Why I used cdrecord from the CLI and no GUI

[rickenbacherus]

Back when I was still amongst the uninformed masses and still using wimpdoze it took nearly all of my processor and RAM to burn a cd. Now, running X but not using a GUI for cdrecord I use about 0.3% of my cpu and a total of 2.2% of my RAM! Is wimpdoze a resource hog or WHAT?

Learning to use the CLI to record discs is not that hard. There are all sorts of tutorials but one of my favorites is here
They give plenty of examples too. Also check out Dave Bechtels page of tips page.
He has listed some good examples for burning cd's and copying floppies.
Remember: you can always use the -dummy option w/ cdrecord and not burn any coasters. Don't forget to look at cdrdao, cdda2wav, readcd, and mkisofs.

In case you weren't aware, these programs I have just listed are what GUI's like Xcdroast and K3b use to burn a disc it's just that with a GUI you get a nice pretty screen to look at. Keep this is mind: in the time it takes you to configure one of these you could have already burned your disc from the CLI.

[aay]

Mkisofs and cdrecord are two tools well worth taking the small amount of time they take to learn. I have multiple computers but not multible burners, but since these are command line tools it's easy to ssh into another computer and use these tools to do my burning. I have put an alias in my .bashrc file too in order to make burning iso's even quicker.

alias burn='cdrecord -v speed=4 dev=0,0,0'

Now when I want to burn an image (assuming it's already made), all I have to do is cd into the directory where it's located, type "burn", type a few letters of the name of the file, hit tab to complete the rest of the name of the file, and hit enter to burn. Burning can't get any easier or faster than that. It would be easy to make a mkisofs alias too if I wanted to save a coulple of key strokes. K3B is nice but not nearly this fast and is still kind of buggy too.

[aay]

Another cli tool that should get more airplay (especially to newbies) is wget. Wget is a command line utility that you can use to download files. It is very feature rich. I always use it to download Knoppix. I see a lot of posts on this forum with problems related to bad downloads. I tend to think that using wget would aleviate some of these problems. If you use the -c option wget can resume lost downloads. Since it is a command line based tool, it has the same remote acess benefits as cdrecord does. Some computers on my lan have larger hard drives than others. When I need to download knoppix, I usually ssh into a computer with a larger drive, copy the http or ftp link to the knoppix image, and paste it into the cli with Konsole. Looks something like this:

wget -c ftp://csociety-ftp.ecn.purdue.edu/pu...3-05-20-EN.iso

This will download the image on the remote machine. I really don't use anything else to download large files except wget. It's great and you'll usually find it on just about every linux system.

[rickenbacherus]

# wget -c ftp://mirror.mcs.anl.gov/pub/suse/i3...86-Int-RC2.iso
--16:36:47--  ftp://mirror.mcs.anl.gov/pub/suse/i3...86-Int-RC2.iso
           => `SuSE-8.2-LiveEval-i386-Int-RC2.iso'
Resolving mirror.mcs.anl.gov... done.
Connecting to mirror.mcs.anl.gov[140.221.9.138]:21... connected.
Logging in as anonymous ... Logged in!
==> SYST ... done.    ==> PWD ... done.
==> TYPE I ... done.  ==> CWD /pub/suse/i386/live-eval-8.2 ... done.
==> PASV ... done.    ==> RETR SuSE-8.2-LiveEval-i386-Int-RC2.iso ... done.
Length: 680,067,072 (unauthoritative)

100%[====================================>] 680,067,072  242.78K/s    ETA 00:00

17:22:25 (242.78 KB/s) - `SuSE-8.2-LiveEval-i386-Int-RC2.iso' saved [680067072]

17.22 minutes to download 680+ megs on a cable modem @ an average of 242.78K- not too shabby eh?

7f6a7e347067a5478f87e8948ed40177  SuSE-8.2-LiveEval-i386-Int-RC2.iso md5sum

$ md5sum SuSE-8.2-LiveEval-i386-Int-RC2.iso
7f6a7e347067a5478f87e8948ed40177  SuSE-8.2-LiveEval-i386-Int-RC2.iso

Not only is wget fast, easy and straightforward, it has fewer calories than the next leading brand and it helps reduce the bandwidth usage on the servers that so graciously host projects just like Knoppix.

As aay has already pointed out the -c option will resume a broken download. Ever tried to download with a browser only to have it stall at 80%? It sucks I tell you. :P

[paradocs]

Hello all,
Thanks for discussing cdrecord.
I am using a shell to blank RWCD and
make backups. All works well. But
I miss one feature from the GUI -- I
do not see any progress. I get spooked
out thinking nothing is happening, and
the old windoz behaviour come out in me
and I stat doing multiple clicks-- all of
which linux faithfull carry out!

So, when my shell is running -- is there a
process indicator I can add to my script?

Best Wishes
paradocs

[Stephen]

So, when my shell is running -- is there a
process indicator I can add to my script?

Best Wishes
paradocs

Look at man cdrecord and the -v option.