CD burning
From Linux 101, The beginner's guide to all things Linux.
CD burning in Linux is pretty easy. There are just a couple of special considerations to make sure of.
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[edit] Which kernel series are you using?
[edit] Kernel 2.4.x
Users of the 2.4 series kernel have some extra kernel options they need to use. Basically the list entails:
- SCSI Support
- SCSI Generic Support
- IDE SCSI CD-ROM Emulation
This may sound a little bit fishy, but the way the 2.4 series kernel wrote the IDE CD-ROM code does not allow for CD writing. So, someone came up with a cute little hack and you tell the kernel to think of the IDE CD-ROM as a SCSI CD-ROM and then it's no problem.
When you boot your kernel with a boot loader, you'll need to pass the option hdc=ide-scsi or something similar. The hdc is from your devices (no /dev/ before it!) and the ide-scsi tells the kernel you want this drive to emulate those SCSI capabilities.
[edit] Kernel 2.6.x
You don't need to worry about the SCSI emulation like the 2.4 users. Your kernel IDE code was rewritten to allow for CD writing.
[edit] Command line programs
As a beginner, you will probably not want to actually burn that CD at a command prompt. This is just to tell you about the two big common ones, so you know they exist. You will need these on your computer even if you use a GUI CD burner, because the GUI is actually a really awesome front end for the command line programs.
- cdrdao
- Cdrdao records audio or data CD-Rs in disk-at-once (DAO) mode based on a textual description of the CD contents.
- cdrtools
- This is the more powerful (and common) of the two. It has many CD writing capabilities.
[edit] Setuid
One thing to note about these programs is that they can only be run by root to burn CD's. You'd probably want to go ahead and make it possible to let your personal user write CDs, so you could do the setuid to /usr/bin/cdrdao and /usr/bin/cdrecord.
[edit] Graphical CD-burning
Some developers came along and wrote some good GUI programs to simplify writing CDs.
- gtoaster
- is an OK program for GNOME users. It's not the most developed project yet, but it shows some progress.
- xcdroast
- is a really good general GUI for any desktop environment user. It's interface may seem a little bizarre, so you may want to read some tutorials on it to make sure you understand it. It has more writing capabilities than gtoaster. It's one (current) pitfall is that to burn music CDs you must convert the MP3's to WAV's before hand.
- k3b
- This is the KDE burning GUI and probably is the best one of the lot. It's interface is more or less like Easy CD creator, but it does not cost you money.
