Packet Writing
Packet writing treats the CD or DVD like a hard drive, in which you create a
file system (like ext3) and format the disc and then write to it randomly as
you would to a conventional hard drive. This method, although commonly
available on Windows-based computers, was long considered experimental
for Linux and was never used much anyway because USB thumb drives
became common before the use of CD or DVD-RWs had the opportunity. We
do not cover this in detail here, but a quick overview is appropriate.
TIP
DVD+RW media are capable of only about 1,000 writes, so it is useful to
mount them with the noatime option to eliminate any writing to update
their inodes or simply mount them as read-only when it’s not necessary to
write to them.It is possible to pipe data to the growisofs command:
Click here to view code image
matthew@seymour~:$ sudo your_application | growisofs -Z
/dev/scd0=/dev/fd/0
It is also possible to burn from an existing image (or file, or named pipe, or
device):
Click here to view code image
matthew@seymour~:$ sudo growisofs -Z /dev/scd0=image
The dvd+rw-tools documentation, found at
/usr/share/doc/dvd+rw-tools/index.html, is required reading
before your first use of the program. We also suggest that you experiment
with DVD-RW (rewritable) media first because if you make mistakes, you
can still reuse the discs instead of creating several new coasters for your
coffee mug.
Viewing Video
You can use Ubuntu tools and applications to view movies and other video
presentations on your PC. This section presents some TV and motion picture
video software tools included with the Ubuntu distribution you received with
this book.