XORRECORD(1)XORRECORD(1)NAMExorrecord - Emulation of CD/DVD/BD program cdrecord by program xorriso
SYNOPSISxorrecord [ options ] dev=device [track_source]
DESCRIPTIONxorrecord writes preformatted data to CD, DVD, and BD media.
It understands some options of program cdrecord from cdrtools by Joerg
Schilling. Its implementation is part of program xorriso which shares
no source code with cdrtools, but rather makes use of libburn for
communicating with the drive.
Another, more complete cdrecord emulator is program cdrskin which uses
the same burn functions as xorrecord.
MMC, Session, Track, Media types:
MMC is a standard out of the SCSI family which defines the interaction
between computers and optical drives. Since more than a decade all CD,
DVD, or BD recorders obey this standard regardless by what bus cabling
they are attached to the computer. libburn relies on this standard
compliance and on the capability of the operating system to perform
SCSI transactions over the particular bus cabling.
A Session is a data region on an optical disc which usually gets
written in a single sweep. It contains at least one Track which is a
contiguous string of readable blocks. xorrecord produces a single
session with a single data track which consists of blocks with 2048
bytes each. It chooses the write mode automatically according to media
type, medium state, and option -multi.
On CD media there are other track types, like audio, and particular
write modes like TAO and SAO. CD and DVD- media can put more than one
track into a session. Some of these features can be addressed by
program cdrskin.
MMC describes several recordable media types which roughly form two
families.
Sequentially recordable media are CD-R, CD-RW, DVD-R, DVD-R DL, DVD-RW,
DVD+R, DVD+R DL, BD-R. Except DVD-R DL they can store more than one
session if there is still unwritten space and if the previous session
was written with option -multi. CD-RW and DVD-RW can be blanked in
order to be re-usable from scratch.
Overwritable media are DVD-RAM, DVD+RW, formatted DVD-RW, BD-RE. They
offer a single session with a single track for random access writing.
There is no need to blank overwritable media before re-use.
DVD-RW media are sold in sequentially recordable state but can be
formatted once to become overwritable. See options
blank=format_overwrite and blank=deformat.
If ISO 9660 filesystems are to be stored on overwritable media, then it
is possible to emulate multiple sessions, by using option
--grow_overriteable_iso. In this case, the need for blanking before
re-use is emulated too.
Drive preparation and addressing:
The drives, CD, DVD, or BD burners, are accessed via file addresses
which are specific to libburn and the operating system. Those addresses
get listed by a run of xorrecord--devices or xorriso -device_links.
On GNU/Linux and FreeBSD, the user needs rw-permission for the device
file. On Solaris, the user needs r-permission and privilege
"sys_devices", which is usually gained by running xorrecord via command
pfexec.
These permissions resp. privileges are needed already for listing a
drive. So it might be necessary to get the overview as superuser resp.
via pfexec.
xorrecord does not perform cdrecord option -scanbus and does not accept
the addresses of form Bus,Target,Lun which are told by -scanbus. If
support for these addresses is necessary, consider to use program
cdrskin.
It is possible to let xorrecord work on emulated drives. Their
addresses begin by prefix "stdio:" followed by a file address. The
emulated media behavior depends on the file type. See man xorriso for
details.
If standard output is chosen as emulated drive, then all program result
texts, which usually appear on standard output, will get redirected to
standard error.
Relation to program xorriso:
xorrecord is actually a command mode of program xorriso, which gets
entered either by xorriso command "-as cdrecord" or by starting the
program by one of the names "xorrecord", "cdrecord", "wodim", or
"cdrskin".
This command mode can be left by argument "--" which leads to generic
xorriso command mode. See man xorriso for its description. Other than
in xorriso command mode, the sequence of the cdrecord emulation options
does not matter. All pending actions get performed in a fixed sequence
before the program run ends resp. before cdrecord emulation ends.
OPTIONS
Addressing the drive:
--devices
Print the list of accessible CD, DVD, or BD drives to standard
output. Drives might be inaccessible if the user lacks of
permissions to use them or if the drive is in use by another
program.
Each accessible drive is shown by a line like:
0 -dev '/dev/sr0' rwrw-- : 'TSSTcorp' 'CDDVDW SH-S203B'
The libburn address of this drive is '/dev/sr0'. 'TSSTcorp' is
the name of the vendor (in this case: Toshiba Samsung Storage
Technologies Corporation), 'CDDVDW SH-S203B' is the model name
(in this case: a DVD burner).
Afterwards end emulation without performing any further drive
operation.
dev=drive_address
Set the libburn address of the drive to be used.
E.g. on GNU/Linux: dev=/dev/sr0
E.g. on FreeBSD: dev=/dev/cd0
E.g. on Solaris: dev=/dev/rdsk/c2t2d0s2
See also above "Drive preparation and addressing".
The medium in the drive should not be mounted or be otherwise in
use.
This option will only get into effect if a track source, a
blank= option, or a drive inquiry option is given. Else it will
lead to a SORRY event and normally cause a non-zero exit value.
Inquiring drive and media:
-inq Print to standard output: vendor, model name, and firmware
revision of the drive.
-checkdrive
Print unconditionally that the drive supports burnfree, SAO, and
TAO. Also print the output of option -inq.
-atip Print the output of -checkdrive, the most capable profile of the
medium in the drive, the list of profiles which are supported by
the drive, whether it is erasable (i.e. can be blanked), the
media manufacturer, and the medium product name.
Profiles are usage models, which are often tied to a particular
media type (e.g. CD-RW), but may also apply to a family of
media. E.g. profile CD-ROM applies to all CD media which contain
data.
-toc Print a table of content of the medium in the drive. The output
is not compatible to cdrecord option -toc, but rather the one of
xorriso command -toc. It lists the address, vendor, model name,
and firmware revision of the drive.
About the medium it tells product name and manufacturer, whether
there is already content written, and if so, whether the medium
is closed or appendable. Appendable media can take another
session. The amount of readable and writable data is told. If
there are sessions, then their start block address and size is
reported. If a session contains an ISO 9660 filesystem, then
its Volume Id is reported. If the medium is writable, then the
next writable block address is reported.
If not option --grow_overriteable_iso is given or no ISO 9660
file system is present on the medium, then overwritable media
are reported as being blank. This is due to the fact that they
can be written from scratch without further preparation, and
that MMC does not distinguish between data written by the most
previous burn run and older data which have not been overwritten
by that burn run. Consequently, these media are reported with 0
readable blocks, although all their writable blocks normally are
readable, too.
-msinfo
Print the argument text for option -C of programs mkisofs,
genisoimage, or xorrisofs. It consists of two numbers separated
by a comma.
The first number tells the first block of the first track of the
last recorded session. This is also the address used by default
when operating systems mount a medium with e.g. ISO 9660
filesystem.
The second number tells the next writable address, where
xorrecord will begin to write the next session.
This option is only valid for written, appendable media. In all
other cases it will yield no output text but will abort the
program with non-zero exit value.
Settings for the burn run:
A burn run requires exactly one track source address argument, which
tells from where to read the data wich shall be put into the upcomming
session. The medium state must be either blank or appendable.
Track source may be "-" for standard input or the address of a readable
file of any type except directories. Nearly all media types accept a
track source with unpredictable byte count, like standard input or
named pipes. Nevertheless, DVD-R DL and DVD-RW blanked by mode
deformat_quickest demand exact in-advance reservation of the track
size, so that they either need to be read from a source of predictable
length, or need to be accompanied by option tsize= or by option
-isosize.
Several options expect a size value as argument. A number with a
trailing letter "b" or without a trailing letter is a plain byte count.
Other trailing letters cause multiplication of the given number by a
scaling factor:
"k" or "K" = 1024 , "m" or "M" = 1024k , "g" or "G" = 1024m , "s" or
"S" = 2048
E.g. tsize=234567s means a size of 234567 * 2048 = 480393216 bytes.
blank=mode
Blank a CD-RW or DVD-RW to make it re-usable from scratch.
Format a DVD-RW, DVD+RW, DVD-RAM, BD-R, or BD-RE if not yet
formatted.
This operation normally makes any recorded data on the medium
unreadable. It is combinable with burning in the same run of
xorrecord, or it may be performed without a track source,
leaving the medium empty.
The mode given with blank= selects the particular behavior:
as_needed
Try to make the media ready for writing from scratch. If
it needs formatting, then format it. If it is not blank,
then try to apply blank=fast. It is a reason to abort if
the medium cannot assume thoroughly writeable state, e.g.
if it is a non-blank write-once.
This leaves unformatted DVD-RW in unformatted blank
state. To format DVD-RW use blank=format_overwrite. Blank
unformatted BD-R stay unformatted.
(Note: blank=as_needed is not an original cdrecord
option.)
all
Blank an entire CD-RW or an unformatted DVD-RW.
fast
Minimally blank an entire CD-RW or blank an unformatted
DVD-RW.
deformat
Like blank=all but with the additional ability to blank
overwriteable DVD-RW. This will destroy their formatting
and make them sequentially recordable.
(Note: blank=deformat is not an original cdrecord
options)
deformat_quickest
Like blank=deformat but blanking DVD-RW only minimally.
This is faster than full blanking but yields media
incapable of writing tracks of unpredicatable size.
Multi-session will not be possible either.
(Note: blank=deformat_quickest is not an original
cdrecord option.)
format_overwrite
Format a DVD-RW to "Restricted Overwrite". The user
should bring some patience.
Format unformatted DVD+RW, BD-RE or blank BD-R to their
default size. It is not mandatory to do this with DVD+RW
and BD-RE media, because they will get formatted
automatically on the first write attempt.
BD-R media may be written in unformatted state. This
keeps disabled the replacement of bad blocks and enables
full nominal write speed. Once BD-R media are written,
they cannot be formatted any more.
For re-formatting already formatted media or for
formatting with non-default size, use program xorriso
with command -format.
(Note: blank=format_overwrite is not an original cdrecord
options)
help
Print a short overview of blank modes to standard error
output.
Afterwards end emulation without performing any drive
operation.
-multi This option keeps CD, unformatted DVD-R[W], DVD+R, or BD-R
appendable after the current session has been written. Without
it the disc gets closed and may not be written any more -
unless it is a -RW and gets blanked, which causes loss of its
content.
This option cannot be applied to DVD-R DL and DVD-RW which were
blanked by type deformat_quickest.
In order to have all filesystem content accessible, the eventual
ISO-9660 filesystem of a follow-up session needs to be prepared
in a special way by the filesystem formatter program. mkisofs,
genisoimage, and xorrisofs expect particular info about the
situation which can be retrieved by xorrecord option -msinfo.
With overwriteable DVD or BD media, -multi cannot mark the end
of the session. So when adding a new session, this end has to
be determined from the payload. Currently only ISO-9660
filesystems can be used that way. See option
--grow_overwriteable_iso.
-dummy Try to perform the drive operations without actually affecting
the inserted media. There is no warranty that this will work
with a particular combination of drive and media. Blanking is
prevented reliably, though. To avoid inadverted real burning,
-dummy refuses burn runs on anything but CD-R[W], DVD-R[W], or
emulated stdio-drives.
-waiti Wait until input data is available at stdin or EOF occurs at
stdin. Only then begin to access any drives.
One should use this if xorrisofs is working at the end of a pipe
where the feeder process reads from the drive before it starts
writing its output into xorrisofs. Example:
xorrisofs ... -C 0,12800 -M /dev/sr0 ... | \
xorrecord dev=/dev/sr0 ... -waiti -
This option works even if standard input is not the track
source. If no process is piping in, then the Enter key of your
terminal will act as trigger for xorrecord. Note that this input
line will not be consumed by cdrskin if standard input is not
the track source. It will end up as shell command, usually.
tsize=size
Announce the exact size of the track source. This is necessary
with DVD-R DL media and with quickest blanked DVD-RW, if the
size cannot be determined in advance from the track source. E.g.
if it is standard input or a named pipe.
If the track source does not deliver the predicted amount of
bytes, the remainder of the track is padded with zeros. This is
not considered an error. If on the other hand the track source
delivers more than the announced bytes then the track on media
gets truncated to the predicted size and xorrecord exits with
non-zero value.
-isosize
Try to obtain the track size from the content of the track
source. This works only if the track source bears an ISO 9660
filesystem. Any other track source content will cause the burn
run to abort.
If the track source is not a regular file or block device, then
this option will work only if the program's fifo size is at
least 64k. See option fs=.
padsize=size
Add the given amount of trailing zeros to the upcomming track.
This feature can be disabled by size 0. Default is 300 kB in
order to work around a problem with GNU/Linux which often fails
to read the last few blocks of a CD track which was written in
write mode TAO. TAO is used by xorrecord if the track size
cannot be predicted or if the CD medium is not blank but
appendable.
-nopad The same as padsize=0.
-pad The same as padsize=15s. This was once sufficient with older
GNU/Linux kernels. Meanwhile one should at least use
padsize=128k, if not padsize=300k.
-data Explicitely announce that the track source shall be recorded as
data track, and not as audio track. This option has no effect
with xorrecord, because there is no support for other track
formats anyway.
fs=size
Set the size of the program fifo buffer to the given value
rather than the default of 4m.
The fifo buffers a temporary surplus of track source data in
order to provide the drive with a steady stream during times of
temporary lack of track source supply.
Other than cdrecord, xorrecord enables drive buffer underrun
protection by default and does not wait with writing until the
fifo is full for a first time. On very old CD drives and slow
computers, this might cause aborted burn runs. In this case,
consider to use program cdrskin for CD burning. DVD and BD
drives tolerate buffer underrun without problems.
The larger the fifo, the longer periods of poor source supply
can be compensated. But a large fifo can deprive the operating
system of read cache for better filesystem performance.
speed=value
Set the write speed. Default is 0 = maximum speed. Speed can be
given in media type dependent x-speed numbers or as a desired
throughput per second in MMC compliant kB (= 1000) or MB (= 1000
kB). Media x-speed factor can be set explicity by appending "c"
for CD, "d" for DVD, "b" for BD. "x" is optional.
Example speeds:
706k = 706kB/s = 4c = 4xCD
5540k = 5540kB/s = 4d = 4xDVD
If there is no hint about the speed unit attached, then the
medium in the drive will decide. Default unit is CD, 1x =
176,400 raw bytes/second. With DVD, 1x = 1,385,000
bytes/second. With BD, 1x = 4,495,625 bytes/second.
MMC drives usually activate their own idea of speed and take the
speed value given by the burn program only as a hint for their
own decision.
-eject Eject the drive tray after alll other work is done.
Program version and verbosity:
-version
Print to standard output a line beginning by
"Cdrecord 2.01-Emulation Copyright"
and further lines which report the version of xorriso and its
supporting libraries. They also state the license under which
the program is provided, and disclaim any warranty, to the
extent permitted by law.
Afterwards end emulation without performing any drive operation.
-v Increase program verbosity by one level. There are four
verbosity levels from nearly silent to debugging verbosity. The
both highest levels can be enabled by repeated -v or by -vv
resp. -vvv.
-V Log SCSI commands and drive replies to standard error. This
might be of interest if xorrecord and a particular drive or
medium do not cooperate as expected, or if you just want to know
how libburn interacts with the drive. To understand this
extremely verbous log, one needs to read SCSI specs SPC, SBC,
and MMC.
Please do not add such a log to a bug report on the first hand,
unless you want to point out a particular deviation from said
specs, or if you get asked for this log by a maintainer of
xorrecord who feels in charge for your bug report.
-help Print a sparse list of program options to standard error and
declare not to be cdrecord.
Afterwards end emulation without performing any drive operation.
Options not compatible to cdrecord:
--no_rc
Only if used as first command line argument this option prevents
reading and interpretation of startup files. See section FILES
below.
--grow_overwriteable_iso
Enable emulation of multi-session writing on overwriteable media
which contain an ISO 9660 filesystem. This emulation is learned
from growisofs -M but adapted to the usage model of
xorrecord-msinfo
xorrisofs -C -M | xorrecord-waiti -multi -
for sequential media.
--grow_overwriteable_iso does not hamper the use of true
multi-session media. I.e. it is possible to use the same
xorrecord options with both kinds of media and to achieve
similar results if ISO 9660 filesystem images are to be written.
This option implies option -isosize and therefore demands that
the track source is a ISO 9660 filesystem image.
With overwriteable media and no option blank=fast|all present it
expands an eventual ISO 9660 filesystem on media. It is assumed
that this image's inner size description points to the end of
the valuable data. Overwriteable media with a recognizable ISO
9660 size will be regarded as appendable rather than as blank.
I.e. options -msinfo and -toc will work. -toc will always show
a single session with its size increasing with every added ISO
9660 image.
stream_recording="on"|"off"|number
Mode "on" requests that compliance to the desired speed setting
is preferred over management of write errors. With DVD-RAM and
BD this can bring effective write speed near to the nominal
write speed of the media. But it will also disable the
automatic use of replacement blocks if write errors occur. It
might as well be disliked or ignored by the drive.
If a number is given, then error management stays enabled for
all byte addresses below that number. Any number below 16s is
the same as "off".
dvd_obs="default"|"32k"|"64k"
Linux specific: Set the number of bytes to be transmitted with
each write operation to DVD or BD media. Tracks get padded up to
the next multiple of this write size. A number of 64 KB may
improve throughput with bus systems which show latency problems.
The default depends on media type, option stream_recording=, and
on compile time options.
write_start_address=value
Set the block address on overwritable media where to start
writing the track. With DVD+RW, DVD-RAM or BD-RE, byte_offset
must be aligned to 2 kiB blocks, but better is 32 kiB on DVD and
64 kiB on BD. With formatted DVD-RW 32 kiB alignment is
mandatory.
Other media are not suitable for this option.
stdio_sync="on"|"off"|number
Set the number of bytes after which to force output to emulated
stdio: drives. This forcing keeps the memory from being clogged
with lots of pending data for slow devices. Default "on" is the
same as "16m". Forced output can be disabled by "off".
EXAMPLES
Overview of examples:
Get an overview of drives and their addresses
Get info about a particular drive or loaded media
Prepare CD-RW or DVD-RW for re-use, BD-R for bad block handling
Format DVD-RW to avoid need for blanking before re-use
De-format DVD-RW to make it capable of multi-session again
Write a single ISO 9660 filesystem image
Write multiple ISO 9660 sessions
Write ISO 9660 session on-the-fly
Write compressed afio archive on-the-fly
Get an overview of drives and their addresses:
$ xorrecord--devices
Get info about a particular drive and loaded media:
$ xorrecord dev=/dev/sr0 -atip -toc --grow_overwriteable_iso
Prepare CD-RW or DVD-RW for re-use:
$ xorrecord-v dev=/dev/sr0 blank=as_needed -eject
Format DVD-RW to avoid need for blanking before re-use:
$ xorrecord-v dev=/dev/sr0 blank=format_overwrite -eject
This command may also be used to format BD-R media before first use, in
order to enable handling of write errors. Several hundred MB of spare
blocks will be reserved and write runs on such media will perform with
less than half nominal speed.
De-format DVD-RW to make it capable of multi-session again:
$ xorrecord-v dev=/dev/sr0 blank=deformat
Write a single ISO 9660 filesystem image:
$ xorrecord-v dev=/dev/sr0 speed=12 fs=8m \
blank=as_needed -eject padsize=300k my_image.iso
Write multiple ISO 9660 sessions:
This is possible with all media except minimally blanked DVD-RW and
DVD-R DL, which cannot do multi-session.
The first session is written like in the previous example, except that
option -multi is used. It will contain the files of hard disk directory
./tree1 under the ISO 9660 directory /dir1:
$ xorrisofs -o image_1.iso -J -graft-points /dir1=./tree1
$ xorrecord-v dev=/dev/sr0 speed=12 fs=8m \
-multi --grow_overwritable_iso \
blank=as_needed -eject padsize=300k image_1.iso
For the second session xorrisofs needs to know the -msinfo numbers of
the medium. Further it will read data from the medium by using the
system's read-only CD-ROM driver.
It is advised to load the tray manually or via dd by the CD-ROM driver,
rather than letting xorrecord do this by its own SCSI driver. Many
system CD-ROM drivers do not take notice of xorrecord's activities.
$ dd if=/dev/sr0 count=1 >/dev/null 2>&1
Now get the -msinfo numbers:
$ m=$(xorrecord dev=/dev/sr0 -msinfo)
and use them with xorrisofs to add ./tree2 to the image as /dir2:
$ xorrisofs -M /dev/sr0 -C $m -o image_2.iso \
-J -graft-points /dir2=./tree2
Now burn the new session onto the same medium. This time without
blanking:
$ xorrecord-v dev=/dev/sr0 speed=12 fs=8m \
-multi --grow_overwritable_iso \
-eject padsize=300k image_2.iso
Operating systems which mount this medium will read the superblock of
the second session and show both directories /dir1 and /dir2.
Write ISO 9660 session on-the-fly:
It is possible to combine the run of xorrisofs and xorrecord in a
pipeline without storing the ISO 9660 image as file on hard disk:
$ xorrisofs -M /dev/sr0 -C $m \
-J -graft-points /dir2=./tree2 \
| xorrecord-v dev=/dev/sr0 speed=12 fs=8m \
-waiti -multi --grow_overwritable_iso \
-eject padsize=300k -
This is also the main use case of program xorriso itself, where this
run would look like:
$ xorriso -dev /dev/sr0 -joliet on -speed 12 -fs 8m \
-map ./tree2 /dir2 -commit_eject all
Write compressed afio archive on-the-fly:
This is possible with all media except minimally blanked DVD-RW and
DVD-R DL. Since the compressed output stream is of very variable
speed, a larger fifo is advised. Nevertheless, this example is not
suitable for very old CD drives which have no underrun protection and
thus would abort the burn run on temporary data shortage.
$ find . | afio -oZ - | \
xorrecord-v dev=/dev/sr0 speed=12 fs=64m \
-multi padsize=300k -
afio archives do not contain references to absolute data block
addresses. So they need no special precautions for multi-session. One
may get the session start addresses by option -toc, and then use dd
option skip= to begin reading at one of those addresses. E.g. for
listing its content:
$ dd if=/dev/sr0 bs=2048 skip=64046 | afio -tvZ -
afio will know when the end of the archive is reached.
FILES
Startup files:
If not --no_rc is given as the first argument then xorrecord attempts
on startup to read and execute lines from the following files:
/etc/default/xorriso
/etc/opt/xorriso/rc
/etc/xorriso/xorriso.conf
$HOME/.xorrisorc
The files are read in the sequence given here, but none of them is
required to exist. The lines are not interpreted as xorrecord options
but as generic xorriso commands. See man xorriso.
SEE ALSO
For generic xorriso command mode
xorriso(1)
Formatting track sources for xorrecord:
xorrisofs(1), mkisofs(8), genisoimage(8), afio(1), star(1)
Other programs which burn sessions to optical media
growisofs(1), cdrecord(1), wodim(1), cdrskin(1)BUGS
To report bugs, request help, or suggest enhancements for xorriso,
please send electronic mail to the public list <bug-xorriso@gnu.org>.
If more privacy is desired, mail to <scdbackup@gmx.net>.
Please describe what you expect xorriso to do, the program arguments
resp. commands by which you tried to achieve it, the messages of
xorriso, and the undesirable outcome of your program run.
Expect to get asked more questions before solutions can be proposed.
AUTHOR
Thomas Schmitt <scdbackup@gmx.net>
for libburnia-project.org
COPYRIGHT
Copyright (c) 2011 - 2012 Thomas Schmitt
Permission is granted to distribute this text freely. It shall only be
modified in sync with the technical properties of xorriso. If you make
use of the license to derive modified versions of xorriso then you are
entitled to modify this text under that same license.
CREDITS
xorriso is in part based on work by Vreixo Formoso who provides
libisofs together with Mario Danic who also leads the libburnia team.
Thanks to Andy Polyakov who invented emulated growing, to Derek Foreman
and Ben Jansens who once founded libburn.
Compliments towards Joerg Schilling whose cdrtools served me for ten
years.
Version 1.2.2, Apr 02, 2012 XORRECORD(1)
