DVD-R/W In Unix?

Vilorman asks: "So has anyone been successful at writing DVD's in Unix? At work, we're primarily a Solaris shop and we just got an IDE CD-RW working but it's a little small. We need to archive a four gig filesystem and DVD sounds like the way to go. I do have a few concerns: how well does Solaris or Linux supoort the DVD media; and what type of drive works best under either OS (IDE, SCSI, Firewire, etc)? I've found IDE and FireWire drives but SCSI DVR-R/W still seems to be a little scarce. One would assume (from looking at the code) that Schilly's CD-Record and mkisofs would get the job done with a DVD, right?"

Comments

Yes

[Anonymous Coward]

Microlite supports DVD-RAM on Linux. If you want to spend a lot of money, Lineo has a pricey product.

Of course, with the new Linux kernel there is native DVD-RAM support. I can't swear to Solaris but, I'm pretty sure it's in there too. Use IDE, it's cheaper, more readily available and just as fast.

"It depends."

[willfe]

Ah, yes, that old favorite answer. Unfortunately, it's true in this case.

Some points of note:

• Out-of-the-box cdrecord does not write DVD-R(W) discs. You have to pay for the author's "cdrecord-prodvd" release or apply the free patches I found at http://www.abcpages.com/~mache/cdrecord-dvd.html.
• While DVD-RAM fares better than DVD-RW in Linux (DVD-RAM doesn't need that damned packet writing stuff that the gang at http://packet-cd.sourceforge.net/ haven't updated since 2.4.7-ish), it still has plenty of problems. If you hit a media error, kiss your session goodbye and prepare to reboot. And despite much marketing efforts to the contrary, DVD-RAM discs aren't readable by anything I've been able to throw them at.
• Whether you're using the "official" DVD version of cdrecord (the test version, at least, limited to -dummy mode or 1GB images) or the one based on the free patch, if you hand the Pioneer DVD-A03 "cheap" DVD-RW media, it always seems to give up. Sadly, Nero Burning ROM in 'doze writes to the same pieces of media just fine. This stings to admit, since I'm quite the Linux junkie :)
• You can forget about packet writing if you're using a DVD-RW drive, unless someone out there has updates (or something better to use) than the packet-cd project at Sourceforge. The patches there won't even apply to kernels newer than 2.4.12 (according to the mailing list), and even then it's still unfriendly and unreliable.

I would love it if someone could disprove any of the above; I have a QPS (Que!) external Firewire drive (the Pioneer DVD-A03 stuffed into a firewire enclosure) that I really wish was more reliable in Linux than it is right now. Packet writing would be lovely. As it stands now, I can write DVD-Rs okay with the free patched cdrecord, but the only DVD-RW media that's writable in Linux seems to be the one that shipped with the drive. Nothing else has worked :(