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

FreeBSD Manual Pages

  
 
  

home | help
READCD(1)		    Schily's USER COMMANDS		     READCD(1)

NAME
       readcd -	read or	write data Compact Discs or related media

SYNOPSIS
       readcd [	dev=device ][ options ]

DESCRIPTION
       readcd is used to read or write Compact Discs.

   Device naming
       Most  users do not need to care about device naming at all.  If no dev=
       option was specified, readcd implements auto  target  support  and  au-
       tomagically  finds the drive in case that exactly one CD-ROM type drive
       is available in the system.  In case that more  than  one  CD-ROM  type
       drive  exists  on the system, a list of possible	device name parameters
       may be retrieved	with readcd -scanbus or	from the target	 example  from
       the output of readcd dev=help, then the dev= parameter may be set based
       on the device listing.

       The  device  parameter to the dev= option explained below refers	to the
       SCSI CAM	standard notation for scsibus/target/lun of the	CD/DVD/BluRay-
       Recorder.  If a file /etc/default/cdrecord exists, the parameter	to the
       dev= option may also be a drive name label in said file (see FILES sec-
       tion).

OPTIONS
       If no options except the	dev= option have been specified,  readcd  goes
       into  interactive  mode.	 Select	a primary function and then follow the
       instructions.

   Informative options
       -help  display version information for readcd on	standard output.

       -version
	      Print version information	and exit.

       -v     Increment	the level of general verbosity by one.	This  is  used
	      e.g. to display the progress of the process.

   Readcd functional options
       -clone Do  a  clone  read.  Read	the CD with all	sub-channel data and a
	      full TOC.	 The full TOC data will	be put into a file with	 simi-
	      lar name as with the f= option but the suffix .toc added.

	      Note  that reading in clone mode results in having no error cor-
	      rection at sub-channel level. Even in  the  main	data  channel,
	      there  is	less error correction than with	other read modes. This
	      results in a slightly quality degradation. Avoid	copying	 audio
	      CDs in clone mode	for this reason.

       -c2scan
	      Scans  the  whole	CD or the range	specified by the sectors=range
	      for C2 errors. C2	errors are errors that are uncorrectable after
	      the second stage of the 24/28 + 28/32  Reed  Solomon  correction
	      system  at  audio	level (2352 bytes sector size).	If an audio CD
	      has C2 errors, interpolation is needed to	hide the errors. If  a
	      data  CD has C2 errors, these errors are in most cases corrected
	      by the ECC/EDC code that makes  2352  bytes  out	of  2048  data
	      bytes.  The  ECC/EDC code	should be able to correct about	100 C2
	      error bytes per sector.

	      If you find C2 errors you	may want to reduce the speed using the
	      speed= option as C2 errors may be	a result of dynamic  unbalance
	      on the medium.

       -cxscan
	      Scans  the  whole	CD or the range	specified by the sectors=range
	      for C1/C2/CU errors.  In non-verbose mode,  only	a  summary  is
	      printed.	 With  -v,  a  line  for each non error	free second is
	      printed.	with -vv, a line for each  second  is  printed.	  This
	      scan method only works for a few drives.

       -edc-corr
	      In  this mode, readcd reads CD data sectors in uncorrected audio
	      mode and then tries to correct the data using  the  ECC/EDC  de-
	      coder  library  from Heiko Eissfeldt. As this library implements
	      looping over two layers of error correction, readcd may be  able
	      to correct more data than	the firmware of	the CD-ROM drive.

	      This  option  is currently experimental and only applicable with
	      CD media and currently only supports plain 2048 Byte CD-ROM sec-
	      tors.

       f=file Specify the filename where the output should be written  or  the
	      input  should  be	 taken	from. Using '-'	as filename will cause
	      readcd to	use stdout resp. stdin.

       -factor
	      Output the speed values for meshpoints=# as factor based on sin-
	      gle speed	of the current medium.	This only works	if  readcd  is
	      able to determine	the current medium type.

       -fulltoc
	      Retrieve a full TOC from the current disk	and print it in	hex.

       meshpoints=#
	      Print  read-speed	at # locations.	 The purpose of	this option is
	      to create	a list of read speed values suitable  for  e.g.	  gnu-
	      plot.   The speed	values are calculated assuming that 1000 bytes
	      are one kilobyte as documented in	the SCSI standard.  The	output
	      data created for this purpose is written to stdout.

       -nocorr
	      Switch the drive into a mode where it  ignores  read  errors  in
	      data  sectors  that are a	result of uncorrectable	ECC/EDC	errors
	      before reading.  If readcd completes, the	error recovery mode of
	      the drive	is switched back to the	remembered old mode.

       -noerror
	      Do not abort if the high level error checking in readcd found an
	      uncorrectable error in the data stream.

       -notrunc
	      Do not truncate the output file when opening it.

       -overhead
	      Meter the	SCSI command overhead time.  This is done by executing
	      several commands 1000 times and printing the total time used. If
	      you divide the displayed times by	 1000,	you  get  the  average
	      overhead time for	a single command.

       -pi8scan
	      Scans  the whole DVD or the range	specified by the sectors=range
	      for pisum8 errors.  In  non-verbose  mode,  only	a  summary  is
	      printed.	 With  -v, a line for each non error free block	of 8 *
	      32 kB is printed.	 with -vv, a line for each block of 8 *	32  kB
	      is printed.  This	scan method only works for a few drives.

       -pifscan
	      Scans  the whole DVD or the range	specified by the sectors=range
	      for pif errors.  In non-verbose mode, only a summary is printed.
	      With -v, a line for each non  error  free	 block	of  32	kB  is
	      printed.	 with  -vv, a line for each block of 32	kB is printed.
	      This scan	method only works for a	few drives.

       -plot  This option modified the	behavior  for  -cxscan,	 -pi8scan  and
	      -pifscan.	 The output is better suited for gnuplot.

       retries=#
	      Set  the retry count for high level retries in readcd to #.  The
	      default is to do 128 retries which may be	too much if  you  like
	      to read a	CD with	many unreadable	sectors.

       sectors=range
	      Specify a	sector range that should be read.  The range is	speci-
	      fied  by the starting sector number, a minus sign	and the	ending
	      sector number.  The end sector is	not included in	the  list,  so
	      sectors=0-0  will	not read anything and may be used to check for
	      a	CD in the drive.

       speed=#
	      Set the speed factor of the read or write	process	to #.  # is an
	      integer, representing a multiple of the audio  speed.   This  is
	      about  150  KB/s for CD-ROM and about 172	KB/s for CD-Audio.  If
	      no speed option is present, readcd will use maximum speed.  Only
	      MMC compliant drives will	benefit	from this option.   The	 speed
	      of non MMC drives	is not changed.

	      Using a lower speed may increase the readability of a CD or DVD.

       -w     Switch  to  write	mode.  Writing is only possible	to DVD-RAM me-
	      dia. For other media, use	cdrecord instead.  Note	that  cdrecord
	      also supports to write DVD-RAM media.

	      If  this	option is not present, readcd reads from the specified
	      device.

   SCSI	options
       dev=target
	      Set the SCSI target for the  CD/DVD/BluRay-Recorder,  see	 notes
	      above.  A	typical	target device specification is dev=1,6,0 .  If
	      a	 filename  must	be provided together with the numerical	target
	      specification, the filename  is  implementation  specific.   The
	      correct  filename	 in  this case can be found in the system spe-
	      cific manuals of the target operating system.  On	a FreeBSD sys-
	      tem without CAM support, you need	 to  use  the  control	device
	      (e.g.   /dev/rcd0.ctl).	A correct device specification in this
	      case may be dev=/dev/rcd0.ctl:@ .

	    General SCSI addressing
	      The target device	to the dev=  option  refers  to	 the  SCSI CAM
	      standard	notation  for scsibus/target/lun of the	CD/DVD/BluRay-
	      Recorder.	Communication on SunOS is done with the	 SCSI  general
	      driver scg.  Other operating systems are using a library simula-
	      tion  of	this  driver.	Possible  syntax is: dev= scsibus,tar-
	      get,lun or dev= target,lun.  In the latter case, the CD/DVD/Blu-
	      Ray-Recorder has to be connected to the default SCSI bus of  the
	      machine.	Scsibus, target	and lun	are integer numbers.  Some op-
	      erating systems or SCSI transport	implementations	may require to
	      specify a	filename in addition.  In this case the	correct	syntax
	      for  the	device	is: dev= devicename:scsibus,target,lun or dev=
	      devicename:target,lun.  If the name of the device	node that  has
	      been  specified  on such a system	refers to exactly one SCSI de-
	      vice, a shorthand	in the form dev= devicename:@ or dev=  device-
	      name:@,lun  may  be used instead of dev= devicename:scsibus,tar-
	      get,lun.

	    Remote SCSI	addressing
	      To access	remote SCSI devices, you need to prepend the SCSI  de-
	      vice  name by a remote device indicator. The remote device indi-
	      cator is either REMOTE:user@host:	or REMOTE:host:	A valid	remote
	      SCSI device name may be: REMOTE:user@host: to allow remote  SCSI
	      bus scanning or REMOTE:user@host:1,0,0 to	access the SCSI	device
	      at  host connected to SCSI bus # 1,target	0, lun 0.  In order to
	      allow remote access to a specific	 host,	the  rscsi(1)  program
	      needs to be present and configured on the	host.

	    Alternate SCSI transports
	      Cdrecord	is  completely	based  on SCSI commands	but this is no
	      problem as all CD/DVD/BluRay writers ever	made use SCSI commands
	      for the communication. Even ATAPI	drives are  just  SCSI	drives
	      that  inherently	use  the  ATA packet interface as SCSI command
	      transport	layer build into the IDE  (ATA)	 transport.   You  may
	      need  to	specify	 an  alternate	transport layer	on the command
	      line if your OS does not implement  a  fully  integrated	kernel
	      driver  subsystem	that allows one	to access any drive using SCSI
	      commands via a single unique user	interface.

	      To access	SCSI devices via alternate transport layers, you  need
	      to  prepend the SCSI device name by a transport layer indicator.
	      The transport layer indicator may	be something  like  USCSI:  or
	      ATAPI:.	To  get	 a list	of supported transport layers for your
	      platform,	use dev= HELP:

	    Portability	Background
	      To make readcd portable to all UNIX platforms, the  syntax  dev=
	      devicename:scsibus,target,lun  is	 preferred as it hides OS spe-
	      cific knowledge about device names from the user.	 A specific OS
	      may not necessarily support a way	to specify a real device  file
	      name nor a way to	specify	scsibus,target,lun.

	      Scsibus 0	is the default SCSI bus	on the machine.	Watch the boot
	      messages for more	information or look into /var/adm/messages for
	      more  information	 about the SCSI	configuration of your machine.
	      If you have problems to figure out what values for  scsibus,tar-
	      get,lun  should  be  used, try the -scanbus option of readcd de-
	      scribed below.

	    Using logical names	for devices
	      If no dev	option is present, readcd will try to get  the	device
	      from the CDR_DEVICE environment.

	      If  a  file /etc/default/cdrecord	exists,	and if the argument to
	      the dev= option or the CDR_DEVICE	environment does  not  contain
	      the  characters ',', '/',	'@' or ':', it is interpreted as a de-
	      vice  label  name	 that  was  defined  in	 the   file   /etc/de-
	      fault/cdrecord (see FILES	section).

	    Autotarget Mode
	      If  no  dev= option and no CDR_DEVICE environment	is present, or
	      if it only contains a transport specifyer	but no	address	 nota-
	      tion,  readcd  tries  to	scan the SCSI address space for	CD-ROM
	      drives.  If exactly one is found,	this is	used by	default.

       debug=#,	-d
	      Set the misc debug value to # (with debug=#)  or	increment  the
	      misc  debug  level  by  one  (with -d). If you specify -dd, this
	      equals to	debug=2.  This may help	to find	problems while opening
	      a	driver for libscg.  as well as with sector  sizes  and	sector
	      types.   Using -debug slows down the process and may be the rea-
	      son for a	buffer underrun.

       kdebug=#, kd=#
	      Tell the scg-driver to modify the	kernel debug value while  SCSI
	      commands are running.

       -scanbus
	      Scan  all	 SCSI devices on all SCSI busses and print the inquiry
	      strings. This option may be used to find SCSI address of the de-
	      vices on a system.  The numbers printed out as labels  are  com-
	      puted by:	bus * 100 + target

       scgopts=list
	      A	 comma separated list of SCSI options that are handled by lib-
	      scg.  The	implemented options may	be updated independently  from
	      applications.   Currently, one option: ignore-resid is supported
	      to work around a Linux kernel bug.

       -silent,	-s
	      Do not print out a status	report for failed SCSI commands.

       spt=#  Set the maximum number of	sectors	per transfer.

       timeout=#
	      Set the default SCSI command timeout value to  #	seconds.   The
	      default  SCSI  command  timeout  is the minimum timeout used for
	      sending SCSI commands.  If a SCSI	command	fails due to  a	 time-
	      out, you may try to raise	the default SCSI command timeout above
	      the  timeout  value  of the failed command.  If the command runs
	      correctly	with a raised command timeout, please report the  bet-
	      ter timeout value	and the	corresponding command to the author of
	      the program.  If no timeout option is present, a default timeout
	      of 40 seconds is used.

       ts=#   Set  the	maximum	 transfer size for a single SCSI command to #.
	      The syntax for the ts= option is the same	as for	cdrecord  fs=#
	      or sdd bs=#.

	      If no ts=	option has been	specified, readcd defaults to a	trans-
	      fer size of 256 kB. If libscg gets lower values from the operat-
	      ing  system,  the	 value is reduced to the maximum value that is
	      possible with the	current	operating system.  Sometimes,  it  may
	      help  to	further	reduce the transfer size or to enhance it, but
	      note that	it may take a long time	to find	a better value by  ex-
	      perimenting with the ts= option.

       -V     Increment	 the verbose level with	respect	of SCSI	command	trans-
	      port by one.  This helps to debug	problems during	 the  process,
	      that  occur in the CD-Recorder.  If you get incomprehensible er-
	      ror messages you should use this flag to get more	detailed  out-
	      put.   -VV  will show data buffer	content	in addition.  Using -V
	      or -VV slows down	the process.

EXAMPLES
       For all examples	below, it will be assumed that the drive is  connected
       to the primary SCSI bus of the machine. The SCSI	target id is set to 2.

       To  read	 the complete media from a CD-ROM writing the data to the file
       cdimage.raw:

	   readcd dev=2,0 f=cdimage.raw

       To read sectors from range 150 ... 10000	from a CD-ROM writing the data
       to the file cdimage.raw:

	   readcd dev=2,0 sectors=150-10000 f=cdimage.raw

       To write	the data from the file cdimage.raw (e.g.  a  filesystem	 image
       from mkisofs) to	a DVD-RAM, call:

	   readcd dev=2,0 -w f=cdimage.raw

ENVIRONMENT
       RSH    If  the  RSH  environment	is present, the	remote connection will
	      not be created via rcmd(3) but by	calling	the program pointed to
	      by RSH.  Use e.g.	 RSH=/usr/bin/ssh to  create  a	 secure	 shell
	      connection.

	      Note  that  this	forces cdrecord	to create a pipe to the	rsh(1)
	      program and disallows cdrecord to	directly  access  the  network
	      socket to	the remote server.  This makes it impossible to	set up
	      performance parameters and slows down the	connection compared to
	      a	root initiated rcmd(3) connection.

       RSCSI  If the RSCSI environment is present, the remote SCSI server will
	      not  be  the  program  /opt/schily/sbin/rscsi  but  the  program
	      pointed to by RSCSI.  Note that the remote SCSI  server  program
	      name  will  be  ignored  if you log in using an account that has
	      been created with	a remote SCSI server program as	login shell.

EXIT STATUS
       The following exit codes	are used:

       0      No error appeared.

       -1     A	specific error appeared. This may be a usage error  caused  by
	      an illegal command line or another error with a problem specific
	      error message from readcd.

       -2     An  unspecified  error appeared during the process of talking to
	      the drive.  See SCSI error message  for  more  information.  The
	      section DIAGNOSTICS below	contains an explanation	on how to read
	      SCSI error messages.

       Note  that older	operating systems and older shells may not support the
       full 32 bit range of the	exit code and mask the value with  0xFF.  This
       results	in shortened exit codes	in the range 0..255 where -1 is	mapped
       to 255.

FILES
SEE ALSO
       cdrecord(1), mkisofs(8),	rcmd(3), ssh(1).

NOTES
       If you don't want to allow users	to become root on your system,	readcd
       may  safely be installed	suid root. This	allows all users or a group of
       users with no root privileges to	use readcd.  Readcd in this case  will
       only allow access to CD-ROM type	drives-	To give	all user access	to use
       readcd, enter:

	    chown root /usr/local/bin/readcd
	    chmod 4711 /usr/local/bin/readcd

       To give a restricted group of users access to readcd enter:

	    chown root /usr/local/bin/readcd
	    chgrp cdburners /usr/local/bin/readcd
	    chmod 4710 /usr/local/bin/readcd

       and add a group cdburners on your system.

       Never  give  write permissions for non root users to the	/dev/scg?  de-
       vices unless you	would allow  anybody  to  read/write/format  all  your
       disks.

       You should not connect old drives that do not support disconnect/recon-
       nect to either the SCSI bus that	is connected to	the CD-Recorder	or the
       source disk.

       When  using readcd with the Linux SCSI generic driver.  You should note
       that readcd uses	a layer, that tries to emulate	the  functionality  of
       the scg driver on top of	the drives of the local	operating system.  Un-
       fortunately, the	sg driver on Linux has several flaws:

             It cannot	see if a SCSI command could not	be sent	at all.

             It cannot	get the	SCSI status byte.  Readcd for that reason can-
	      not report failing SCSI commands in some situations.

             It  cannot  get  real DMA	count of transfer.  Readcd cannot tell
	      you if there is an DMA residual count.

             It cannot	get number of bytes valid in auto sense	data.	Readcd
	      cannot tell you if device	transfers no sense data	at all.

             It  fetches to few data in auto request sense (CCS/SCSI-2/SCSI-3
	      needs >= 18).

DIAGNOSTICS
       A typical error message for a SCSI command looks	like:

	      readcd: I/O error. test unit ready: scsi sendcmd:	no error
	      CDB:  00 20 00 00	00 00
	      status: 0x2 (CHECK CONDITION)
	      Sense Bytes: 70 00 05 00 00 00 00	0A 00 00 00 00 25 00 00	00 00 00
	      Sense Key: 0x5 Illegal Request, Segment 0
	      Sense Code: 0x25 Qual 0x00 (logical unit not supported) Fru 0x0
	      Sense flags: Blk 0 (not valid)
	      cmd finished after 0.002s	timeout	40s

       The first line gives information	about the transport  of	 the  command.
       The text	after the first	colon gives the	error text for the system call
       from  the  view	of  the	 kernel. It usually is:	I/O error unless other
       problems	happen.	The next words contain a  short	 description  for  the
       SCSI  command  that fails. The rest of the line tells you if there were
       any problems for	the transport of the command over the SCSI bus.	 fatal
       error means that	it was not possible to transport the command (i.e.  no
       device present at the requested SCSI address).

       The second line prints the SCSI command descriptor block	for the	failed
       command.

       The  third  line	 gives information on the SCSI status code returned by
       the command, if the transport of	the command succeeds.  This  is	 error
       information from	the SCSI device.

       The fourth line is a hex	dump of	the auto request sense information for
       the command.

       The  fifth  line	is the error text for the sense	key if available, fol-
       lowed by	the segment number that	is only	valid if  the  command	was  a
       copy  command. If the error message is not directly related to the cur-
       rent command, the text deferred error is	appended.

       The sixth line is the error text	for the	sense code and the sense qual-
       ifier if	available.  If the type	of the device is known,	the sense data
       is decoded from tables in scsierrs.c .  The text	is followed by the er-
       ror value for a field replaceable unit.

       The seventh line	prints the block number	that is	related	to the	failed
       command	and  text for several error flags. The block number may	not be
       valid.

       The eight line reports the timeout set up for this command and the time
       that the	command	really needed to complete.

BUGS
       None currently known.

       Mail bugs and suggestions to schilytools@mlists.in-berlin.de or open  a
       ticket at https://codeberg.org/schilytools/schilytools/issues.

       The mailing list	archive	may be found at:

       https://mlists.in-berlin.de/mailman/listinfo/schilytools-mlists.in-berlin.de.

AUTHORS
       Joerg Schilling and the schilytools project authors.

SOURCE DOWNLOAD
       The source code for the cdrtools	is included in the schilytools project
       and may be retrieved from the schilytools project at Codeberg at

       https://codeberg.org/schilytools/schilytools.

       The download directory is

       https://codeberg.org/schilytools/schilytools/releases.

INTERFACE STABILITY
       The interfaces provided by readcd are designed for long term stability.
       As  readcd  depends  on interfaces provided by the underlying operating
       system, the stability of	the interfaces offered by  readcd  depends  on
       the  interface  stability of the	OS interfaces.	Modified interfaces in
       the OS may enforce modified interfaces in readcd.

Joerg Schilling			  2022/10/06			     READCD(1)

Want to link to this manual page? Use this URL:
<https://man.freebsd.org/cgi/man.cgi?query=readcd&sektion=1&manpath=FreeBSD+Ports+14.3.quarterly>

home | help