GNU/Linux Desktop Survival Guide by Graham Williams
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cdrdao

The cdrdao package provides, by far, the simplest interface for burning CDs. Also, some burners have had limited support for track at once burning, as was the experience with Mint (104.34) where cdrecord could not work for recording audio. The cdrdao tool worked just fine in that instance. Cdrdao can be used to duplicate both data and audio CDs.

By default cdrdao is run as root and access can be provided to users through the use of sudo. If you wish to provide all users with access to the program you can set the permissions appropriately:

  # chmod u+s /usr/bin/cdrdao

To use cdrdao you need to know where your CD writer is. Use the cdrdao command as follows to find this out:

  $ cdrdao scanbus

You can then specify as command line options of cdrdao the -device and -driver. However, to avoid having to do this every time you can create either /home/kayon/.cdrdao or /etc/default/cdrdao. The file should contain the following line or lines, replacing the 0,0,0 with your SCSI device address as identified by cdrdao scanbus, and the driver (if required) with the appropriate one for your CD writer - see the cdrdao man pages:

  write_device: "0,0,0"
  write_driver: "generic-mmc"

On Athens (104.7) (kernel 2.6.7) the device is ATA:1,0,0.

The following cdrdao commands can be specified on the command line without the need to identify the device each time (assuming it is identified in the appropriate configuration file as described above):

  show-toc  - prints out toc and exits
  toc-info  - prints out short toc-file summary
  toc-size  - prints total number of blocks for toc
  read-toc  - create toc file from audio CD
  read-cd   - create toc and rip audio data from CD
  read-cddb - contact CDDB server and add data as CD-TEXT to toc-file
  show-data - prints out audio data and exits
  read-test - reads all audio files and exits
  disk-info - shows information about inserted medium
  msinfo    - shows multi session info, output is suited for scripts
  unlock    - unlock drive after failed writing
  blank     - blank a CD-RW
  scanbus   - scan for devices
  simulate  - shortcut for 'write --simulate'
  write     - writes CD
  copy      - copies CD

See Section 14.3.1 for examples of copying a CD, Section 14.3.3 for mastering and burning an audio CD, Section 14.7 deals with CD-RWs, and Section 14.5.4 covers copying VCDs.