xcdroast can’t be used to burn DVD under CentOS Linux 4
I has been using xcdroast to burn system backups to DVD for archiving purpose. The support of DVD burning is provided by ProDVD and the latter required its free key renewed every so often. Yesterday I was told the key expired again. As usually, I retrieved the README file off Helmut Jarausch, the author’s site. Surprisingly, no more new keys found in the file. The DVD support has been contributed to the open source project under CDDL since last May (I really needs to read Slashdot or get out more often). After some mucking, I couldn’t use xcdroast to burn DVD under CentOS 4.
The README file on the author’s site said the following:
NOTE: the DVD-recording drivers have been added to the OpenSource
part on May 15th 2006 with cdrtools-2.01.01a09.See ftp://ftp.berlios.de/pub/cdrecord/alpha/
The cdrecord package, one key component of cdrtools package, on my CentOS 4 desktop is up to date. To verify, I successfully burned a DVD using mkisofs and cdrecord from command line (here is a mini how-to). So, it is just xcdroast that does not cooperate with now DVD-capable cdrecord.
On xcdroast’s official site, it says:
* xdroast and recent cdrtool versions:
For a while now the newer cdrtools are no longer fully compatible with X-CD-Roast. A patch from Helmut Jarausch fixes a problem with mkisofs.Again I remind you, that you can use X-CD-Roast with the new cdrtools (including the free DVD-support, without the need for a key) when you copy the binary from “cdrecord” to “cdrecord.prodvd” and start X-CD-Roast with the “-n” option (to skip the version check).
Per the instruction, I copied “cdrecord” to /usr/bin/cdrecord.prodvd. xcdroast start-up messages says something about 2.01-DVD version now, so the trick seemed to have worked. Well, it didn’t. Once I navigated down to create cd/master tracks/media, I couldn’t find 4.7G or anything longer than 90m listed in the media type drop-down menu. I tried even to copy “cdrecord” to /usr/lib/xcdroast-0.98a/cdrecord.prodvd. Same results.
I don’t think the mkisofs patch matters for the symptoms observed. Browsing X-CD-Roast’s source ftp site, it looks like nobody has touched it for quite some years, not even for Fedore Core Linux whose user base is more desktop-oriented and more advante guard.
Maybe it is time to move on with K3B (requires KDE library) or GnomeBaker (requires GNOME) . Aha, K3B works fine off the bat on a up-to-date CentOS 4.4/i386 desktop running Gnome. To install, ‘yum -y install k3b’.
BTW, he chose to release under CDDL instead of GPL, has caused Debian package maintainers to abandon the good old cdrtools pakage, and to fork off to start a new GPL-compliant packages named cdrkit.
