GROWISOFS(1m)                                                                                                                        GROWISOFS(1m)

NAME

       growisofs - combined mkisofs frontend/DVD recording program.

SYNOPSIS

       growisofs [-dry-run] [-dvd-compat] [-overburn] [-speed=1] -[Z|M] /dev/dvd <mkisofs-options>

DESCRIPTION

       growisofs  was  originally  designed  as a frontend to mkisofs to facilitate appending of data to ISO9660 volumes residing on random-access
       media such as DVD+RW, DVD-RAM, plain files, hard disk partitions. In the course of development general purpose DVD  recording  support  was
       implemented,  and as of now growisofs supports not only random-access media, but even mastering of multisession DVD media such as DVD+R and
       DVD-R/-RW, as well as Blu-ray Disc. In addition growisofs supports first-/single-session recording of arbitrary pre-mastered image (format-
       ted as UDF, ISO9660 or any other file system, if formatted at all) to all supported DVD media types.

       growisofs  in  SUSE  distribution  has been patched to prefer genisoimage over mkisofs. You can override this behavior by exporting MKISOFS
       environment variable.

OPTIONS

       -Z /dev/dvd
              Burn an initial session to the selected device. A special form of this option is  recognized  to  support  burning  of  pre-mastered
              images. See EXAMPLES section for further details.

       -M /dev/dvd
              Merge a new session to an existing one.

       -version
              Print version information and invoke mkisofs, also with -version option.

       -dvd-compat
              Provide maximum media compatibility with DVD-ROM/-Video. In write-once DVD+R or DVD-R context this results in unappendable recording
              (closed disk). In DVD+RW context it instructs the logical unit to explicitly burn [otherwise optional] lead-out.

       -dry-run
              At dry-run growisofs performs all the steps till, but not including the first write operation. Most  notably  check  for  "overburn"
              condition is performed, which implies that mkisofs is invoked and terminated prematurely.

       -overburn
              Normally  single layer DVD media can accommodate up to approximately 4.700.000.000 bytes (in marketing speech 4.7GB). In other words
              a DVD can contain about 4.377 GiB or 4482 MiB. Same kind of arithmetics applies to Blu-ray Disc capacity  of  25.000.000.000  bytes.
              Anyway, growisofs won't start without this option, if "overburn" condition appears to be unavoidable.

       -speed=N
              An  option to control recording velocity. Most commonly you'll use -speed=1 with "no-name" media, if default speed setting messes up
              the media. Keep in mind that N essentially denotes speed closest to N*1385KBps in DVD or N*4496KBps in Blu-ray Disc case among those
              offered by unit for currently mounted media. The list can be found in dvd+rw-mediainfo output. Note that Blu-ray Disc recordings are
              commonly performed at ~1/2 of advertised speed, because of defect management being in effect.

       <mkisofs-options>
              More options can be found in the manpage for mkisofs.

       There are several undocumented options commonly denoted with -use-the-force-luke prefix.  Some  of  them  serve  debugging  purposes.  Some
       require certain knowledge about recording process or even OS kernel internals and as being such can induce confusing behaviour. Some are to
       be used in very specific situations better recognized by front-ends or automated scripts. Rationale behind leaving  these  options  undocu-
       mented is that those few users who would actually need to use them directly can as well consult the source code or obtain specific instruc-
       tions elsewhere.

DIFFERENCES WITH RUNNING MKISOFS DIRECTLY

       When using growisofs you may not use the -o option for an output file.  growisofs dumps the image directly to the media;

       You don't have to specify the -C option to create a higher level session on a multisession disk, growisofs will construct one for you;

       Otherwise everything that applies to [multisession] mastering with mkisofs applies to growisofs as well.  growisofs needs at least  mkisofs
       version 1.14, version 2.0 is required for multisession write-once recordings.

EXAMPLES

       Actual  device  names  vary  from  one  operating system to another. We use /dev/dvd as a collective name or as symbolic link to the actual
       device if you wish. Under Linux it will most likely be an ide-scsi device  such as "/dev/scd0." Under NetBSD/OpenBSD it has to be a charac-
       ter   SCSI  CD-ROM  device  such  as  "/dev/rcd0c."  Under  Solaris  it  also  has  to  be  a  character  SCSI/ATAPI  CD-ROM  device,  e.g.
       "/dev/rdsk/c0t1d0s2" or "/vol/dev/aliases/cdrom0." And likewise in HP-UX, IRIX and Mac OS X...

       To master and burn an ISO9660 volume with Joliet and Rock-Ridge extensions on a DVD or Blu-ray Disc:

            growisofs -Z /dev/dvd -R -J /some/files

       To append more data to same media:

            growisofs -M /dev/dvd -R -J /more/files

       Make sure to use the same options for both initial burning and when appending data.

       To finalize the multisession DVD maintaining maximum compatibility:

            growisofs -M /dev/dvd=/dev/zero

       To use growisofs to write a pre-mastered ISO-image to a DVD:

            growisofs -dvd-compat -Z /dev/dvd=image.iso

       where image.iso represents an arbitrary object in the filesystem, such as file, named pipe or device entry. Nothing  is  growing  here  and
       command name is not intuitive in this context.

NOTES

       If executed under sudo(8) growisofs refuses to start. This is done for the following reason. Naturally growisofs has to access the data set
       to be recorded to optical media, either indirectly by letting mkisofs generate ISO9660 layout on-the-fly  or  directly  if  a  pre-mastered
       image is to be recorded. Being executed under sudo(8), growisofs effectively grants sudoers read access to any file in the file system. The
       situation is intensified by the fact that growisofs parses MKISOFS environment variable in order to determine alternative path  to  mkisofs
       executable  image.  This  means  that  being executed under sudo(8), growisofs effectively grants sudoers right to execute program of their
       choice with elevated privileges. If you for any reason still find the above acceptable and are willing to take the consequences, then  con-
       sider running following wrapper script under sudo(8) in place for real growisofs binary.

            #!/bin/ksh
            unset SUDO_COMMAND
            export MKISOFS=/path/to/trusted/mkisofs
            exec growisofs "$@"

       But  note  that  the recommended alternative to the above "workaround" is actually to install growisofs set-root-uid, in which case it will
       drop privileges prior accessing data or executing mkisofs in order to preclude unauthorized access to the data.

       If the media already carries isofs and growisofs is invoked with -Z option non-interactively, e.g. through cron, it shall fail with "FATAL:
       /dev/dvd already carries isofs!" Note that only ISO9660 is recognized, you can perfectly zap e.g. an UDF filesystem non-interactively. Rec-
       ommendation is to prepare media for unattended usage by re-formatting or nullifying first 64KB in advance.

       "Overburn" protection in pre-mastered image context works only with plain files and ISO9660 formatted volumes. E.g. [given  that  /dev/root
       is an ext2 formatted file system larger than 4.7GB] /dev/dvd=/dev/root is bound to produce corrupted recording.

       Note  that  DVD+RW re-formatting procedure does not substitute for blanking. If you want to nullify the media, e.g. for privacy reasons, do
       it explicitly with 'growisofs -Z /dev/dvd=/dev/zero'.

       Playback of re-writable DVD media, both DVD+RW and DVD-RW, might be limited in legacy DVD-ROM/-Video units. In most cases this  is  due  to
       lower reflectivity of such media.

       Even though growisofs supports it, playback of multisession write-once DVD might be limited to the first session for two reasons:

       o      not all DVD-ROM players are capable of multi-border DVD-R playback, even less are aware of DVD+R multisessioning, burner unit there-
              fore might be the only one in your vicinity capable of accessing files written at different occasions;

       o      OS might fail to mount multisession DVD for various reasons;

       The above is not applicable to DVD+RW, DVD-RW Restricted Overwrite, DVD-RAM or Blu-ray Disc, as volumes are grown within a single session.

       When growisofs "runs into" blank Blu-ray Disc media, BD-RE or BD-R, it gets pre-formatted with minimal spare area size of 256MB.

SEE ALSO

       Most up-to-date information on dvd+rw-tools is available at http://fy.chalmers.se/~appro/linux/DVD+RW/.

       The manpage for mkisofs.

AUTHORS

       Andy Polyakov <appro@fy.chalmers.se> stands for programming and on-line information.

       This manpage is currently maintained by Huub Reuver <h_reuver@mantell.xs4all.nl>.

LICENSE

       growisofs is distributed under GNU GPL.

growisofs 7.1                                                       1 Mar 2008                                                       GROWISOFS(1m)