[TriLUG] more DVD-burning questions

[Brian Henning]

Pat Regan wrote:
> 
> I would advise against trying to burn any files over 2 GB.  I am pretty
> sure mkisofs doesn't actually complain, for some strange reason...  When
> I first started burning DVDs, I tried burning a file a bit over 2 GB.
> The disc burned, and could be mounted.  The filesizes were reported very
> incorrectly, and the files weren't readable.
> 

mkisofs starts to complain around 4GB.  It simply ignores the source 
files that large with a terse message.

Unfortunately, breaking up the large file into smaller pieces is not 
convenient at all, as it adds several steps and creates the need for 
more staging area.

If there's a way to get a 4-8GB single file on a DVD without using 
iso-9660, I'm all for it--it only needs to be able to be read by the 
same Linux system that created it.  So if there's a way to get ext3 on a 
DVD, for example, that would work for me.

> 
> This makes it sound like there is absolutely no data on the disc, or the
> drive can't read the disc.  Have you tried the disc in another machine?
>  I have a burner here that sometimes can't read discs that it burned
> (but every machine I put them in can read them just fine).
> 

I can see with my eyes (as opposed to "see" with a computer..) that 
there is /something/ on the disc -- I can see the big band where it 
doesn't look the same as it did when it was blank.  It's just apparently 
not in a valid form.

> 
>>Here's a summary of what I did:
>>
>>media: 8.5GB Double-Layer DVD+R
>>
>>% mkisofs -o image.iso -V VolumeName -R -J image.gz
>>... several minutes later, mkisofs spits out a 3,991 MB .iso
>>% cdrecord -dev=/dev/cdrom1 -verbose -dao -driveropts=burnfree image.iso
>>... 1123.707 seconds later, cdrecord exits with no errors.
>>Hit the eject button, drive blinks red and ejects the disc.
>>
> 
> 
> I would assume that the activity of the LED would be manufacturer, and
> perhaps device, specific.
> 

Without a doubt.  I just can't find any documentation on it, even from 
the drive manufacturer.

~Brian