Burning DVDs on Debian for Newbies

Posted by k2 on Wed 21 Dec 2005 at 14:43

DVD writers have become so common these days that there is hardly any difference between the price of a CD-writer drive and a DVD-writer drive. So I'm assuming that almost everyone would be buying a DVD writer drive these days. Below are a few tips for newbies on how to burn DVDs on a Debian box using the command line. Other GUI tools like k3b, nautilus burner, etc exists but its always fun to know how to do that stuff from command line.

Requirements: dvd+rw-tools package which provides growisofs to burn DVDs, and dvd+rw-format for formatting them in addition to other utilities.

There are mainly three situations to burn a DVD:

Write an pre-mastered disc image(iso or img) to a dvd:
```
~$ growisofs -Z /dev/dvd=imageName.iso
```
Write files to a dvd(an ISO 9660 filesystem with Joliet and Rock-Ridge extensions):
```
~$ growisofs -Z /dev/dvd -R -J directory/files to be written
```

Merge(add) another session to a DVD-RW:

~$ growisofs -M /dev/dvd -R -J directory/files to be written

You can also add the option -dvd-compat when writing a DVD for DVD-ROM/Video players to get maximum compatibility. Other helpful options are -V 'volid' which gives the volume ID for the disk and -speed=N if you want to use a particular speed. Remember to change /dev/dvd above to your DVD writer device name according to your system.

Further more detailed information read the man pages for growisofs and mkisofs or you can indulge in huge amounts of information about dvd+rw-tools at its home page.

This article can be found online at the Debian Administration website at the following bookmarkable URL:

http://www.debian-administration.org/articles/313