Cdrtools Explained

cdrtools
Author:Jörg Schilling, Eric Youngdale, Heiko Eißfeldt, James Pearson
Developer:schilytools team
Programming Language:C
Operating System:Cross-platform
Language:English
Genre:Optical disc authoring software
License:CDDL, GNU GPL and GNU LGPL

cdrtools (formerly known as cdrecord) is a collection of independent projects of free software/open source computer programs.

The project was maintained for over two decades by Jörg Schilling, who died on October 10, 2021.[1] [2]

Because of some licensing issues,[3] there is also a Debian fork of an older version of cdrtools called cdrkit.

Features

The most important parts of the package are cdrecord, a console-based burning program; cdda2wav, a CD audio ripper that uses libparanoia; and mkisofs, a CD/DVD/BD/UDF/HFS filesystem image creator. As these tools do not include any GUI, many graphical front-ends have been created.

The collection includes many features for CD, DVD and Blu-ray disc writing such as:

History

Origins and name change

The first releases of cdrtools were called cdrecord because they only included the cdrecord tool and a few companion tools, but not mkisofs nor cdda2wav. A copy of mkisofs, created in 1993 by Eric Youngdale for Yggdrasil Linux, was incorporated in 1997.[5] [6] In 1998, a copy of an experimental version of cdda2wav, created by Heiko Eißfeldt[7] [6] was included in the cdrecord package.[8] [9]

In 1999 the project started to be called cdrtools[10] [8] [11] to better reflect the fact that it had become a collection of tools.

DVD and Blu-ray disc writing support

DVD writing support (cdrecord-ProDVD) in cdrecord started in early 1998, at the request of the data archivists of the European Southern Observatory.[12] [13] [14] But since the relevant information required a non-disclosure agreement and DVD writers were not publicly available, it was not included in the source code.In 2002, Jörg Schilling started offering free license keys to the closed-source variant cdrecord-ProDVD for educational, and research use, shortly thereafter also for private use.[15] Unregistered free licenses were initially limited to single-speed writing and would expire every year.[16] On 15 May 2006, support for DVD writing was added to the open-source version 2.01.01a09 after switching the license to CDDL; thereby removing the need to get a license key.[15] [17] Blu-ray disc support was added starting 2007.[18]

The lack of open-source DVD writing support in 2001 led to heated discussions on the mailing lists,[15] and to a number of unofficial patches for supporting the Pioneer DVD-R A03, the first DVD writer to reach mass market, and forks of cdrecord: Mandrake shipped a version called cdrecord-dvdhack,[19] whereas Redhat had dvdrecord.[20]

Hardware access controversy

Unlike cdrkit and libburnia, which use device files to access the hardware, cdrtools uses a different method known as CAM (for Common Access Method),[21] which is available on many operating systems, including some which lack device files or only allow the kernel to access them.This difference has turned into a controversy: some Linux users claim that the method used by cdrtools is not appropriate, while some Linux users claim that the users of cdrtools do not need to know which method is used.

In cdrtools, burning optical media (such as CDs, DVDs and Blu-rays discs) is done through the SCSI interface. Users of systems with more than one burning device need to provide a SCSI device (which is identified by a triplet of numbers, scsibus,target,lun). Users of systems with only one burning device, however, do not need to specify the SCSI device since cdrtools is able to find it. By 2002 more and more burners were using the ATAPI interface. Linux 2.6 allowed the users to detect the SCSI ID of a device from its UNIX device path (/dev/hdX) and a patch was published that made identifying the burner device for cdrecord simpler by allowing the user to specify the /dev/hdX device name (or even default to a udev managed link such as /dev/cdrw). Schilling, however, rejected this approach as well as other modifications used by Linux distributions, with the rationale that it would make the software more complex and less portable as this function was not available on other UNIX systems. Linus Torvalds states that SCSI LUNs should not be used for addressing devices on Linux,[22] because these numbers are not unique, and do not make sense for many devices anymore (many devices will report 0:0:0 fake numbers). Instead Torvalds recommends that devices should be addressed via their UUID, physical connection, or an alias symlink[23] as managed by udev on Linux.Torvalds pointed out that the ioctl's have been kept to ensure cdrecord compatibility[24] and do not return a meaningful value.[25]

License compatibility controversy

By 2004, Linux distributions were maintaining a number of unofficial changes such as allowing the use of /dev/hdX device names and (limited) DVD writing support that were rejected by Schilling,[26] who repeatedly demanded that distributions stop shipping "bastardized and defective" versions of his "legal original software".[27] Starting with version 2.01.01a09 in May 2006, most code from cdrtools has been relicensed under the CDDL, while mkisofs remains licensed under the GPL.[28] This change led to an ongoing disagreement about whether distribution or use of precompiled cdrtools binaries is legally possible (the GPL permits collective works, but not derivative works; and the Makefiles used to build mkisofs are CDDL licensed). The following are one-sentence summaries of the different positions:

As a result of this controversy:

Inclusion into toolset Schily-Tools

Cdrtools are part of Jörg Schilling's toolset Schily-Tools which was originally distributed on SourceForge.[47]

Schilling stopped updating the cdrtools-only alpha and stable branch in 2017 with version 3.02a9;[48] version 3.02a10 and higher are only included in the source package schilytools.

The "Schily" Tool Box is a set of tools written or managed by Jörg Schilling. It includes the programs: cdrecord, cdda2wav, readcd, mkisofs, smake, bsh, btcflash, calc, calltree, change, compare, count, devdump, dmake based on SunPro Make, hdump, isodebug, isodump, isoinfo, isovfy, label, mt, obosh, od, p, POSIX patch, pbosh, sccs, scgcheck, scpio, sdd, sfind, sformat, smake, sh/bosh (Bourne sh), star, star_sym, strar, suntar, gnutar, tartest, termcap, and ved.

The final version of Schily-Tools published by Jörg Schilling himself is the 2021-09-18 release.[49] After his death, development of Schily-Tools has been taken up by a group of volunteers. Instead of hosting it on SourceForge, it is hosted on a-not-for-profit platform, Codeberg. To mark his passing, his cdrtools final version, 3.02a10 (where the a indicates the software is semantically alpha) was declared to be the new stable version 3.02 with no substantial changes.[50]

Version history

Version history of cdrtools
Project namePreview releasesStable releaseNotes
firstlastversiondate
cdrecord1.001996-02-04
1.011996-10-04
1.021996-12-20
1.031997-05-16
1.041997-05-23
1.5a11.5a9[//sourceforge.net/projects/cdrtools/files/AN-1.05/view 1.05]1997-09-15
1.6a011.6a15[//sourceforge.net/projects/cdrtools/files/AN-1.06/view 1.06]1998-04-18
1.6.1a11.6.1a7[//sourceforge.net/projects/cdrtools/files/AN-1.06.1/view 1.06.1]1998-10-19
1.8a011.8a40[//sourceforge.net/projects/cdrtools/files/AN-1.08/view 1.08]2000-01-28
1.8.1a011.8.1a09[//sourceforge.net/projects/cdrtools/files/AN-1.08.1/view 1.08.1]2000-04-27
1.9a011.9a05[//sourceforge.net/projects/cdrtools/files/AN-1.09/view 1.09]2000-07-20
cdrtools1.10a011.10a19[//sourceforge.net/projects/cdrtools/files/AN-1.10/view 1.10]2001-04-22
1.11a01
2.0pre1		1.11a40
2.0pre3		[//sourceforge.net/projects/cdrtools/files/AN-2.00/view 2.00]2002-12-25DVD-Video support since July 2002.[51]
[//sourceforge.net/projects/cdrtools/files/AN-2.00.3/view 2.00.3]2003-05-28
2.01a012.01a38[//sourceforge.net/projects/cdrtools/files/AN-2.01/view 2.01]2004-09-09This series was the last GPL-licensed version and was used as base for the fork cdrkit.
2.01.01a012.01.01a80[//sourceforge.net/projects/cdrtools/files/AN-3.00/view 3.00][52] [53] 2010-06-02In May 2006, most parts of cdrtools were switched to the CDDL. Blu-ray support is available since July 2007[54]
3.01a013.01a31[//sourceforge.net/projects/cdrtools/files/AN-3.01/view 3.01]2015-08-26
3.02a013.02a093.022022-09-18DVD-Audio support since December 2015.[55]

See also

Forks

Software that can use cdrtools

External links

Notes and References

  1. Web site: RIP Jörg Schilling. I have received message from his family that Jörg Schilling has passed away. https://web.archive.org/web/20211013052832/https://minnie.tuhs.org/pipermail/tuhs/2021-October/024523.html. 2021-10-13.
  2. Web site: Fraunhofer FOKUS IT original Jörg Schilling has passed away. 2022-01-01. www.fokus.fraunhofer.de. 1 January 2022. https://web.archive.org/web/20220101100900/https://www.fokus.fraunhofer.de/en/news/fokus/joerg_schilling_2021_10. dead.
  3. Web site: cdrtools - a tale of two licenses. lwn.net.
  4. Web site: cdrtools 3.01 announcement and release notes . Schilling . Jörg . 26 August 2015 . cdrtools.sourceforge.net . 2015-08-28.
  5. Web site: Announcing mkisofs 1.13 .
  6. Web site: CDRTOOLS = cdrecord + cdda2wav + mkisofs .
  7. Web site: Cdda2wav .
  8. Web site: cdrecord-1.8a10 (cdrtools) ready .
  9. Web site: NEW features of cdrecord-1.8a6 .
  10. Web site: cdrtools-1.8a19 ready (cdrecord+cdda2wav+mkisofs) .
  11. Web site: Information for build cdrtools-2.01-11.fc7 .
  12. Web site: Using DVD Technology for Archiving Astronomical Data . European Southern Observatory.
  13. Web site: The Prospects of DVD-R for Storing Astronomical Archive Data . Astronomical Society of the Pacific - Provided by NASA Astrophysics Data System.
  14. Web site: Using DVD Technology for Archiving Astronomical Data (cont'd) . Astronomical Society of the Pacific - Provided by NASA Astrophysics Data System.
  15. Web site: Re: cdrecord floating point exception .
  16. Web site: cdrecord will not burn DVD ISO's .
  17. Web site: README .
  18. Web site: Changelog . German.
  19. Web site: Support / Security / Advisories / Mandrakelinux 8.2 / MDKA-2002:011-1 / Mandriva . . 2014-10-16 . cdrecord-dvdhack-1.11-0.a31.1.1mdk.ppc.rpm. shows that Mandrake maintained a "cdrecord-dvdhack" version.
  20. Web site: dvdrtools - dvdrecord . 2014-04-12 . dead . https://web.archive.org/web/20021201160106/http://www.nongnu.org/dvdrtools/ . 1 December 2002 . dmy .
  21. Web site: Common Access Method Transport and SCSI Interface Module . 29 December 2011 . . 2016-01-24 .
  22. Web site: Re: [PATCH] Move SG_GET_SCSI_ID from sg to scsi ]. Torvalds . Linus . Linus Torvalds . 2006-03-27 . . 2015-10-22 . the SCSI ID simply doesn't make sense to [Many (most) Linux devices] and they have none. So it's _not_ a unique ID..
  23. Web site: Re: [PATCH] Move SG_GET_SCSI_ID from sg to scsi ]. Torvalds . Linus . Linus Torvalds . 2006-03-27 . . 2015-10-22.
  24. Web site: Re: [PATCH] Move SG_GET_SCSI_ID from sg to scsi]. Torvalds . Linus . Linus Torvalds . 2006-03-27 . . 2015-10-22 . it does a few ioctl's that cdrecord wanted [...] does NOT try to claim that those numbers "mean" anything [...] BUS/ID/LUN crap really doesn't make sense for the majority of devices out there. Never has, never will. .
  25. Web site: Linux source code, scsi_ioctl.c, function scsi_get_idlun . Linux Cross Reference . 2015-10-22 . return put_user(0, p); [i.e. they always yield 0].
  26. Web site: The value of middlemen . Jonathan . Corbet . . 2004-08-11 . 2014-04-07.
  27. Web site: The unending story of cdrtools . Corbet . Jonathan . 2009-08-12 . . 26 February 2014.
  28. The license change took place on 15 May 2006, when cdrtools-2.01.01a09 was released. (Source: [//sourceforge.net/projects/cdrtools/files/alpha/OLD/3.00aX/AN-2.01.01a09/view AN-2.01.01a09])
  29. Web site: cdrtools - a tale of two licenses . Jonathan . Corbet . . 2007-08-04.
  30. Web site: Comment 17 for bug 213215 . 2011-06-27 . Ubuntu bug tracking . Joerg . Schilling . Nobody is violating a license for distributing cdrtools either in source or in binary form..
  31. Web site: Forbidden items - FedoraProject. fedoraproject.org.
  32. Web site: Re: [Fedora-legal-list] Legal CD/DVD/BD writing software for RedHat and Fedora]. www.redhat.com.
  33. Web site:
    1. 377109 - RM: cdrtools -- RoM: non-free, license problems - Debian Bug report logs
    . 2007-08-04.
  34. Web site: Information for build cdrtools-2.01-11.fc7. moved back to version 2.01 (last GPL version), due to incompatible license issues. 2007-08-04.
  35. Web site: Minutes from the Technical Board meeting, 2008-08-26. 26 August 2008. 2008-09-15.
  36. Web site: cdrkit (fork of cdrtools) uploaded to Debian, please test. 2007-08-04.
  37. Web site: 591778 – app-cdr/cdrkit removal request. bugs.gentoo.org.
  38. Web site: SlackBuilds.org - cdrkit. slackbuilds.org.
  39. Web site: Welcome to vtown, volkerdi's friendly takeover of alienBOB's ktown Plasma 5 packages - testing/packages/vtown/deps/libburn-1.5.2.pl01-x86_64-1_vtown_1.txz: Added..
  40. Web site: Mandriva Cooker : The Inside Man V. 2007-08-04.
  41. Web site: Mandriva SA official blog: Mandriva Linux will return to the community . dead . 17 May 2012 . 2015-12-13 . . 23 May 2015 . https://web.archive.org/web/20150523070604/https://blog.mandriva.com/en/2012/05/17/mandriva-linux-will-return-to-the-community/ . dmy .
  42. Packages of cdrtools for OpenMandriva Lx are available from both the OpenMandriva Association at [//github.com/OpenMandrivaAssociation/cdrtools github.com] and RosaLabs's auto build farms at [//abf.rosalinux.ru/openmandriva/cdrtools abf.rosalinux.ru]
  43. Web site: openSUSE 10.3 Release Notes. www.novell.com.
  44. Web site: [openFATE 311186] original cdrtools - openSUSE Features]. openSUSE Mailing Lists. 22 December 2013 .
  45. Web site: Joerg Schilys cdrtools. openSUSE Build Service. 14 May 2013 .
  46. Web site: CDRTools.org : The unofficial cdrtools website to ease building cdrtools from source . 2014-11-16.
  47. "The official Shily-Tools project website:" http://schilytools.sourceforge.net/
  48. Web site: cdrecord | Release notes for cdrecord at SourceForge.net. sourceforge.net.
  49. Web site: Schily Tools: Browse files.
  50. Web site: cdrecord: bump version to 3.02 . Clausecker . Robert . 2022-08-18 . codeberg.org. The schilytools project . 2022-10-16.
  51. Full DVD-Video support (in mkisofs), contributed by Olaf Beck, was added to preview release 1.11a27 on 21 July 2002 (Source: [//sourceforge.net/projects/cdrtools/files/alpha/OLD/2.0aX/AN-1.11a27/view AN-1.11a27]) and to stable release 2.00 on 25 December 2002 (Source: [//sourceforge.net/projects/cdrtools/files/AN-2.00/view AN-2.00])
  52. Web site: cdrtools 3.00 release announcement . Schilling . Jörg . 18 May 2010 . 2010-05-18.
  53. Web site: cdrtools 3.00 release notes . Schilling . Jörg . 2 June 2010 . 2010-06-02.
  54. Support for Blu-ray Discs was added on 4 July 2007 to cdrtools 2.01.01a29. (Source: [//sourceforge.net/projects/cdrtools/files/alpha/OLD/3.00aX/AN-2.01.01a29/view AN-2.01.01a29])
  55. [DVD-Audio]
  56. Web site: dvdrtools - Summary . dvdrtools is a fork of cdrtools/cdrecord with support for writing to DVDs. . 2002-01-28 . . 2016-01-24.
  57. Web site: dvdrtools - News: dvdrtools 0.2.0 released . dvdrtools 0.2.0 has been released. . 2005-02-05 . . 2016-01-24. (This was the last release of dvdrtools before the project was abandoned.)
  58. Web site: cdrtfe - open source CD/DVD/BD burning program for Microsoft Windows . cdrtfe.sourceforge.net . 2015-11-28 . cdrtfe is a win32 frontend for the cdrtools (cdrecord, mkisofs, readcd, cdda2wav), Mode2CDMaker, VCDImager and other well-known tools..

This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia article "Cdrtools".

Except where otherwise indicated, Everything.Explained.Today is © Copyright 2009-2024, A B Cryer, All Rights Reserved. Cookie policy.