Burning DVD-R's

[Charles Swiger]

On Dec 29, 2003, at 4:18 PM, Brett Glass wrote:
> At 01:42 PM 12/29/2003, Charles Swiger wrote:
>> Yes, FreeBSD can burn DVD-R's.  Please see 
>> /usr/ports/sysutils/dvd+rw-tools.
>
> I've taken a look at this port. Unfortunately, it's REALLY hard to
> figure out the documentation (which consists of a few Web pages written
> in very contorted -- almost unreadable -- English).

The man page for growisofs is the primary documentation; it's not a 
gem, but neither does it strike me as being far less understandable 
than "man burncd", "man mkisofs", or other documentation related to 
this topic.

> From what I can tell, though, this software is really meant to work
> with DVD+R, which records a little more than half as fast as DVD-R.
> I need the speed, and so need to make sure it really works with DVD-R.

Meaning what?  You want to make sure the software really works with 
DVD-R, but you are not willing to test the software yourself?  Hmm...

> Also, it looks as if this port runs on top of another utility called
> "cdrecord", which itself runs on top of an ATAPI-to-SCSI shim.

dvd+rw-tools depends on mkisofs (aka sysutils/cdrtools).
For ATAPI burner devices, it will use ATAPI/CAM.

> I'm worried that this ziggurat of utilities will not be anywhere near
> as reliable as a simple utility that goes directly to the ATAPI drive.

Your concern could be resolved by verifying the data after you burn it 
to DVD, which, come to think of it, is a really fine idea when using 
any type of backup or archival mechanism.

> The code is also GPLed. I'm looking, if at all possible, for an all-BSD
> solution.

Is the license actually a genuine concern, or are you inventing 
excuses?  Sigh.  FreeBSD contains lots of GPL'ed code: see /usr/src/gnu 
and /usr/src/contrib!

-- 
-Chuck

PS: You're welcome to use whatever software you want, of course, but 
the problem  you want to solve and issues you raised aren't 
particularly congruent.