[NTLUG:Discuss] Multiple CD-R Burners / Observations & Questions
David Simmons
dsimmons at powersmiths.com
Fri Mar 12 15:48:03 CST 2004
Guys,
For my company, I've created a CD that everyone wants me to reproduce
for them - in an effort to reduce creation time, I've added a second CD
burner to my Linux system. Now the fun begins. Here are my conclusions
on what seemed to work best...and request for what others are
using/doing and refinement of the CLI scripts.
System: Fedora Core 1, PIII @ 866 MHz, 256MB Ram, 20GB Hard-drive w/ the
following CD-R/W's:
ATAPI - CD-R/RW 48x16 (0,0,0) - As Secondary Master IDE channel (with no
slave)
HL-DT-ST CD-RW GCE-8525B 52x32x52 (0,1,0) - On PCI ATA-133 Card as
Primary Master (with no slave)
**Note - both drives utilize ide-scsi with the following lines in my
/boot/grub/grub.conf kernel lines**:
kernel /vmlinuz-blah.blah ro hdc=ide-scsi hde=ide-scsi root=LABEL=/
**Note2 - Originally was burning a directory of files that included
multiple sub-directories. When burning to multiple CD-R's, needed to
create a duplicate directory so that each burn had a different directory
of files to 'lock'. Then I decided to 'compress' into .ISO's Used two
different .ISO files to burn to different disks.
Burning Methods:
Way 1) X-CD-Roast 0.98alpha14 w/ Cdrecord-Clone 2.01a19
(i686-redhat-linux-gnu)
Way 2) GnomeToaster 1.0Beta6 w/ Cdrecord (above)
Way 3) Fedora 'Built-In' burn:\\\
Way 4) Command-Line Script (cdrecord -v -speed=48 -dev=0,0,0 -data
-eject cd-1.iso)
Performance Table
_____________________________________________________________
| Method | Observations & Notes |
| CD1 | CD2
| |
_____________________________________________________________
| 2 | 2 | Worked well to start with...would get errors |
| | | and 'child process died' errors after a few |
_____________________________________________________________
| 2 | 3 | Moved to this next...was more consistant (ie |
| | | less errors) but system would 'hang' until |
| | | the other burner was finished (guessed it was|
| | | probing for other drive that was in use |
_____________________________________________________________
| 4 | 4 | Seemed to work fast...and consistant, but |
| | | hard to catch the 'had errors' message to |
| | | know that a 'coaster' was created and not to |
| | | put into 'good' stack. |
_____________________________________________________________
| 1 | 1 | With their own .ISO file. Seems to work the |
| | | best...because it would say if all tracks |
| | | were successfully written...and didn't seem |
| | | to have the 'hang' issue noted above...BUT |
| | | it filled my DMESG with 'attempt to access |
| | | beyond end of device' and 'timeout' issues |
| | | BUT these could have been from the other |
| | | methods as DMESG was only checked at end |
| | | and there were no timestamps in errors |
_____________________________________________________________
Questions:
1). What is everyone else doing with multiple CD-write drives for
concurrent burning?
2). How can my CLI script be re-written for more reliable performance
and indication of a PASS! or FAIL! of the burning process.
3). Noticing that cdrecord -scanbus shows many empty 'slots', it seems
like the theoretical limit would be 8 burners per machine - is anyone
doing this? What are the 'gotchas' and work-arounds?
4). Per Note2 above - it was necessary to create different directories
of files for 'locking'/permissions issues. If I had 8 burners would I
need 8 different directories of files and/or 8 copies of the same .ISO?
Thanks for listening - Dave
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