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 (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
              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 settings
              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 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 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
       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
       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.
       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 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 therefore 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 7.0                     23 Sep 2006                    GROWISOFS(1m)
