Burning ISOs

[Mike A. Harris]

Anne Wilson wrote:

>All I can say is that hopefully all of the different aspects of
>>why cd/dvd burning in Linux is currently a bumpy ride for at least
>>some people, eventually get worked out, whatever the root cause(s)
>>happen to be.
>>
> 
> As Jeff remarked, speed can be the cause of problems.  I always set the 
> maximum burn speed for half the rate that the drive claims.  Coasters are 
> almost unknown for me.
> 
> I don't think that applications are the cause of your problems, Mike, so maybe 
> it's media, or maybe it's settings.

Except for the fact that I burn all my disks in Windows at the full
rated speed of the media normally, and every single disk verifies
properly, and works fine.  I even have an ancient 1994 CDROM drive
which my burns work fine on, which is rather surprising.  DVD's I
burn in Windows, work fine on all of my computer DVD players, as
well as my standalone unit.

I haven't made a frisbee burning in Windows for as long as I can
even remember now.

Burning in Linux either yields media that does not verify, or which
doesn't work.  Please tell me how that is "media" every time that is
the cause.  I think not.

Just to restate - I have seen a number of people report that they
are able to burn CD/DVD in Linux with great reliability, and some
people report that their burns do not verify, while others say they
do.  So this isn't a 100% "it works for everyone" or "it does not
work for anyone" thing.

There are a great many variables involved, however I exclude the brand
of media and speed of burning from the equation, because the same drive
with the same media, booted into "that other OS", burns them perfect
every single time - for /me/.

I just want to /use/ my hardware and consider it to be a black box
that either works or does not.  I prefer the functionality of getting
properly burned media that just works flawlessly for me period, far
more than I care what OS burned them for me, or what software happened
to be used, etc.

This should not be rocket science really.  There are various bug reports
and confirmations that the kernel is (or at least has been for a long
time) screwy WRT media verification.  Well, verification is a very
important part of the puzzle to me, and something I want to point and
click and have work, not hack around.

About once every 6 months, I try some test burns to RW media in
Linux, with the idea that if it works properly, I'll finally be able
to ditch the evil OS once again.  So far, the experiment has not
turned out in my favour.  Bad media you say?  Funny, the same RW
disk re-erased and the same .iso image burned to it and verified in
the evil OS with Nero or CDRwin, verifies for me, and then works.

Perhaps there are evil anti-OSS pixies in my hardware.  From the
looks of the number of bugs reported in bugzilla, and the results
of a quick google search however, I sure am not alone.



-- 
Mike A. Harris  *  Open Source Advocate  *  http://mharris.ca
                       Proud Canadian.