faq

-一个LINUX下的使用方&#63845 的CD-ROM刻录软件,开放源码

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| FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS                              |
|                                                         |
| X-CD-Roast 0.98                                         |
|                                                         |
| 20.03.2000 Thomas Niederreiter                          |
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Overview:

* What is X-CD-Roast and who is working on it?
* Why doesn't X-CD-Roast find my harddrives/CD-Burner/CD-ROMs?
* Why is there no more direct partition support in the new X-CD-Roast?
* My writer is not on the supported list! Is is supported anyway or when
  it will be supported? 
* I cant compile X-CD-Roast 0.98!
* I think I found a bug! How do I report it to you?
* My language is not supported yet! Can I do the translation for you?
* When you will release the final version?
* The CDDB-lookup does not work! Why?
* Will there be multisession and bootable CD support?
* You say X-CD-Roast 0.98 will not need root or suid-bit? How is this
  possible? (Non-root-mode?)
* What about audio-quick copy?
* Why don't you offer CVS access?
* I am a cdwriter-vendor and I want to sponsor you!
* Why does X-CD-Roast report to write up to 750 MB when only 650 MB do fit
  on a CD-R? 
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Q:
What is X-CD-Roast and who is working on it?

A:
X-CD-Roast is a graphical user interface (GUI) for the command-line
cdrtools. You can do anything X-CD-Roast does yourself using these
tools - but its nicer and easier with the frontend. The cdrtools
contain "cdrecord" (does do the hard job to support all the cdwriters and
is doing the actual writing of CDs), "readcd" (does read data-tracks of
CDs - its a portable replacement of "dd"), "mkisofs" (does master CD-images
from given file-trees on the harddisk) and "cdda2wav" (does read audio-tracks).
Cdrecord, readcd and mkisofs are maintained by Joerg Schilling, cdda2wav
by Heiko Eissfeldt and X-CD-Roast by me, Thomas Niederreiter.

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Q:
Why doesn't X-CD-Roast find my harddrives/CD-Burner/CD-ROMs?


A:
X-CD-Roast 0.96e had limited ATAPI-device support. But this was
just a quick hack and I had a lot of complaints that the code
detected devices wrong. So I decided to remove ANY ATAPI/IDE-code
from X-CD-Roast. And there is really absolut no reason why you
need it anyway. Direct support of partitions and harddisks is gone,
so you never need to see devices of this kind in X-CD-Roast. 

But in order to write a CD, X-CD-Roast must of course detect your
CD-Writer. If you have a SCSI-Writer there should never be a problem.
All you need is generic-scsi support in the kernel. 
ATAPI/IDE-Writers need scsi-emulation to be detected and accessable.
You have to install scsi-emulation for ALL your ATAPI-CDROM drives too, if
you want to use them within X-CD-Roast. 
Parallel-Writers need the parallelport-driver in the kernel. 

Please see section 2 of the CD-Writing-HOWTO how to configure
your kernel on Linux. 
http://www.linuxdoc.org/HOWTO/CD-Writing-HOWTO.html

If you use not Linux but any other OS, you have to check the cdrecord
documentation how to access your writer. 
 
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Q:
Why is there no more direct partition support in the new X-CD-Roast?


A:
Partition support was introduced in X-CD-Roast about 3 years ago.
At this time using a raw partition to save image-data was saver than
going through a filesystem. Today the computers are so fast, that using
a raw-partition is absolutly nonsense. The partitions were also a
severly security risk, because if you set them wrong, you were able to
delete your system nicely. In version 0.98 of X-CD-Roast you can specify
an unlimited number of directories where the image/audio-data can be
stored. This is much more flexible and transparent. 
If you still have some extra partitions dedicated only for cdwriting 
with X-CD-Roast, you simple have to format them and mount them 
somewhere. Then you just specify this mountpoint in X-CD-Roast setup
and you can use it like in former version of X-CD-Roast. (But you also
can store any other data on it...X-CD-Roast will NOT delete any data
it does not recognize)
 
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Q:
My writer is not on the supported list! Is is supported anyway or when
it will be supported?

A:
Please look at the cdrecord-homepage for a current list of supported
writers. But even when your writer is not on the list, chances are
very high that it is supported. Newer writers (newer than one year) 
usually are SCSI3/MMC conform, which means that they run anyway,
even when their name is not on that list. All ATAPI-Writers are
supported. Parallel-Writers are also all supported, when the parallel-port
driver in the Linux kernel does work. (See your Kernel-documentation)

cdrecord-page: 
http://www.fokus.gmd.de/research/cc/glone/employees/joerg.schilling/private/cdrecord.html

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Q:
I cant compile X-CD-Roast 0.98!

A:
The current release of X-CD-Roast 0.98 is just a test release. I did
not intend that it is easy to install. Only users who are able to
get it running should run it. If you cant run it, then you have to
wait for the final release, where all installation issues will be 
adressed.

If you are running linux and get errors about some missing include
files or gtk-config not found, you forgot to install all the needed
packages from your distribution CD. Please see the README file.

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Q:
I think I found a bug! How do I report it to you?

A:
If you think you found a bug (please don't write about "missing" features - 
remember this test shows only about 50% of the final product) you have
first to find out if you can reproduce it reliably. Then run xcdroast in
debug mode (-d 10 switch) and send me the output. Please describe
what exactly you have done and what went wrong.

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Q:
My language is not supported yet! Can I do the translation for you?

A:
I am looking for people who volunteer to translate X-CD-Roast.
Its very easy because there are only two ASCII-files (language.def and
langhelp.def) which contain all texts. Please contact me first and
I will send you further instructions. I only need people which are
reliable and can react on short notice when there are some texts to
change. As official maintainer for your language you will be added
to the X-CD-Roast Hall-of-Fame.
 
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Q: 
When you will release the final version?

A:
Good question. I really do not know. I have plenty of other things
to do, but I try hard to make any release as quick as possible.
There will be a lot of test versions before the final release which
will be somewhere in middle 2000. 

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Q:
The CDDB-lookup does not work! Why?

A:
Current CDDB-code does not support CDDB via HTTP and proxies. So when
you are behind a firewall you cannot lookup your CD-titles. 
I will add proxy support when I am really bored someday.

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Q:
Will there be multisession and bootable CD support?

A:
Yes. This is the main-reason for the 0.98 release. I will try to
support all mkisofs-features in X-CD-Roast. Please be patient - 
its not trivial to create a GUI for all this.

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Q: 
You say X-CD-Roast 0.98 will not need root or suid-bit? How is this
possible? (Non-root-mode?)

A:
Earlier version of X-CD-Roast needed root permissions to access the partition
stuff. But because I thrown this out there is no reason for root in
the GUI. This is much saver and also disabled the need for a non-root
mode. X-CD-Roast is automatically save to be run by any user. This is 
possible because only the helper application will get suid-root to
get access to the scsi-hardware. The tools itself will drop their root
permissions as fast as possible to make it very hard to exploit them.
(buffer-overrun or stuff like that). Any security issues will be cared
of in the tools itself. Should be very hard to do any harm with them.

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Q:
What about audio-quick copy?

A:
Currently quick-copy (copying without buffering any tracks on harddrive)
does only work for pure data-CDs. We are working on audio-quick copy, so
that the final version of X-CD-Roast 0.98 should offer this feature.

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Q:
Why don't you offer CVS access?

A:
At the moment I don't want anybody get the sources without my
approval. In this early stage are too much changes all the time and
any CVS archive would only disappoint you because the code won't 
work at all.
I am putting special-prepared snap-shots on my page. Thats all you can
get at the moment.


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Q:
I am a cdwriter-vendor and I want to sponsor you!

A:
Fine! If you send me free hardware, I can test X-CD-Roast with it and
recommend it to other users. I also will put your logo on my webpage.
Please don't hesitate to contact me.

Current sponsors are:

RICOH, which gave me a CD-R/RW MP7060S
SANYO, which gave me a CRD-RW1 and CD-R CRD-R800S

Also thanks to NETPLACE (www.netplace.de) for hosting my domain.

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Q:
Why does X-CD-Roast report to write up to 750 MB when only 650 MB do fit
on a CD-R? 

A:
This or any other question about the size-calculations of X-CD-Roast
do relate to the used sector sizes. First of all you have to understand
that there is a big difference between writing a data CD or an audio CD.
When you look at a standard CD-R there may be written on it:
Capacity 74 Min / 650 MB. The first number is capacity that fits on an
audio CD. The second relates only to data CDs. So how comes that X-CD-Roast
insits on needing almost 750 MB space for 74 min audio? An audio CD consists 
of 2352 bytes sectors - as opposed to 2048 bytes needed for data! 
In reality also the data-sector takes up 2352 bytes - but only 2048 bytes
are useable for you - the other 304 bytes are used for error-correction,
sector numbers and stuff. 
So, when a CD-R vendor tells you about 650 MB capacity this means that  
you calculate with 2048 byte sectors. And because the audio-sectors are
bigger, you need more space to rip audio to the harddrive. So, reading
a 74 Min CD to the harddisk takes up to

	74 * 60 seconds * 44100 hz sample rate * 2 (16 bit) * 2 (stereo)
	= 783216000 bytes = 746 MB. 

And 746 MB is the size X-CD-Roast reports! Because thats exactly the
free size you need on your harddrive to save the audio-tracks.
Don't worry that this might not fit on your CD-R just because the
vendor wrote 650 MB on it - X-CD-Roast will warn you in any case when
something might not fit. And if you don't believe X-CD-Roast, then
calculate yourself!
As a rule of thumb - when creating audio CDs, watch the minute counter
and when doing data watch the MB counter. Its just as simple as it
sounds.

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Any FAQ I forgot? Please contact me...

4.12.99 Thomas Niederreiter <[e-mail]>