In this article we will cover the cdrecord and dd commands where we will burn ISO images, data backups, and audio CDs.

Installing cdrecord and dd

By default, cdrecord and dd, should be installed. If not you can find it in your Add/Remove Software utility by searching for “cdrecord” and “dd”. Once you have installed the applications open up a terminal window and get ready.

The first thing you need to do is to determine where your device is located. To locate your device issue the command cdrecord -scanbus. When the command runs you should see output similar to:

1000,0,0 100000) *
1000,1,0 100001) *
1000,2,0 100002) ‘HL-DT-ST’ ‘RW/DVD GCC-T10N ‘ ‘1.00′ Removable CD-ROM
1000,3,0 100003) *
1000,4,0 100004) *
1000,5,0 100005) *
1000,6,0 100006) *
1000,7,0 100007) *
As you can see above, my device is listed. The listing information I take out of this is 0,2,0. If your scanbus reports the number before the first “,” as a 1000 you will only want the last digit – in my case a 0. If scanbus reports only a 0 before the first “,” that will be your first number in your device location. So my device is 0,2,0.

This device address will be plugged into the command for burning in conjunction with the dev= argument.

Burning ISO image

You have data on a CD that you want turned into an ISO image. This could be a Linux distribution or anything. To do this you would issue the command:

dd if=/dev/cdrom of=ISO_file.iso

Where /dev/cdrom is the location of your CD device and ISO_file.iso name of the ISO image you want to create. NOTE: If you are wanting to put the ISO image file in a location other than where you are issuing the command, use the full path to the file name.

You can also make use of the mkisofs command to create ISO images of directories on your hard drive. The command for this would look like:

mkisofs -o Directory.iso Directory

Now let’s burn that ISO image to a CD. To do this issue a command similar to:

cdrecord dev=0,0,0 -data speed=48 ISO_file.iso

The above command would put the ISO_file.iso file onto a burnable CD. If you know the actual burning speed of your device you can make adjustments to the command above.

Burn Audio CDs

What everyone has been waiting for. How to burn audio CDs. You could easily burn a directory full of .wav files with the command:

cdrecord dev=0,0,0 -eject speed=48 -pad -audio *.wav

But let’s take this one step further and create a handy bash script that will do the following:

Convert spaces in file names to underscores.

Convert .mp3 files to .wav files.

Burn all .wav files to cd.

Here is the script:

#!/bin/sh

# Convert spaces to underscores
for i in *.mp3; do mv “$i” `echo $i | tr ‘ ‘ ‘_’`; done

# Convert MP3 files to WAV files
for i in *.mp3; do mpg123 -w `basename $i .mp3`.wav $i; done

# Burn the CD
cdrecord dev=0,0,0 -eject speed=48 -pad -audio *.wav

Once you have created the script, make sure you chmod the file so it is executable like this:

chmod u+x burn_script

To run the script first move it into the directory that contains your mp3 files and issue the command ./burn_script. Or you can copy the burn_script to /usr/bin so it is a global command.

Final Thoughts

Linux is an incredibly flexible operating system. The ability to burn CDs from the command line proves just how flexible it is. Do you have other tricks you like to use along these lines? If so, share them.

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I was about to give up hope and copy the files manually when I came across an extremely powerful, yet simple, Unix command: dd.

Using a Linux live disc, dd can be used to copy files, disks and partitions. It can output directly onto another disc or as an image (like an iso).

dd copies data byte-exactly, meaning it won’t get stuck should it encounter corrupted or fragmented data.

dd is nicknamed ‘destroy disk’ as mistyping one letter can wipe your hard disk, so caution must be used.

To copy a hard disk, one would use the following command (whilst root):

dd if=/dev/hdx of=/dev/hdy

hdx is the input hard disk (to be copied) and hdy is the output hard disk (where it is to be copied to).

if = input
of = output

This is extremely important to remember and their names must be altered according to how they are on your computer (use a tool like gParted to find out your drive’s paths). For example, your ‘if’ may be /dev/sdb whilst your ‘of’ may be /dev/sda, but this obviously varies according to how you want to use it and computer-by-computer so you MUST check. An extremely intelligent friend of mine accidentally wiped a hard drive using this command!

Another use would be to use it to produce a CD image:

dd if=/dev/cdrom of=image.iso bs=2k.

Debian Help has a more complete guide.

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