Re: xorriso format seems not to respect size argument

[Thomas Schmitt]

Hi,

carsten.kunze@arcor.de wrote:
> the bug had been in the drive firmware, with the new drive xorriso formats
> the disk correctly.

Strange bug. I wonder whether it can still be an individual flaw of one
drive. But this looks like more a bad firmware version.


> dvd+rw-format does not format my verbatim BD-R.

What's its complaint ?


> For writing a ready UDF image I would now use:
> xorriso -outdev /dev/sr0 -format by_size_23610m
> xorriso -as cdrecord -v dev=/dev/sr0 image.udf

This should work fine.


> Do I need to specify this cdrecord emulation for writing an image or is the
> same possible with pure xorriso style options?

The cdrecord emulation is the only way to do image writing in xorriso.
I thought about a -dd command for a while. But in the end it would not do
anything more than the emulation.

The situation is different with the mkisofs emulation. The user interface of
mkisofs suffers much from the fact that its options get applied in a
predefined order, which is quite restrictive when composing filesytem content.
(You can add stuff and override it by adding more under the same path.
But renaming, deleting, attaching of filters, etc. needs the finer tuning
which xorriso's native commands can provide.)


> Can I specify the -format option in the burn command so that I have only one
> xorriso command?

Yes. You can put xorriso commands before the "-as" command, and you may
end its argument range by "--", if you ever want to perform xorriso
commands after image burning.
You do not need to tell -as cdrecord the output drive after it was already
chosen by command -outdev.

So this would be both actions in one run, with some ornamental commands
at then end to demonstrate a use case for "--":

  xorriso -outdev /dev/sr0 -format by_size_23610m \
          -as cdrecord -v image.udf --
          -prompt "Press Enter when all fingers are out the way of the tray " \
          -eject all


> Where to put the speed option in the command, I guess the option position in
> the argument list is not arbitrary.

In general you have to put the -speed command before the xorriso command
that triggers writing. In this case before "-as":

  xorriso -outdev /dev/sr0 -format by_size_23610m \
          -speed 4 \
          -as cdrecord -v image.udf

But the emulation has its own speed option, which gets applied in the
predefined sequence of its option interpretation, regardless of its position
in the argument list of "-as". You may use either way of setting speed.

  xorriso -outdev /dev/sr0 -format by_size_23610m \
          -as cdrecord -v speed=4 image.udf

Of course if you suspect that formatting reacts on speed, then you would
set it before the -format command:

  xorriso -outdev /dev/sr0 \
          -speed 4 \
          -format by_size_23610m \
          -as cdrecord -v image.udf

Regard the xorriso commands of a run like shell commands in a script.
You have to create the proper preconditions of a command by preceding
commands. Like you have to create a file before you can rename it.

Actually there is a dialog mode where you may enter single commands
and get shown their immediate effect, if they have any:

  xorriso -abort_on NEVER -page 16 80 -dialog on

I use it mainly for debugging and for exploring foreign ISO 9660
filesystems.

Leave -dialog mode by one of the commands -end or -rollback_end.
(-abort_on NEVER throws you out of the dialog loop only when the program
sees absolutely no other way than aborting. Ctrl+C is such a reason,
a fatal failure of a burn run is normally not.)


Have a nice day :)

Thomas