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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.