[SOLVED] Growisofs burned DVDs empty on other machines

i3 · 2017-01-06 22:42:43

Hello,

I recently bought a DVD writer for archiving old images and stuff. Because my DVD writer is plugged into my headless "server" I have to use a command line burning program. After some short research I decided to go with growisofs.

Everything went fine - I put a blank DVD-R (4.7GB) disk in my dvd slot and ran

`growisofs -Z /dev/sr0 -R -J /some/files`

and continued the session by running

`growisofs -M /dev/sr0 -R -J /some/other-files`

Status codes were good and the process seemed to have finished fine. So I was asking myself: Can this disk be read by another machine? I put the DVD into my Debian machine and mounted /dev/sr0 - nice! All data was there.
Then I tried my wife's Windows 7 machine - and it said something like "Empty disk - do you want to burn files?". This seems really odd because one can clearly see that the DVD is "used/laser burned" from the bottom side.

Does anyone know what I am missing? Do I have to "finalise" the disk before using in non-Linux machines? Why is it empty on a Windows machine... (maybe it is not only Windows, could not check OSX or other Linux distributions)

Maybe relevant: I had to install `genisoimage` so that growisofs could start burning.

Last edited by i3 (2017-01-07 17:38:11)

frostschutz · 2017-01-06 22:48:29

"continuing sessions" never has worked particularly well, you would do better to collect all the data in one go.

scdbackup · 2017-01-07 08:25:06

Hi,

i3 wrote:
> I put the DVD into my Debian machine and mounted /dev/sr0 - nice!
> All data was there.

Did you read all data files or did you only look whether the file names
get listed ?

Reading all files could be done by taring up the whole mount point.
Like:

tar cf - /mnt/iso | wc

This should work without error messages and yield a plausible byte count.

frostschutz wrote:
> "continuing sessions" never has worked particularly well,

The shown growisofs -M run does not continue the old session but adds
a new one. This gesture works well for me with xorriso on various media
types.

i3 wrote:
> Do I have to "finalise" the disk before using in non-Linux machines?

I would be very astonished if MS-Windows would generally not recognize
a DVD-R with more than one session which is not yet closed. This is a
normal medium state.

> Why is it empty on a Windows machine...

I would rather ask: Why is it perceived empty in that drive ?
The operating system is for now less a suspect than the hardware.

The two growisofs commands look ok. genisoimage can hardly be blamed
either.

If you have the chance to put the medium into other drives, then do.
If more than one does not recognize it as readable then you need to
do more tests with your burner and other media.

Have a nice day

Thomas

seth · 2017-01-07 10:58:47

No idea about Win7 but iirc on WinXP only dedicated tools like nero could handle (unfinalized) multisession disks, but not the OS itself.
If anyhing, see whether such program (they probaby still ship crippled retail addons or shareware?) can handle the disk. In case, try finalizing the disk.

i3 · 2017-01-07 17:37:16

Thank you all for your replies!

TL;DR Windows sucks!!

I had the chance to check out my burned DVD at my parents computer (also Windows) and I was able to see (and open) all files that were written to the DVD! Back home I put the DVD again in my wife's windows laptop. First time it was empty again - second time it worked. WTF Microsoft?! So anyway i guess this was just a Windows or maybe hardware specific problem.

@seth Do you know how to "finalize" the disk??

seth · 2017-01-07 17:46:49

growisofs -M /dev/sr0=/dev/zero

Edit: nevertheless i'd check some windows burn utility (when the OS itself failed on it)

Last edited by seth (2017-01-07 17:47:34)

shulamy · 2017-01-07 19:03:31

maybe

 
      -dvd-compat
              Provide maximum  media  compatibility  with  DVD-ROM/-Video.  In
              write-once  context  (DVD+R and DVD-R) this results in unappend-
              able recording (closed disk). In DVD+RW context it instructs the
              logical unit to explicitly burn [otherwise optional] lead-o

http://www.linuxcommand.org/man_pages/growisofs1.html

ezik

scdbackup · 2017-01-07 19:24:29

Hi,

i3 wrote:
> Windows sucks!!

Proud to be 100% Microsoft Free.

> First time it was empty again - second time it worked.

Then it's quite probably about the drive, not the system.

You could put some Live Linux on USB stick so that the DVD drive stays unused
and then check by simply trying to read DVD content. Either by mounting and
tar or by

dd if=/dev/sr0 bs=2048 | wc

If you get error messages, then look into the system log (e.g. output of dmesg)
for messages about "sr0" and try to retrieve them for showing them here.
(E.g. send them to yourself as mail.)

If it works on the first try, eject and re-load the medium and try again.
Statistics on small numbers is a mine field.

In case of reproducible problems it would be helpful to have dvd+rw-mediainfo
or xorriso at hand for examining the drive's idea of the medium.
With Archlinux, this should be doable by adding packages "dvd+rw-tools"
or "libisoburn" to the install ISO
https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Re … nstall_ISO
or by installing them from the internet when the Live system is up.

Then runs like

dvd+rw-mediainfo /dev/sr0 foo 2>&1 | tee -i /tmp/dvd+rw-mediainfo.log

xorriso -scsi_log on -indev /dev/sr0 -toc 2>&1 | tee -i /tmp/xorriso.log

should tell very verbously what the drive reports about the medium
and log this in the /tmp/*.log files. Omitting "foo" and "-scsi_log on"
makes the runs much less verbous.
(Of course only the failed attempts to recognize the readability of the
medium will be of interest for diagnosing the problem cause. Success is
boring ...)

Have a nice day

Thomas

Last edited by scdbackup (2017-01-07 21:14:08)

Arch Linux

#1 2017-01-06 22:42:43

[SOLVED] Growisofs burned DVDs empty on other machines

#2 2017-01-06 22:48:29

Re: [SOLVED] Growisofs burned DVDs empty on other machines

#3 2017-01-07 08:25:06

Re: [SOLVED] Growisofs burned DVDs empty on other machines

#4 2017-01-07 10:58:47

Re: [SOLVED] Growisofs burned DVDs empty on other machines

#5 2017-01-07 17:37:16

Re: [SOLVED] Growisofs burned DVDs empty on other machines

#6 2017-01-07 17:46:49

Re: [SOLVED] Growisofs burned DVDs empty on other machines

#7 2017-01-07 19:03:31

Re: [SOLVED] Growisofs burned DVDs empty on other machines

#8 2017-01-07 19:24:29

Re: [SOLVED] Growisofs burned DVDs empty on other machines

Board footer