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.