I have a RedHat 9 system where I would like to use dvdrecord to backup data to DVD disc. I have purchased a new HP dvd530i internal IDE drive and the drive works fine if I run cdrecord. However, when I burn a CD using cdrecord I notice the output of the command says:

"This version of cdrecord does not include DVD-R/DVD-RW support code.
If you need DVD-R/DVD-RW support, ask the Author for cdrecord -ProDVD".

How can I obtain -ProDVD or a suitable update to make RedHat 9 compatible with dvdrecord?

The full output of cdrecord is below:

Cdrecord 2.0 (i686-pc-linux-gnu) Copyright (C) 1995-2002 Jrg Schilling
scsidev: '0,0,0'
scsibus: 0 target: 0 lun: 0
Linux sg driver version: 3.1.24
Using libscg version 'schily-0.7'
/usr/bin/cdrecord: Warning: using inofficial libscg transport code version (schily - Red Hat-scsi-linux-sg.c-1.75-RH '@(#)scsi-linux-sg.c 1.75 02/10/21 Copyright 1997 J. Schilling').
Device type : Removable CD-ROM
Version : 0
Response Format: 2
Capabilities :
Vendor_info : 'HP '
Identifikation : 'DVD Writer 530r '
Revision : 'VPS8'
Device seems to be: Generic mmc2 DVD-R/DVD-RW.
/usr/bin/cdrecord: This version of cdrecord does not include DVD-R/DVD-RW support code.
/usr/bin/cdrecord: If you need DVD-R/DVD-RW support, ask the Author for cdrecord -ProDVD.
Using generic SCSI-3/mmc CD-R driver (mmc_cdr).
Driver flags : MMC-3 SWABAUDIO BURNFREE FORCESPEED
Supported modes: TAO PACKET SAO SAO/R96P SAO/R96R RAW/R16 RAW/R96P RAW/R96R
Turning forcespeed off
Starting to write CD/DVD at speed 4 in real BLANK mode for single session.
Last chance to quit, starting real write 0 seconds. Operation starts.
I noticed the following

Hi,

Jörg schilling is the author of cdrecord and dvdrecord-pro.

He and Linus have had some issues about how dvd/cd burners should be accessed an a kernel level,
they have not found a solution wich would satisfy them both.

AFAIK Jörg refuses to incorperate (ide aka: /dev/hdc) dvd recording (as a hack) into cdrecord,
and provides dvdrecord (-pro) as a binary only. (GPL and copyrights things start getting shaky from here)

Jörg has further acused secveral Linux vendors of patching his code (or breaking it)
without telling their users properly, resulting in disgruntled suse users complainting to Jörg about a broken cdreccorc wich he did not write.
(Then things start getting ugly)

Maybe you should loko into growisofs (which can burn DVD + / - R/W) or dvr-+-rw-tools
which can also burn dvds.
Frontends like K3B recognise these tools once they are installed,
and will use them for burning dvd's.

Whachout because at least under Debian the names of both packeges are on the Install list twice,
one old (unmaintained) and one new version.

You can ofcourse obtain the dvdrecord-pro binary from Jörgs Site:

http://www.fokus.fraunhofer.de/resea.../cdrecord.html

This has some more info about the redhat and suse issues.
(But you can read from hs wording that he is pretty fed up with dweeb linux users)

What I'm really looking for is a way to backup to DVD on a nightly schedule. I had hoped to edit crontab with a few statements to run the backup at night. Can one of these other tools be invoked from crontab?

For the record, growisofs works well with RedHat 9. I was looking around online and I found a package already compiled into rpm format.

Further, you can invoke growisofs from crontab so now I have my automated backup system.

Thanks for the tip!