[GLLUG] CD-RW/CD-R for Linux

[Matt Graham]

On Sunday 27 April 2003 15:44, after a long battle with technology, Ben 
Pfaff wrote:
> "Seth Bembeneck" <sbembeneck@characterlink.net> writes:
> > I’m looking to get a cd-rw for Red Hat. The two manufacturers I’m
> > looking at right now are Lite-on and Cendyne. When I look at the
> > boxes for them, Linux is not listed. Does any one know if they will
> > work? Should most of the newer cd-rw drives work? Does Red hat even
> > support cd burning?

The only Cendyne drive I've ever worked with suffered a severe hardware 
failure less than a week after the warranty ran out.  Liteon got 
reasonable marks from people in col.hardware, but for my money, you 
can't beat a Plextor.  My current Plextor is almost a year out of 
warranty, and still works fine.

> I haven't yet run into a CD-RW I couldn't make work under Linux.
> These days, most will work fine right out of the box.  That said,
> some won't, and some may take more work than others.

I have been answering questions about CD-RWs for years now on 
col.hardware, and I can report that any IDE drive made after about 1998 
will Just Work when it's been set up properly.  Setting up an IDE drive 
properly typically involves adding "hdX=ide-scsi" to the LILO or GRUB 
commandline parameters, then having /etc/init.d/boot.local (or 
whatever) call "modprobe ide-scsi".  Redhat may actually do this itself 
via kudzu--maybe.

SCSI CD-RWs are of course no problem.  USB CD-RWs might be a little 
iffy, but problem reports I've seen have been few and far between.  
Firewire CD-RWs are sort of nebulous.

> Red Hat should support CD burning.  You want the cdrecord program
> and perhaps some kind of friendly GUI wrapper, like grip (for
> music CDs) or xcdroast (for anything).

May I suggest cdbakeoven instead of XCDRoast?  They do pretty much the 
same thing, but cdbakeoven is easier to configure ("chmod +s `which 
cdrecord`" is all you need) and easier to fix when something breaks 
since it logs all cdrecord (or cdrdao) output.  HTH,

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