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.

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/sr0." 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.

       A  DVD-RW  accepts  two	disc modes: the Sequential Recording and the Restricted Overwrite. If a DVD-RW medium is in the later one, it will
       behave much like DVD+RW.  By default DVD-RW discs are in Sequential Recording mode, but can be put into	Restricted  Overwrite  mode  using
       dvd+rw-format.  See dvd+rw-format(1) for more info.

SEE ALSO

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

       mkisofs(1), dvd+rw-format(1)

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)