initializing a blank DVD+R disk?

[Rick Stevens]

On 01/11/2010 02:40 PM, Stuart McGraw wrote:
> I am trying to setup backup software (Bacula) on my home
> network and ran into a real dumb newbie DVD question I haven't
> been able to google an answer to (at least an answer I could
> understand) since I have never used writable DVDs before.
>
> How does one write a iso filesystem onto a blank DVD+R disk
> without writing any files, and leaving the DVD writable (i.e,
> not finalized if that this the right term)?  The growisofs
> and mkisofs man pages are mostly greek to me.  Is there a
> magic cookbook incantation I can use until I can figure
> out all the techy details?\

It's pretty simple:

	growisofs -Z /dev/dvd -R -J /path/file1 /path/file2 ...

When you want to add more files:

	growisofs -M /dev/dvd -R -J /path/to/more/files ...

The magic is replacing the "-Z" (meaning "initialize session") with
"-M" (merge data into session).  When you finally want to close the
session:

	 growisofs -M /dev/dvd=/dev/zero

which fills out the rest of the session with zeroes.

Hope that helps.
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- Rick Stevens, Systems Engineer                      ricks at nerd.com -
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