LinuxQuestions.org - burning cdrs using cdrecord (ver2.0) from the command line (understanding)

Hi all,

I recently upgraded RH (using upgrade option) to ver 9. I'm very happy with everything and gradually getting new things to work. Plan to get mpeg video / DVD and networking going soon I hope. Lately I have finally got around to CD burning on the device. I have a few questions that maybe soon of you could help / clarify me with:

mkisofs -r -o ora9id2.iso Disk2/

Here I used this to put Disk2 directory contents into an .iso cd image format suitable for buring. Am I stating this correctly?

cdrecord -scanbus

I used this to see what scsibus my DVD/CDwriter was on. I got: 0,0,0 <Name....>
Does the 0,0,0 mean <scsibus>, <minor>, <major> and what is the meaning about the minor/major values ? Torus geometry? :)

cat /proc/sys/dev/cdrom/info

I found the "drive speed" is 24x (read) and that I can write CDs (val=1). I know it's x10 for burning using Sandra2003 under the XP partition I have. Is there somewhere I can find my cd writer's max write speed under linux? I assume it's the same but I wonder can I proc it somehow?

I tried burning the .iso (cdimage) from above via the cmdline:

cdrecord -v speed=10 dev=0,0 ora9id2.iso

This worked perfectly 3 times (3 cds). Is "mkisofs" necessary, ie is not possible to just burn "disk2" directory directly to Cdr?

eg. cdrecord -v speed=10 dev=0,0 Disk2/

So, If I do a backup of downloaded files in a directory: I should typically always do a mkisofs of the directory before burning to CD? Thanks for any help.

I have been using Linux for several months now and while I will continue to use Windows for now... I feel very comfortable with Linux than ever before. Enjoy looking up all the extra parameters on everyday commands. Shell scripting coming on too. Basic but coming on... again my thanks to all contributors on this forum!