[CLUE-Tech] combining mkisofs & cdrecord

[Dave Anselmi]

jason at matchingmoms.com wrote:

> The documentation I've seen describes burning a CD-RW as a 2-step process:
> 1. mkisofs to make an image
> 2. cdrecord to write the image to the CD-RW
>
> That works fine.  Now, I'm trying to combine those two into one, but I get
> an error:
>
> mkisofs -r /path/to/directory | cdrecord -v speed=8 dev=0,0,0 -data
> cdrecord: No tracks specified. Need at least one.
> cdrecord: Usage: cdrecord [options] track1...trackn

Cdrecord expects you to tell it a file to get the data out of.  Look for an
option to tell it to read from stdin (where the pipe sends its data).  Might be
as easy as adding a dash at the end of the above.

If cdrecord won't play, you can make a fifo (named pipe) and have mkisofs write
to it and cdrecord read from it.  See if there is a mkfifo or mkpipe command.
In any event, mknod should work.  Check to see how big you can make the fifo
buffer, you'll probably want a big one.

You could also use a ramdisk or tempfs to store the iso image file in memory
rather than on disk.  (What do you mean you don't have 700MB of free memory?)

Any of these methods will increase your chances of buffer underruns on the CDR.
Perhaps you have one that handles those gracefully, perhaps not.  Try running
your final command with the -dummy switch to cdrecord to make sure it works
without ruining CDRs.  You should load the machine as heavily as you think it
will be when doing actual burns for the best results.

Dave