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 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 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  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 genisoimage 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 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  advertised  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 session 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 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 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  situation  is
       intensified by the fact that growisofs parses GENISOIMAGE environment variable in order to
       determine alternative path to genisoimage 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 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.  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:

       •      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 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@mantell.xs4all.nl>.

LICENSE

       growisofs is distributed under GNU GPL.