Writing DVD's in Linux with file size over 2 gb
 

Hello,
I have been trying to write a dvd in Linux using mkisofs made iso and using dvdrecord to burn the iso on the dvd.

The problem I have faced is that I have .tar file with size > 2 GB. It seems that mkisofs cant make an iso image of a file greater than 2 GB. I know bzippign is an option but I wanted to do it with tar.

I found on the net that the latest version of mkisofs handles that, but I downloaded cdrtools-2.01 and it did try to make an iso image but when i mounted that iso, it had a corrupted the data.

Does anybody know an alternate way to make data DVD's with file size > 2 gb in Linux.

I found that there is a toold called mkudffs, but there isnt any good examples on how to use.

Any thoughts??.

Thanks in advance,
haoscar

I just use k3b to burn my DVD files, just recently I created and burned 7.5 gig images to DVD DL media, and regularly burn 4.7 gig disks. Never had a problem.

I admit that I don't know enough about dvd's yet, but I was wondering about your filesystem on the hard drive. Are you using EXT2 or EXT3? I believe that there is a 2G file size limit on these filesystems, which would explain why you're having this problem (if you can't make a big enough "temp" file, you're certainly not gonna make the dvd, either). The solution would be to use XFS or ReiserFS for a "temp" partition for K3B (or for your whole drive! I went to ReiserFS 3 as soon as it came out and haven't looked back).


edited because I didn't have the facts - I'm leaving the post intact, just admitting here that I was wrong on several counts here - read my later post for the goods...

If I read haoscar's post correctly, he's referring to the situation where he's got ONE file that's larger than 2 GB.

So am I. A single file 7.5 gigs .img format. I have also tarballed complete directories (several gigs) and then burned the tar balls to data DVD's.

k3b hasn't failed me yet.

isn't that a 32bit problem, a 32bit machine can't address a machine over 2something GB. I'm sure there's ways around it. but that's what i though

4GB limit on memory addressing per process.

You're talking about an ISO image that's larger than 2 GB, which is actually quite normal considering even a single-layer DVD-R can store up to 4.7 GB of data. I've never had trouble creating an ISO image larger than 2 GB, either.

The impression I got from the OP is that he's trying to create an ISO image from an original file that's already larger than 2 GB.

As for the file size limit and 32-bit architecture, I believe they are related. The signed integer on a 32-bit machine is 32-bit, which means the largest file size can only be 2 ^ 31 - 1 bytes. Most UNIX/Linux systems have that limitation removed somehow, though.

Ya quoted me, but apparently didn't even read what you quoted. Because I said Not only iso's but I have created tarballs larger then 2 gigs and 4 gigs and burned them to DVD's

Doh! I guess I jumped the gun. My apologies. :cry:

Hello Guys,
Thanks for your replies. I think I shall re state my problem.

I have a tar ball of 2.6 GB size. I want to write it to a DVD, can you please let me know the steps.

The file system I have on that disk is ext3.

Do I need to change it to Reizor FS.

As I was saying I need to create an iso of that tar ball ( so a single file is > 2BG). I used the latest mkisofs and it failed to craete a clean iso.

After mounting the iso , i tried to tar -tvf file.tar and it gave me a EOF error.

I was using the latest cdrtools package.

I used the following commands
mkisofs -r -o image.iso /home/user

mount -t iso9660 -o ro,loop=/dev/loop0 image.iso test/

dvdrecord -v -dao dev=0,0,0 image.iso

Should I be using soemthing else other than dvdrecord??

What is growisofs used for ??, How do I split the large tar ball into 2 if that is needed.

Thanks a lot,

Haoscar

Hi,
I tried to split the 2.6 GB iso into parts of 1 GB using the command
mkisofs -r -split-output -o image.iso user/

It did create 3 iso files but the Trans.TBL file size was zero according to i, which meant that there was problem with the iso creation.
*********************** output************************************
mkisofs -r -split-output -o image.iso user/
.
.
99.98% done, estimate finish Mon Jan 10 14:33:57 2005
Total translation table size: 0
Total rockridge attributes bytes: 248
Total directory bytes: 0
Path table size(bytes): 10
Max brk space used 5384
1335315 extents written (2608 MB)

********************************************************************
I am using version 2.01 of cdrtools.

also how does one test mount the series of iso images to check whether the iso creation was fine??

Like for mounting one iso file I use

mount -t iso9660 -o ro,loop=/dev/loop0 image.iso test/

Any thoughts people. Examples would be great.!!!!


Thanks a lot,
haoscar

I am confused by your statements. So you're saying that you can now create an ISO image of 2.6 GB from your /home/user directory? If that is the case, why do you need to split it into multiple ISO images?

Hello,
What I meant was that the iso gets created but when I mount it and try to untar the tar ( the file having size 2.6 GB) it fails.

I am not able to create a clean iso from that .tar file.
The command runs fine but after mounting it becomes clear that iso wasnt created properly.

I read that -split-output will make iso's of size 1 GB. But I saw the same output for this command too.

The Translation Table size was zero.(TRANS.TBL) (see the output from my last post).

So I am guessing I shall run inot the same problem again.

In the end, I was asking whether anybody knew how to mount multiple iso's created by -split-output onto one directory.

I hope this helps.

Thanks,
Haoscar

I don't mean to be picky, but you're not trying to untar the tar file right on the mount point ("/test" in your case), are you?

Since you mounted the ISO image as "read-only," you naturally cannot untar the file there. You need to copy it on a partition w/ write access in order to untar it.

Just making sure we're on the same page...

[ADD] Here's my test procedure:

(1) Create test.tar from /home/daihard/test/ as follows:
(2) The tar file, test.tar, is 3.0 GB in size.
(3) Run "mkisofs" on it to create an ISO image:
(4) Mount the resulting iso file (test.iso) this way:
(5) Now, the tar file is correctly seen on /mnt/test.
(6) Copy the tar file from /mnt/test to /home/daihard/test2/.
(7) Untar it as follows:
I was able to untar the file and see/use the contents without any problem.