You are here: Home » Featured » Burn a ISO image to CD via Command Line Linux – openSUSE Ubuntu Fedora

Burn a ISO image to CD via Command Line Linux – openSUSE Ubuntu Fedora

By ben.kevan on Jan 14, 2010 in Featured, Tutorials

Recently an associate of mine asked me to burn him a CD since his computer was “out of service”. I put in the CD and started hammering at my console to get him the CD he requested. He thought it was pretty cool that I could do it from the command line (he is a non technical user).

So I figured, there are some people that actually want to know how to burn an ISO Image to a CD via the command line. So here you go.

In this quick tutorial we will be using the program cdrecord. You can quickly check to see if you have cdrecord in your $PATH with:

which cdrecord

Which would give you an output like:

/usr/bin/cdrecord

Note: It is important to note that cdrecord, is just a symlink to wodim, so you can use the commands interchangeably.

If you do not have it installed you can install it with:
On openSUSE:

sudo su -c ‘zypper in cdrecord’

On Ubuntu:

sudo apt-get install cdrecord

On Fedora:

sudo su -c ‘yum install cdrecord’

Now that you have the application, you need to know what device you are writing your ISO image to. This is accomplished with the --devices option of cdrecord, as seen below.

cdrecord --devices

This will scan your scsi buses and give an output similar like so

wodim: Overview of accessible drives (1 found) :
————————————————————————-
0 dev=’/dev/scd0′ rwrw– : ‘PLDS’ ‘DVD+-RW DU-8A2S’
————————————————————————-

Here you will want to note the location of the device you want to write (burn) to. In the instance above the device indicated it

dev=’/dev/scd0′

Now I’ll write the ISO Image to the blank CD rom which has been placed in the device above. This is accomplished by running.

cdrecord -v -dev=’/dev/scd0′ kubuntu-9.10-alternate-i386.iso

Where -dev=’/dev/xxxx’ is the device that you noted previously and the final argument I passed above is the ISO image I want to burn.
Note: Obviously there are many other options and arguments that can be passed to cdrecord, which can be seen by reading the cdrecord manpage.

man cdrecord

Prior to the burn starts, you’ll be given some information followed with a countdown before the actual burn starts.

wodim: No write mode specified.
wodim: Asuming -tao mode.
wodim: Future versions of wodim may have different drive dependent defaults.
TOC Type: 1 = CD-ROM
wodim: Operation not permitted. Warning: Cannot raise RLIMIT_MEMLOCK limits.scsidev: ‘/dev/scd0′
devname: ‘/dev/scd0′
scsibus: -2 target: -2 lun: -2
Linux sg driver version: 3.5.27
Wodim version: 1.1.9
SCSI buffer size: 64512
Device type : Removable CD-ROM
Version : 5
Response Format: 2
Capabilities :
Vendor_info : ‘PLDS ‘
Identification : ‘DVD+-RW DU-8A2S ‘
Revision : ’4D12′
Device seems to be: Generic mmc2 DVD-R/DVD-RW.
Current: 0×0009 (CD-R)
Profile: 0x002B (DVD+R/DL)
Profile: 0x001B (DVD+R)
Profile: 0x001A (DVD+RW)
Profile: 0×0015 (DVD-R/DL sequential recording)
Profile: 0×0014 (DVD-RW sequential recording)
Profile: 0×0013 (DVD-RW restricted overwrite)
Profile: 0×0012 (DVD-RAM)
Profile: 0×0011 (DVD-R sequential recording)
Profile: 0×0010 (DVD-ROM)
Profile: 0x000A (CD-RW)
Profile: 0×0009 (CD-R) (current)
Profile: 0×0008 (CD-ROM)
Profile: 0×0002 (Removable disk)
Using generic SCSI-3/mmc CD-R/CD-RW driver (mmc_cdr).
Driver flags : MMC-3 SWABAUDIO BURNFREE FORCESPEED
Supported modes: TAO PACKET SAO SAO/R96P SAO/R96R RAW/R16 RAW/R96P RAW/R96R
Drive buf size : 1867008 = 1823 KB
Beginning DMA speed test. Set CDR_NODMATEST environment variable if device
communication breaks or freezes immediately after that.
FIFO size : 4194304 = 4096 KB
Track 01: data 682 MB
Total size: 784 MB (77:40.42) = 349532 sectors
Lout start: 784 MB (77:42/32) = 349532 sectors
Current Secsize: 2048
ATIP info from disk:
Indicated writing power: 4
Is not unrestricted
Is not erasable
Disk sub type: Medium Type A, low Beta category (A-) (2)
ATIP start of lead in: -12508 (97:15/17)
ATIP start of lead out: 359845 (79:59/70)
Disk type: Short strategy type (Phthalocyanine or similar)
Manuf. index: 22
Manufacturer: Ritek Co.
Blocks total: 359845 Blocks current: 359845 Blocks remaining: 10313
Forcespeed is OFF.
Speed set to 4234 KB/s
Starting to write CD/DVD at speed 24.0 in real TAO mode for single session.
Last chance to quit, starting real write in 3 seconds.

If you want to cancel the burn before it actually starts you can do so with ^C, which it CTRL+C. If you find no reason to cancel then let the countdown complete, and let the burn begin. Since we used the -v argument, you’ll be able to watch the burn in all its glory (as -v is the argument for verbose).

Once the built in timebomb expires and it start writing here’s the type of output you’d be able to enjoy (again since we chose the verbose option).

Waiting for reader process to fill input buffer … input buffer ready.
Performing OPC…
Starting new track at sector: 0
Track 01: 682 of 682 MB written (fifo 100%) [buf 99%] 24.9x.
Track 01: Total bytes read/written: 715837440/715837440 (349530 sectors).
Writing time: 330.378s
Average write speed 14.5x.
Min drive buffer fill was 98%
Fixating…
Fixating time: 33.379s
BURN-Free was never needed.
wodim: fifo had 11276 puts and 11276 gets.
wodim: fifo was 0 times empty and 10833 times full, min fill was 89%.

The last thing to do is to eject your newly created cd, which can be done via the command line simply by telling it to eject the device.

eject /dev/scd0

Pop goes the drive, out comes the cd and you’re set.