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GROWISOFS(1)							  GROWISOFS(1)

NAME
       growisofs - combined genisoimage frontend/DVD recording program.

SYNOPSIS
       growisofs   [-dry-run]	[-dvd-compat]  [-overburn]  [-speed=1]	-[Z|M]
       /dev/dvd <genisoimage-options>

DESCRIPTION
       growisofs was originally designed  as  a	 frontend  to  genisoimage  to
       facilitate  appending  of  data	to ISO9660 volumes residing on random-
       access media such as DVD+RW, DVD-RAM, plain  files,  hard  disk	parti‐
       tions.  In the course of development general purpose DVD recording sup‐
       port 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	genisoimage, 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 log‐
	      ical 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 genisoim‐
	      age is invoked and terminated prematurely.

       -overburn
	      Normally single layer DVD media can accommodate up  to  approxi‐
	      mately 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 adver‐
	      tised speed, because of defect management being in effect.

       <genisoimage-options>
	      More options can be found in the manpage for genisoimage.

       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 GENISOIMAGE 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 ses‐
       sion on a multisession disk, growisofs will construct one for you;

       Otherwise everything that  applies  to  [multisession]  mastering  with
       genisoimage  applies  to	 growisofs  as well.  growisofs needs at least
       mkisofs version 1.14, version 2.0 is required for  multisession	write-
       once recordings or genisoimage.

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 exten‐
       sions 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  com‐
       mand 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 genisoimage
       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	situa‐
       tion is intensified by the fact that growisofs parses GENISOIMAGE envi‐
       ronment variable in order to determine alternative path to  genisoimage
       executable  image.  This means that being executed under sudo(8), grow‐
       isofs 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 GENISOIMAGE=/path/to/trusted/genisoimage
	    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 genisoimage	 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.	Recom‐
       mendation  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 blank‐
       ing. 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:

       ·      not all DVD-ROM players are capable of multi-border DVD-R	 play‐
	      back,  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 genisoimage.

AUTHORS
       Andy Polyakov <appro@fy.chalmers.se> stands for programming and on-line
       information.

       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(1)
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