[Ham-Linux] Backing up to CD ?

Thu, 7 Aug 2003 00:41:35 -0400 (EDT)

On Wed, 6 Aug 2003 [email protected] wrote:

> I would appreciate hearing from those who use CD writers to
> backup their linux data. I am having a bit of trouble sorting
> it out.

I use xcdroast both to collect my files into a .iso image,
and to write the image to CD.   http://www.xcdroast.org/

As for device setup, I think cd-writers are detected correctly on RedHat 9
and other recent distributions.   

But I did have to do it by hand once.  
The HOWTO files I found had a lot of out-of-date information.  CD writers 
got a lot more standardized starting in the late 90s.
What I remember:

IDE cd/dvd writers aren't normal ide disks; writing is done by
encapsulating the SCSI command over IDE; a process called "ATAPI".

To do this in linux, you use the ide-scsi driver.
Figure out which ide device is your cd writer; often it is "hdc"
the primary device on the second controller.
Add this option the kernel boot-time options string in /etc/grub.conf
or lilo.conf "hdc=ide-scsi"
This tells the normal ide driver to leave the cdrw device alone,
and instead load the ide-scsi driver to handle it.  From then on, it looks
like you have a SCSI cdrom/cdrw drive.

Then make a symbolic link from /dev/cdrom to /dev/scd0
(If your drive can read dvds, also link from /dev/dvd to /dev/scd0.

That's it.  xcdroast should detect the cdwriter drive in its setup screen.
The only other thing to do in xcdroast setup is point it to a directory in
which to store .iso images.  
I create "/home/cddata" for this, and enter it.

Use xcdroast's "Master Tracks" function to gather up files into a
.iso, and "write tracks" to write them.
("Track" means either a .iso data file containing a tree of files, or a
.wav file containing audio.  When making an audio disk, you usually 
put several .wav files on it, but for a data disk, usually just one .iso).

> cheers, Paul - VA7NT ex VE7CQK - email: [email protected]
> "Those who hear not the music. . . think the dancers mad."
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-- 
--
Steve Tell  [email protected] 