Re: [Dvdrtools-users] growisofs

[Volker Kuhlmann]

You mention many issues in one post ;)

I found the display of free blocks on a DVD unreliable, some of the DVD
technologies might not even allow it. Some DVD formats don't allow to
obtain the number of free blocks if the media is erased (or else it's
not even implemented in cdrecord-prodvd).

DVD capacity is 4.7 billion bytes = 4.37GB. Block numbers I have
observed were all 2,298,496 with block size 2048.

iso9660 has a fixed block size of 2048, I believe this can't be changed.
Use isoinfo -d to display.

udf allows block sizes of 4096 as well, at least mkudffs does.

I found that the space reported with du on an ext2 or reiserfs
filesystem is pretty close to the space required on iso9960. Obviously
this depends on the number and size of files, but I never noticed
differences of more than a few %.

If you get different numbers from growisofs then its putting out
nonsense, or else it's not possible to obtain correct numbers before
the media is written.

> After I made the DVD image, I see only 1GB stored.

See, you're fine :)

> I read in an earlier post by address@hidden that
> cdrecord-wrapper.sh works for Sony DRU-500A (I have DRX-500U).

Nobody can give a guarantee that these drives behave exactly the same.
Burners are controlled by their own command set, the implementation of
which is subject to bugs, as with every software. It appears to me that
manufacturers certainly rush hardware out the door before debugging
firmware is remotely finished. When the hardware hits the market, it
will work in the basic settings with e.g. Nero, as those companies work
together and it's tested. Open source developers do not have access to
the same information from the drvie's manufacturer, and they can only
*start* when the hardware hits the market, at which time e.g. Nero is
already *finished*. Then there's the reverse-engineering problem. And
who has one of every drive model (and plenty of blanks) to test his
software?

> Why the
> key and no source to use cdrecord-prodvd?

Simple, the maintainer(/owner!) of cdrecord added dvd support, changed
its name to cdrecord-prodvd, and called it a commercial binary-only
product. He has every right to do so. Tough luck for the rest of us.

> all that is being done is open,
> fwrite, and close

Far from the truth, see above.

Unfortunately dvd support for Linux does not seem to be an active
field. The only OSS dvd burn program(s), dvdrecord + cdrecord-ossdvd,
are a very old and very incomplete patch for dvd support added to an
obsolete resp. current version of cdrecord. Their performance is
noticably inferior to that of cdrecord-prodvd. I haven't fiddled with
packet writing yet, support there might be a bit better, but the
sourceforge sites show close to zero activity. Open source - you want
it, you make it... ;)

Volker

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