GROWISOFS(1m)

🌈 growisofs — the manual, but make it make sense 💅

okay so bestie, you're reading the GROWISOFS(1m) page, which honestly is a lot of manual for one little binary, but she's iconic so we're doing it. grab a strawberry drink 🍓 and let's go.

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✨ NAME ✨

growisofs — the combined mkisofs frontend slash DVD recording program. she does both. main character energy fr fr. 👑

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🎀 SYNOPSIS 🎀

growisofs [-dry-run] [-dvd-compat] [-overburn] [-speed=1] -[Z|M]
/dev/dvd <mkisofs-options>

that's the whole vibe. -Z or -M, the device, and then all your mkisofs options trailing behind like a little entourage. 🦋

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💖 DESCRIPTION 💖

so originally growisofs was just supposed to be a frontend to mkisofs — like, a cute little helper so you could append data to ISO9660 volumes sitting on random-access media. and when we say random-access media we mean stuff like DVD+RW, DVD-RAM, plain files, hard disk partitions. lowkey humble beginnings.

but then she grew up. 🧚 during development, general-purpose DVD recording support got implemented, and as of now growisofs doesn't just do random-access media — she also handles mastering of multisession DVD media like DVD+R and DVD-R/-RW, and Blu-ray Disc too. yes ma'am.

on top of all that, growisofs also supports first-/single-session recording of arbitrary pre-mastered images to all supported DVD media types — and by arbitrary we mean formatted as UDF, ISO9660, or literally any other file system, if it's formatted at all. no cap.

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🌸 OPTIONS 🌸

• -Z /dev/dvd — burn an initial session to the device you picked. there's also a special form of this option that gets recognized so you can burn pre-mastered images — peep the EXAMPLES section for the deets. 🔥
• -M /dev/dvd — merge a new session onto one that already exists. it's giving "and another one." 💅
• -version — print version info and invoke mkisofs, also with the -version option. she brings a friend. 🫶
• -dvd-compat — gives you maximum media compatibility with DVD-ROM/-Video. in write-once DVD+R or DVD-R context this means unappendable recording (closed disk, periodt). in DVD+RW context it tells the logical unit to explicitly burn the [otherwise optional] lead-out. ⭐
• -dry-run — at dry-run, growisofs does every single step up to but not including the first write operation. most notably, the check for the "overburn" condition gets performed, which implies mkisofs is invoked and then terminated prematurely. like a rehearsal, bestie. 🙈
• -overburn — okay so normally single layer DVD media can hold up to approximately 4.700.000.000 bytes (in marketing speech, 4.7GB). in other words a DVD can contain about 4.377 GiB or 4482 MiB. same kind of arithmetics applies to Blu-ray Disc capacity of 25.000.000.000 bytes. anyway: growisofs won't start without this option if the "overburn" condition appears to be unavoidable. she's dramatic but she's safe. 💀
• -speed=N — an option to control recording velocity. most commonly you'll use -speed=1 with "no-name" media, if the default speed setting messes up the media. keep in mind that N essentially denotes the speed closest to N*1385KBps in the DVD case or N*4496KBps in the Blu-ray Disc case, among those offered by the unit for currently mounted media. the list can be found in dvd+rw-mediainfo output. also note that Blu-ray Disc recordings are commonly performed at ~1/2 of advertised speed, because defect management is in effect. 👑
• <mkisofs-options> — more options can be found in the manpage for mkisofs.

also there are several undocumented options commonly denoted with the -use-the-force-luke prefix. some of them serve debugging purposes. some require certain knowledge about the recording process or even OS kernel internals, and being such, they can induce confusing behaviour. some are meant for very specific situations better recognized by front-ends or automated scripts. the rationale behind leaving these options undocumented is that those few users who would actually need to use them directly can as well consult the source code or obtain specific instructions elsewhere.

like... iykyk. 🔮

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🦋 DIFFERENCES WITH RUNNING MKISOFS DIRECTLY 🦋

• when using growisofs you may not use the -o option for an output file. growisofs dumps the image directly to the media.
• you don't have to specify the -C option to create a higher level session on a multisession disk — growisofs will construct one for you. she's thoughtful like that. 💜

otherwise, everything that applies to [multisession] mastering with mkisofs applies to growisofs as well. growisofs needs at least mkisofs version 1.14, and version 2.0 is required for multisession write-once recordings. don't skip the update check bestie. ⭐

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🌈 EXAMPLES 🌈

actual device names vary from one operating system to another, so we use /dev/dvd as a collective name, or as a symbolic link to the actual device if you wish. 💫

• under Linux it will most likely be an ide-scsi device such as "/dev/scd0."
• under NetBSD/OpenBSD it has to be a character SCSI CD-ROM device such as "/dev/rcd0c."
• under Solaris it also has to be a character SCSI/ATAPI CD-ROM device, e.g. "/dev/rdsk/c0t1d0s2" or "/vol/dev/aliases/cdrom0."
• and likewise in HP-UX, IRIX and Mac OS X...

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to master and burn an ISO9660 volume with Joliet and Rock-Ridge extensions on a DVD or Blu-ray Disc:

growisofs -Z /dev/dvd -R -J /some/files

to append more data to same media:

growisofs -M /dev/dvd -R -J /more/files

make sure to use the same options for both initial burning and when appending data. consistency is the vibe check. ✨

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to finalize the multisession DVD maintaining maximum compatibility:

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

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to use growisofs to write a pre-mastered ISO-image to a DVD:

growisofs -dvd-compat -Z /dev/dvd=image.iso

where image.iso represents an arbitrary object in the filesystem, such as file, named pipe or device entry. nothing is growing here and the command name is not intuitive in this context. 😭 she knows. she's aware. we still love her.

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💀 NOTES 💀

if executed under sudo(8), growisofs refuses to start. 🚨

and here's why, bestie, because this is a real one. naturally growisofs has to access the data set to be recorded to optical media — either indirectly by letting mkisofs generate the ISO9660 layout on-the-fly, or directly if a pre-mastered image is to be recorded. being executed under sudo(8), growisofs effectively grants sudoers read access to any file in the file system. the situation is intensified by the fact that growisofs parses the MKISOFS environment variable in order to determine an alternative path to the mkisofs executable image. which means: being executed under sudo(8), growisofs effectively grants sudoers the right to execute a program of their choice with elevated privileges. 💀💀💀

if you for any reason still find the above acceptable and are willing to take the consequences, then consider running the following wrapper script under sudo(8) in place of the real growisofs binary:

#!/bin/ksh
unset SUDO_COMMAND
export MKISOFS=/path/to/trusted/mkisofs
exec growisofs "$@"

but note that the recommended alternative to the above "workaround" is actually to install growisofs set-root-uid, in which case it will drop privileges prior to accessing data or executing mkisofs in order to preclude unauthorized access to the data. 👑

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if the media already carries isofs and growisofs is invoked with the -Z option non-interactively, e.g. through cron, it shall fail with:

FATAL: /dev/dvd already carries isofs!

note that only ISO9660 is recognized — you can perfectly zap e.g. an UDF filesystem non-interactively. recommendation is to prepare media for unattended usage by re-formatting or nullifying the first 64KB in advance. 🫶

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"Overburn" protection in the pre-mastered image context works only with plain files and ISO9660 formatted volumes. e.g. [given that /dev/root is an ext2 formatted file system larger than 4.7GB] /dev/dvd=/dev/root is bound to produce corrupted recording. not a slay. 🚫

note that the DVD+RW re-formatting procedure does not substitute for blanking. if you want to nullify the media, e.g. for privacy reasons, do it explicitly with:

growisofs -Z /dev/dvd=/dev/zero

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playback of re-writable DVD media — both DVD+RW and DVD-RW — might be limited in legacy DVD-ROM/-Video units. in most cases this is due to lower reflectivity of such media. 🌸

even though growisofs supports it, playback of multisession write-once DVD might be limited to the first session, for two reasons:

• not all DVD-ROM players are capable of multi-border DVD-R playback, and even less are aware of DVD+R multisessioning — burner unit therefore might be the only one in your vicinity capable of accessing files written at different occasions;
• OS might fail to mount multisession DVD for various reasons.

the above is not applicable to DVD+RW, DVD-RW Restricted Overwrite, DVD-RAM or Blu-ray Disc, as volumes are grown within a single session. 🦋

when growisofs "runs into" blank Blu-ray Disc media, BD-RE or BD-R, it gets pre-formatted with minimal spare area size of 256MB. ✨

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🔥 SEE ALSO 🔥

most up-to-date information on dvd+rw-tools is available at http://fy.chalmers.se/~appro/linux/DVD+RW/.

the manpage for mkisofs.

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💜 AUTHORS 💜

Andy Polyakov <appro@fy.chalmers.se> stands for programming and on-line information.

this manpage is currently maintained by Huub Reuver <h_reuver@mantell.xs4all.nl>.

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⭐ LICENSE ⭐

growisofs is distributed under GNU GPL.

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okay that's the whole thing, you made it to the end, proud of you 🫶 — this was growisofs 7.1, dated 1 Mar 2008, filed under GROWISOFS(1m). now go burn something (responsibly, and not under sudo). 💅🎀