READCD linux command manual

READCD(1)              Schily?s USER COMMANDS                  READCD(1)



NAME
       readcd - read or write data Compact Discs

SYNOPSIS
       readcd dev=device [ options ]


DESCRIPTION
       Readcd is used to read or write Compact Discs.

       The device refers to scsibus/target/lun of the drive. Communication on
       SunOS is done with the SCSI general driver scg.  Other operating  sys-
       tems  are  using a library simulation of this driver.  Possible syntax
       is: dev= scsibus,target,lun or dev= target,lun.  In the  latter  case,
       the  drive has to be connected to the default SCSI bus of the machine.
       Scsibus, target and lun are integer numbers.  Some  operating  systems
       or SCSI transport implementations may require to specify a filename in
       addition.  In this case the correct syntax for  the  device  is:  dev=
       devicename:scsibus,target,lun  or  dev= devicename:target,lun.  If the
       name of the device node that has  been  specified  on  such  a  system
       refers  to exactly one SCSI device, a shorthand in the form dev= devi-
       cename:@ or dev= devicename:@,lun may be used instead of dev=  device-
       name:scsibus,target,lun.


       To  access  remote  SCSI  devices, you need to prepend the SCSI device
       name by a remote device indicator.  The  remote  device  indicator  is
       either REMOTE:user@host: or  REMOTE:host:
       A  valid  remote  SCSI  device name may be: REMOTE:user@host: to allow
       remote SCSI bus scanning or REMOTE:user@host:1,0,0 to access the  SCSI
       device at host connected to SCSI bus # 1,target 0 lun 0.


       To  access  SCSI  devices  via alternate transport layers, you need to
       prepend the SCSI device name by  a  transport  layer  indicator.   The
       transport  layer indicator may be something like USCSI: or ATAPI:.  To
       get a list of supported transport layers for your platform,  use  dev=
       HELP:


       To make readcd portable to all UNIX platforms, the syntax dev= device-
       name:scsibus,target,lun is preferred as is hides OS specific knowledge
       about  device names from the user.  A specific OS must not necessarily
       support a way to specify a real device file name nor a way to  specify
       scsibus,target,lun.


       Scsibus  0 is the default SCSI bus on the machine. Watch the boot mes-
       sages for more information or look  into  /var/adm/messages  for  more
       information about the SCSI configuration of your machine.  If you have
       problems to figure out what values for  scsibus,target,lun  should  be
       used, try the -scanbus option of cdrecord.


OPTIONS
       If  no options except the dev= option have been specified, readcd goes
       into interactive mode.  Select a primary function and then follow  the
       instructions.


       -version
              Print version information and exit.

       dev=target
              Sets the SCSI target for the drive, see notes above.  A typical
              device specification is dev=6,0 .  If a filename must  be  pro-
              vided  together  with  the  numerical target specification, the
              filename is implementation specific.  The correct  filename  in
              this  case  can  be found in the system specific manuals of the
              target operating system.  On a FreeBSD system without CAM  sup-
              port, you need to use the control device (e.g.  /dev/rcd0.ctl).
              A  correct  device  specification   in   this   case   may   be
              dev=/dev/rcd0.ctl:@ .

              On  Linux,  drives  connected  to  a  parallel port adapter are
              mapped to a virtual SCSI bus. Different adapters are mapped  to
              different targets on this virtual SCSI bus.

              If  no  dev  option  is  present,  cdrecord will try to get the
              device from the CDR_DEVICE environment.

              If the argument to the dev= option does not contain the charac-
              ters  ',',  '/', '@' or ':', it is interpreted as an label name
              that may be found in the  file  /etc/cdrecord.conf  (see  FILES
              section).

       timeout=#
              Set  the  default SCSI command timeout value to # seconds.  The
              default SCSI command timeout is the minimum  timeout  used  for
              sending  SCSI commands.  If a SCSI command fails due to a time-
              out, you may try to raise  the  default  SCSI  command  timeout
              above  the timeout value of the failed command.  If the command
              runs correctly with a raised command timeout, please report the
              better  timeout  value  and  the  corresponding  command to the
              author of the program.  If no  timeout  option  is  present,  a
              default timeout of 40 seconds is used.

       debug=#, -d
              Set  the  misc debug value to # (with debug=#) or increment the
              misc debug level by one (with -d). If  you  specify  -dd,  this
              equals  to debug=2.  This may help to find problems while open-
              ing a driver for libscg.  as well as with sector sizes and sec-
              tor  types.  Using -debug slows down the process and may be the
              reason for a buffer underrun.

       kdebug=#, kd=#
              Tell the scg-driver to modify the kernel debug value while SCSI
              commands are running.

       -silent, -s
              Do not print out a status report for failed SCSI commands.

       -v     Increment  the level of general verbosity by one.  This is used
              e.g. to display the progress of the process.

       -V     Increment the verbose level with respect of SCSI command trans-
              port  by one.  This helps to debug problems during the process,
              that occur in the CD-Recorder.   If  you  get  incomprehensible
              error  messages  you  should use this flag to get more detailed
              output.  -VV will show data buffer content in addition.   Using
              -V or -VV slows down the process.

       f=file Specify  the filename where the output should be written or the
              inout should be taken from. Using '-' as  filename  will  cause
              readcd to use stdout resp. stdin.

       -w     Switch  to  write  mode.  If this option is not present, readcd
              reads from the specified device.

       -c2scan
              Scans the whole CD or the range specified by the  sectors=range
              for  C2  errors.  C2  errors  are errors that are uncorrectable
              after the second stage of the 24/28 + 28/32 Reed  Solomon  cor-
              rection  system  at audio level (2352 bytes sector size). If an
              audio CD has C2 errors, interpolation is  needed  to  hide  the
              errors.  If  a  data CD has C2 errors, these errors are in most
              cases corrected by the ECC/EDC code that makes 2352  bytes  out
              of  2048 data bytes. The ECC/EDC code should be able to correct
              about 100 C2 error bytes per sector.

              If you find C2 errors you may want to reduce  the  speed  using
              the  speed=  option  as  C2  errors  may be a result of dynamic
              unbalance on the medium.

       -scanbus
              Scan all SCSI devices on all SCSI busses and print the  inquiry
              strings.  This  option  may be used to find SCSI address of the
              devices on a system.  The numbers printed  out  as  labels  are
              computed by: bus * 100 + target

       sectors=range
              Specify a sector range that should be read.  The range is spec-
              ified by the starting sector number, a minus sign and the  end-
              ing sector number.  The end sector is not included in the list,
              so sectors=0-0 will not read anything and may be used to  check
              for a CD in the drive.

       speed=#
              Set  the  speed factor of the read or write process to #.  # is
              an integer, representing a multiple of the audio  speed.   This
              is  about  150 KB/s for CD-ROM and about 172 KB/s for CD-Audio.
              If no speed option is present, readcd will use  maximum  speed.
              Only  MMC  compliant drives will benefit from this option.  The
              speed of non MMC drives is not changed.

              Using a lower speed may increase the readability  of  a  CD  or
              DVD.

       ts=#   Set  the  maximum transfer size for a single SCSI command to #.
              The syntax for the ts= option is the same as for cdrecord  fs=#
              or sdd bs=#.

              If  no  ts=  option  has  been  specified, readcd defaults to a
              transfer size of 256 kB. If libscg gets lower values  from  the
              operating system, the value is reduced to the maimum value that
              is possible with the current operating system.   Sometimes,  it
              may  help to further reduce the transfer size or to enhance it,
              but note that it may take a long time to find a better value by
              experimenting with the ts= option.

       -notrunc
              Do not truncate the output file when opening it.

       -fulltoc
              Retrieve  a full TOC from the current disk and print it in hex.

       -clone Do a clone read. Read the CD with all sub-channel  data  and  a
              full TOC.  The full TOC data will be put into a file with simi-
              lar name as with the f= option but the suffix .toc added.

       -noerror
              Do not abort if the high level error checking in  readcd  found
              an uncorrectable error in the data stream.

       -nocorr
              Switch  the  drive  into a mode where it ignores read errors in
              data sectors that are a result of uncorrectable ECC/EDC  errors
              before  reading.   If readcd completes, the error recovery mode
              of the drive is switched back to the remembered old mode.

       retries=#
              Set the retry count for high level retries in readcd to #.  The
              default  is to do 128 retries which may be too much if you like
              to read a CD with many unreadable sectors.

       -overhead
              Meter the SCSI command overhead time.  This is done by  execut-
              ing  several  commands  1000  times and printing the total time
              used. If you divide the displayed times by 1000,  you  get  the
              average overhead time for a single command.

       meshpoints=#
              Print read-speed at # locations.  The purpose of this option is
              to create a list of read speed values suitable for  e.g.   gnu-
              plot.  The speed values are calculated assuming that 1000 bytes
              are one kilobyte as documented in the SCSI standard.  The ouput
              data created for this purpose is written to stdout.

       -factor
              Output  the  speed  values  for meshpoints=# as factor based on
              single speed of the current medium.  This only works if  readcd
              is able to determine the current medium type.

EXAMPLES
       For all examples below, it will be assumed that the drive is connected
       to the primary SCSI bus of the machine. The SCSI target id is  set  to
       2.

       To  read the complete media from a CD-ROM writing the data to the file
       cdimage.raw:

           readcd dev=2,0 f=cdimage.raw

       To read sectors from range 150 ... 10000 from  a  CD-ROM  writing  the
       data to the file cdimage.raw:

           readcd dev=2,0 sectors=150-10000 f=cdimage.raw

       To  write  the data from the file cdimage.raw (e.g. a filesystem image
       from mkisofs) to a DVD-RAM, call:

           readcd dev=2,0 -w f=cdimage.raw


ENVIRONMENT
       RSH    If the RSH environment is present, the remote  connection  will
              not  be  created via rcmd(3) but by calling the program pointed
              to by RSH.  Use e.g.  RSH=/usr/bin/ssh to create a secure shell
              connection.

              Note  that  this forces cdrecord to create a pipe to the rsh(1)
              program and disallows cdrecord to directly access  the  network
              socket  to  the remote server.  This makes it impossible to set
              up performance parameters and slows down  the  connection  com-
              pared to a root initiated rcmd(3) connection.

       RSCSI  If  the  RSCSI  environment  is present, the remote SCSI server
              will not be the program /opt/schily/sbin/rscsi but the  program
              pointed  to by RSCSI.  Note that the remote SCSI server program
              name will be ignored if you log in using an  account  that  has
              been  created with a remote SCSI server program as login shell.

FILES
SEE ALSO
       cdrecord(1), mkisofs(1), scg(7), fbk(7), rcmd(3), ssh(1).


NOTES
       If you don't want to allow users to become root on your system, readcd
       may safely be installed suid root. This allows all users or a group of
       users with no root privileges to use readcd.  Readcd in this case will
       only  allow  access  to CD-ROM type drives- To give all user access to
       use readcd, enter:

            chown root /usr/local/bin/readcd
            chmod 4711 /usr/local/bin/readcd

       To give a restricted group of users access to readcd enter:

            chown root /usr/local/bin/readcd
            chgrp cdburners /usr/local/bin/readcd
            chmod 4710 /usr/local/bin/readcd

       and add a group cdburners on your system.

       Never give write permissions for  non  root  users  to  the  /dev/scg?
       devices  unless  you would allow anybody to read/write/format all your
       disks.

       You should  not  connect  old  drives  that  do  not  support  discon-
       nect/reconnect  to  either  the  SCSI bus that is connected to the CD-
       Recorder or the source disk.

       When using readcd with the broken  Linux  SCSI  generic  driver.   You
       should  note  that readcd uses a hack, that tries to emulate the func-
       tionality of the scg driver.  Unfortunately, the sg  driver  on  Linux
       has several severe bugs:

       ?      It cannot see if a SCSI command could not be sent at all.

       ?      It  cannot  get  the  SCSI status byte.  Readcd for that reason
              cannot report failing SCSI commands in some situations.

       ?      It cannot get real DMA count of transfer.  Readcd  cannot  tell
              you if there is an DMA residual count.

       ?      It cannot get number of bytes valid in auto sense data.  Readcd
              cannot tell you if device transfers no sense data at all.

       ?      It fetches to few data in auto request sense (CCS/SCSI-2/SCSI-3
              needs >= 18).


DIAGNOSTICS
       A typical error message for a SCSI command looks like:

              readcd: I/O error. test unit ready: scsi sendcmd: no error
              CDB:  00 20 00 00 00 00
              status: 0x2 (CHECK CONDITION)
              Sense Bytes: 70 00 05 00 00 00 00 0A 00 00 00 00 25 00 00 00 00 00
              Sense Key: 0x5 Illegal Request, Segment 0
              Sense Code: 0x25 Qual 0x00 (logical unit not supported) Fru 0x0
              Sense flags: Blk 0 (not valid)
              cmd finished after 0.002s timeout 40s

       The  first  line gives information about the transport of the command.
       The text after the first colon gives the error  text  for  the  system
       call  from  the  view  of  the kernel. It usually is: I/O error unless
       other problems happen. The next words contain a short description  for
       the  SCSI  command that fails. The rest of the line tells you if there
       were any problems for the transport of the command over the SCSI  bus.
       fatal  error  means  that it was not possible to transport the command
       (i.e. no device present at the requested SCSI address).

       The second line prints the  SCSI  command  descriptor  block  for  the
       failed command.

       The  third  line gives information on the SCSI status code returned by
       the command, if the transport of the command succeeds.  This is  error
       information from the SCSI device.

       The  fourth  line  is a hex dump of the auto request sense information
       for the command.

       The fifth line is the error text  for  the  sense  key  if  available,
       followed by the segment number that is only valid if the command was a
       copy command. If the error message is not directly related to the cur-
       rent command, the text deferred error is appended.

       The  sixth  line  is  the  error text for the sense code and the sense
       qualifier if available.  If the type of the device is known, the sense
       data  is  decoded from tables in scsierrs.c .  The text is followed by
       the error value for a field replaceable unit.

       The seventh line prints the block number that is related to the failed
       command  and text for several error flags. The block number may not be
       valid.

       The eight line reports the timeout set up for  this  command  and  the
       time that the command really needed to complete.


BUGS
CREDITS
MAILING LISTS
       If  you want to actively take part on the development of cdrecord, you
       may join the cdwriting mailing list by sending mail to:

            other-cdwrite-request@lists.debian.org

       and include the word subscribe in the body.  The mail address  of  the
       list is:

            cdwrite@lists.debian.org


AUTHOR
       Joerg Schilling
       Seestr. 110
       D-13353 Berlin
       Germany

       Additional information can be found on:
       https://www.fokus.fhg.de/usr/schilling/cdrecord.html

       If you have support questions, send them to:

       cdrecord-support@berlios.de
       or other-cdwrite@lists.debian.org

       If you have definitely found a bug, send a mail to:

       cdrecord-developers@berlios.de
       or schilling@fokus.fhg.de

       To subscribe, use:

       https://lists.berlios.de/mailman/listinfo/cdrecord-developers
       or https://lists.berlios.de/mailman/listinfo/cdrecord-support



Joerg Schilling                  Version 2.0                        READCD(1)