I'd like to know how to burn a cd/dvd from the command line but I'm not aware of all the parameters, so I'll just have to stick with xcdroast for now. You simply use cdrecord from the command line, right?

A dialog box pops up every time I start the app which mentions the cdrecord.prodvd expired key. I'm looking into how to renew it now. Thanks.

Try this: growisofs -dvd-compat -Z /dev/scd0=filename.iso

The manpage for growisofs is very short.
I only wanted to write one iso file to a cd, which I've already done, otherwise I'd give it a try. Now I'm trying to write a bunch of video files to a dvd.

However, I suppose I could just download all the debian-testing iso's and write them to a dvd.

Kind of depends what kind of video you wish to burn. Here's some more reading
http://lvempeg.sourceforge.net/DVD-Authoring
http://dvd.chevelless230.com/
http://www.tappin.me.uk/Linux/dvd.html

Also from the dvd+rw-tools page:
Q. Is there a GUI front-end available for dvd+rw-tools?
A. K3b, version 0.10 and later, and nautilus-cd-burner, version 0.5.1 and later, are both hiding growisofs behind their pretty buttons and menus:-) Keep in mind that those are not directly related to dvd+rw-tools development effort and GUI users should turn elsewhere for end-user support. Oh! dvd+rw-tools 5.10.x is a minimum requirement for GUI frontends...

Thanks, I'll have to look at the links you've referred me to.

It sounds like there's a way to tell xcdroast to use something other than prodvd but I'll have to look more into it to know for sure.

edit: Those look like very informative pages but I can safely skip all of them. The reason for this is because I don't have the need to play the dvd on a standalone player (I just want to get them off my hd and be able to watch them at a later time). I've tried transcoding video files before and my system (Celeron 733) is faaaar too slow. I just want to put the regular avi files on a dvd (no fancy menus, bla bla bla). However, at the top of one of the pages it mentions a 'dvdrecord', which looks a lot like what I'm searching for... maybe.

If you just want to burn them as a data dvd: growisofs -Z /dev/dvd -R -J /dir/with/movies/*
If you need to blank a dvd-rw first: dvdrecord -dev /dev/dvd -driver mmc_mdvd -v blank=fast

Or you can make scripts:
$ cat /usr/local/bin/blankdvdrw
#!/bin/sh
dvdrecord -dev /dev/dvd -driver mmc_mdvd -v blank=fast

$ cat /usr/local/bin/burndatadvd
#!/bin/sh
growisofs -Z /dev/dvd -R -J "$@"

$ ls -l /usr/local/bin/{blankdvdrw,burndatadvd}
-rwxr-x--- 1 root cdrom 55 Aug 14 22:19 /usr/local/bin/blankdvdrw
-rwxr-x--- 1 root cdrom 43 Nov 29 11:09 /usr/local/bin/burndatadvd

Then blank with: blankdvdrw
And burn with: burndatadvd /dir/with/movies/*

'growisofs -Z /dev/dvd -R -J /dir/with/movies/*' is chugging along.

I'm also looking in the Linux Cookbook under 'Recording Data DVDs'.
They have this: 'growisofs -Z dev=1,2,0 -dvd-compat -udf -R -J -v /foo/bar'


edit: Hmm, unable to mount the dvd I just burned.

$ sudo mount -t udf /dev/dvd /mnt/dvd
mount: wrong fs type, bad option, bad superblock on /dev/dvd,
missing codepage or other error
In some cases useful info is found in syslog - try
dmesg | tail or so

-udf you can use, otherwise you mount with -t iso9660, note that for >2GB -udf is recommended
-dvd-compat you didn't want for just a data dvd
dev=1,2,0 is just from the scsibus, you can use /dev/dvd
/foo/bar would just burn the file bar in the dir /foo/
-v is for verbose output to konsole

Any insight into why my dvd isn't mounting? I'm only able to mount movie dvd's (video_ts, audio_ts) so far.

It won't mount with -t iso9660 either? Hmm, works for me with the same commands.
The dir which you point growisofs to should also have small enough files so they fit the burned dvd.

Yeah, it doesn't work with -t iso9660 either. I think there's ~4.3GB of files on the dvd and it's a 4.7GB dvd.

All I can think of is that the filesystem gets confused if you write more than 2gb with iso9660. Try blanking the disc and burning with udf. Meaning, I hope you're testing with rw's.

I'll have to try that later. I am testing with RW's.

It turns out I am now able to mount the dvd. I don't know what was going on before.

I was just wondering if there is a way to test the validity of a dvd. I ask because my old, 7-year old HP cd-rw drive always bungled up the cd's so that when I tried them again, months later, it was as if I never wrote to them. I know the LG 4163B is an excellent drive and far superior to my old one, but I'm just curious if such a thing exists.

I used your 'blankdvdrw' script to erase the data on the dvd. I only had to modify two things: commands are denoted by '=' instead of '-' and I had to specify the scsi target rather than the device /dev/dvd (dvdrtools -v = 0.2.1-1).


Thanks for your help, once again.

I don't know of a program to test a drive but you can burn an iso file and check the result:
"dd if=/dev/cdrom of=/dev/null bs=2k" shouldn't return any unreadable blocks
"dd if=/dev/cdrom | md5sum" should match the value of the original md5sum of the iso file which you get with:
"md5sum filename.iso"