Skip site navigation (1)Skip section navigation (2)

FreeBSD Manual Pages

  
 
  

home | help
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 de-
     velopment 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 ar-
     bitrary  pre-mastered  image  (formatted  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 op-
	    tion.

     -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" condi-
	    tion is performed, which implies that mkisofs is invoked and  termi-
	    nated 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 arith-
	    metics 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 of-
	    fered  by unit for currently mounted media. The list can be found in
	    dvd+rw-mediainfo output. Note that Blu-ray Disc recordings are  com-
	    monly  performed at ~1/2 of advertised speed, because of defect man-
	    agement 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 re-
     quire 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 undocumented is that those
     few users who would actually need to use them directly can as well  consult
     the source code or obtain specific instructions 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 character SCSI CD-ROM de-
     vice 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 append-
     ing 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 sudo-
     ers read access to any file in the file system. The situation  is	intensi-
     fied  by the fact that growisofs parses MKISOFS environment variable in or-
     der 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 consider 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 ac-
     tually to install growisofs set-root-uid, in which case it will drop privi-
     leges prior accessing data or executing mkisofs in order to preclude  unau-
     thorized 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 per-
     fectly zap e.g. an UDF filesystem non-interactively. Recommendation  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  explic-
     itly 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 reflec-
     tivity of such media.

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

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

     *	    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 in-
     formation.

     This   manpage  is  currently  maintained	by  Huub  Reuver  <h_reuver@man-
     tell.xs4all.nl>.

LICENSE
     growisofs is distributed under GNU GPL.

growisofs 7.1			   1 Mar 2008			   GROWISOFS(1m)

Want to link to this manual page? Use this URL:
<https://man.freebsd.org/cgi/man.cgi?query=growisofs&sektion=1&manpath=FreeBSD+15.1-RELEASE+and+Ports.quarterly>

home | help