Burning Cd's On Linux

Burning CDs on Linux

Contents:

Linux SCSI emulation adventures

Creating an .iso file

Burning the disk

Copy disk

Multisession

Conclusion

Resources

About the author

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mkisofs and cdrecord at the command line make it all possible
Level: Introductory

Carla Schroder ([email protected])
Principal, Tux Computing
April 23, 2003

Linux offers powerful, flexible tools for creating CDs. You can create disks that are readable on almost any platform and create .iso files for download and distribution.
Burning CDs from the command line on any platform can be mysterious and vexing, and this is certainly true on Linux. However, the commands and terminology are similar enough across platforms that it's useful to learn how to write CDs on Linux. A lot of Linux software is distributed via .iso images, so if you know how to burn your own CDs, you can download the .isos to create your own installation disks.

CD-writing programs are available for both Linux and Windows, but the Linux versions are more powerful and versatile than their Windows cousins. In this article, we'll look at mkisofs and cdrecord, the workhorses of Linux CD recording. mkisofs creates a pre-mastered image, to generate an ISO9660/JOLIET/HFS hybrid filesystem. It both creates and populates a filesystem. Unlike other data storage media such as hard drives and floppy drives, a filesystem on CD is not first created, then populated with data. There is only one chance with a CD-R: formatting it first would create a disk with an empty filesystem. cdrecord records data on Orange Book CD-R/RWs, which is pretty much all of them.

With newfangled technology like CD recording, newer versions of these programs are best. mkisofs and cdrecord should both be 1.10 or newer. The latest version of cdrecord, version 2.0, has been renamed cdrtools. To find the versions installed on your machine, type:

$ cdrecord --version
and

$ mkisofs --version
For those who are new to the world of recordable CDs, here are a few things worth knowing before we press on:

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