howTo CD-RW Linux/RedHat

	howTo CD-RW Linux/RedHat
	Jesse Burkhardt

Getting a CD-RW to work in the linux RedHat environment has only recently become a relatively easy task. There have been difficult issues in the past concerning kernel support and SCSI emulation for IDE/ATAPI based devices. The required kernel module for this device support, without the need for SCSI emulation, is ide-cd. You may check for its existance by using the following command and response:

[cdbackup]# modprobe -l | grep ide-cd
/lib/modules/2.4.18-14/kernel/drivers/ide/ide-cd.o

As you should notice linux kernel version 2.4.18-14, shipping with RedHat 8.0, supports ide-cd de facto.

An indispensible reference document on this subject is maintained at The Linux Documentation Project (http://www.tldp.org/) called, CD-Writing HOWTO by Winfried Tr�mper.

Two CD-RW tools needed, at least for command line CD burning, are cdrecord and mkisofs. The installation packages for these tools are part of the standard RedHat 8.0 distribution.

[Optional:] It is necessary to use the mkisofs command before running cdrecord. The first thing to is to collect the metric for the cdrecord option 'tsize'. (I found that this is actually optional in my experimentation, but command documentation includes it.) Obtain the metric from the following command/response:

[cdbackup]# mkisofs -q -print-size home/
64

Then the actual data to be written to a writable CD needs to be formatted for that particular medium's format. The following use of the mkisofs command will do this, creating the file 'cd_image_test', residing in /var/cdbackup/ and made from /var/cdbackup/home, in our example:

[cdbackup]# mkisofs -r -o cd_image_test home/

It is necessary to determine the 'dev' argument settings for the cdrecord command. In the example below they are set to 0,0,0. (Don't be put off by the SCSI references in the cdrecord -scanbus command output - they are a relic preceding IDE/ATAPI support.)

[cdbackup]# cdrecord -scanbus
Cdrecord 1.10 (i686-pc-linux-gnu) Copyright (C) 1995-2001 J�rg Schilling
Linux sg driver version: 3.1.24
Using libscg version 'schily-0.5'
scsibus0:
        0,0,0    0) '        ' '52X24X52 CD-RW  ' '1.04' Removable CD-ROM
        0,1,0    1) *
        0,2,0    2) *
        0,3,0    3) *
        0,4,0    4) *
        0,5,0    5) *
        0,6,0    6) *
        0,7,0    7) *

Finally we are now ready to run the cdrecord command for its ultimate purpose, to write the data to CD. This may be done simply with the following:

[cdbackup]# cdrecord -v speed=2 dev=0,0,0 -data cd_image_test

These commands can be run via the X-CD-Roast GUI interface. The RPM for the package requires the cdrdao and cdda2wav packages, which are both for audio CD recording.. (My initial attempts to run X-CD-Roast failed, but that was before I had successfully run the mkisofs and cdrecord commands

This is an excerpt from the X-CD-Roast rpm info file:

Description :
X-CD-Roast provides a GUI interface for commands like cdrecord and
mkisofs. X-CD-Roast includes a self-explanatory X11 user interface,
automatic SCSI and IDE hardware setup, support for mastering of new
ISO9660 data CDs, support for production of new audio CDs, fast
copying of CDs without hard disk buffering, and a logfile option.

I will add more on GUIs for use of the CD-RW as I learn about them.