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Below is a basic HOWTO for writing a CDR on the CD-Writer on titan (in room 501B, the Sun room).

Please note the following use policy: the CD-Writer on titan is not to be used to make any audio CDs which violate any copyright laws. It is, like all other university owned equipment, to be used for scientific and educational purposes, not for personal use. That stated, now you can continue to read the directions. Change directories into a partition you can write to that has enough disk space to contain the data you wish to put to CDR. This is typically a local disk on /local/cd-image on titan.

Login to titan.

% slogin titan

% cd /local/cd-image

Run mkisofs with proper flags:

% /usr/schily/bin/mkisofs -pad -R -T -o test.cdr basepath
where basepath is the path to the directory tree you want to make a cd from (typically your home directory or such). Make sure you have all of the files/directories you wish to write to cdrom in proper Rockridge format (no symbolic or hard links, path no more than 10 directories deep, etc...).

Then run cdrecord with the proper flags (as follows):

On titan:

% /usr/schily/bin/cdrecord speed=N dev=1,2,0 test.cdr

Where N is the number times normal speed you wish to write the CDR at (typically between 8 and 16). If you want to test the speed first, add the -dummy flag before the file name and if it completes successfully, repeat the command without -dummy. If not completed successfully, lower the speed by a factor of 2 and test again.

Will take approximately 30-40 (at 2X) minutes for a full 650meg CDROM.

CD-RWs (ReWritable CDs)

For a new CD-RW, treat exactly as a CDR.

If you are using a CD-RW that has already been written and you wish to overwrite it, add the option: blank=fast.

Full Documentation of cdrecord

For more information about other options (including multi-session writing, tracks, etc.) slogin to phoebe or titan and enter:

man -M /usr/schily/man cdrecord


To suggest changes, additions, clarifications in this documentation, contact Central Services: central@astro.