compatibility:
growisofs -M /dev/dvd=/dev/zero
To use growisofs to write a pre-mastered ISO-image to a DVD:
growisofs -dvd-compat -Z /dev/dvd=image.iso
where image.iso represents an arbitrary object in the filesystem, such
as file, named pipe or device entry. Nothing is growing here and com-
mand name is not intuitive in this context.
NOTES
If executed under sudo(8) growisofs refuses to start. This is done for
the following reason. Naturally growisofs has to access the data set to
be recorded to optical media, either indirectly by letting genisoimage
generate ISO9660 layout on-the-fly or directly if a pre-mastered image
is to be recorded. Being executed under sudo(8), growisofs effectively
grants sudoers read access to any file in the file system. The situa-
tion is intensified by the fact that growisofs parses GENISOIMAGE envi-
ronment variable in order to determine alternative path to genisoimage
executable image. This means that being executed under sudo(8), grow-
isofs effectively grants sudoers right to execute program of their
choice with elevated privileges. If you for any reason still find the
above acceptable and are willing to take the consequences, then con-
sider running following wrapper script under sudo(8) in place for real
growisofs binary.
#!/bin/ksh
unset SUDO_COMMAND
export GENISOIMAGE=/path/to/trusted/genisoimage
exec growisofs "$@"
But note that the recommended alternative to the above "workaround" is
actually to install growisofs set-root-uid, in which case it will drop
privileges prior accessing data or executing genisoimage in order to
preclude unauthorized access to the data.
If the media already carries isofs and growisofs is invoked with -Z op-
tion non-interactively, e.g. through cron, it shall fail with "FATAL:
/dev/dvd already carries isofs!" Note that only ISO9660 is recognized,
you can perfectly zap e.g. an UDF filesystem non-interactively. Recom-
mendation is to prepare media for unattended usage by re-formatting or
nullifying first 64KB in advance.
"Overburn" protection in pre-mastered image context works only with
plain files and ISO9660 formatted volumes. E.g. [given that /dev/root
is an ext2 formatted file system larger than 4.7GB] /dev/dvd=/dev/root
is bound to produce corrupted recording.
Note that DVD+RW re-formatting procedure does not substitute for blank-
ing. If you want to nullify the media, e.g. for privacy reasons, do it
explicitly with 'growisofs -Z /dev/dvd=/dev/zero'.
Playback of re-writable DVD media, both DVD+RW and DVD-RW, might be
limited in legacy DVD-ROM/-Video units. In most cases this is due to
lower reflectivity of such media.
Even though growisofs supports it, playback of multisession write-once
DVD might be limited to the first session for two reasons:
• not all DVD-ROM players are capable of multi-border DVD-R play-
back, even less are aware of DVD+R multisessioning, burner unit
therefore might be the only one in your vicinity capable of ac-
cessing files written at different occasions;
• OS might fail to mount multisession DVD for various reasons;
The above is not applicable to DVD+RW, DVD-RW Restricted Overwrite,
DVD-RAM or Blu-ray Disc, as volumes are grown within a single session.
When growisofs "runs into" blank Blu-ray Disc media, BD-RE or BD-R, it
gets pre-formatted with minimal spare area size of 256MB.
SEE ALSO
Most up-to-date information on dvd+rw-tools is available at
http://fy.chalmers.se/~appro/linux/DVD+RW/.
The manpage for genisoimage.
AUTHORS
Andy Polyakov <appro@fy.chalmers.se> stands for programming and on-line
information.
This manpage is currently maintained by Huub Reuver <h_reuver@man-
tell.xs4all.nl>.
LICENSE
growisofs is distributed under GNU GPL.
growisofs 7.1 1 Mar 2008 GROWISOFS(1)
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