/---------------------------------------------------------\
| FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS |
| |
| X-CD-Roast 0.98 |
| |
| 17.07.2001 Thomas Niederreiter |
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NOTE: A always more current version is online at http://www.xcdroast.org
Overview:
1. What is X-CD-Roast and who is working on it?
2. Why doesn't X-CD-Roast find my harddrives/CD-Burner/CD-ROMs?
3. Why is there no more direct partition support in the new X-CD-Roast?
4. My writer is not on the supported list! Is is supported anyway or when
it will be supported?
5. I cant compile X-CD-Roast 0.98!
6. I think I have found a bug! How do I report it to you?
7. My language is not supported yet! Can I do the translation for you?
8. When you will release the final version?
9. The CDDB-lookup does not work! Why?
10. Will there be multisession and bootable CD support?
11. You say X-CD-Roast 0.98 will not need root or suid-bit? How is this
possible? (Non-root-mode?)
12. What about audio-quick copy?
13. Why don't you offer CVS access?
14. I am a cdwriter-vendor and I want to sponsor you!
15. Why does X-CD-Roast report to write up to 750 MB when only 650 MB do fit
on a CD-R?
16. All seems to be fine, but I cannot write!!! X-CD-Roast 0.96e always
worked great!
17. Uh...I feel stupid but how to write downloaded ISO-images?
18. Can I write an audio CD from mp3? Or from wav-files I created myself?
19. How to see the commands X-CD-Roast generates to learn something
about cdrecord?
20. Hmm...CD-Text not working yet?
21. Why are the tooltips no longer yellow?
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Q:
1. 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 it's nicer and easier with the frontend. The cdrtools
contain "cdrecord" (does do the hard job supporting all the cdwriters and
is doing the actual writing of CDs), "readcd" (reads data-tracks of
CDs - its a portable replacement of "dd"), "mkisofs" (masters CD-images
from given file-trees on the harddisk) and "cdda2wav" (reads 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:
2. 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 absolutely 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.
Additional note about configuring SCSI-emulation in Linux:
The HOWTO does not explain how to add more than one ATAPI device to
SCSI-emulation like may be needed for X-CD-Roast. The trick are
these two lines (Examples only!!):
Line for /etc/modules.conf
options ide-cd ignore='hdc hdd'
Line for /etc/lilo.conf
append="hdc=ide-scsi hdd=ide-scsi"
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Q:
3. 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 absolutely nonsense. The partitions were also a
severe security risk, because if you set them wrong, you were able to
delete your system. 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:
4. 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 (less 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 works. (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:
5. 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 can't 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:
6. 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:
7. 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:
8. 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 at the end of 2001.
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Q:
9. 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:
10. 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:
11. 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've thrown this out there is no reason for root in
the GUI. This is much safer and also disabled the need for a non-root
mode. X-CD-Roast is automatically safe 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 taken care
of in the tools itself. Should be very hard to do any harm with them.
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Q:
12. What about audio-quick copy?
A:
Currently quick-copy (copying without buffering any tracks on harddrive)
only works 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:
13. Why don't you offer CVS access?
A:
At the moment I don't want anybody to get the sources without my
approval. In this early stage are too many changes all the time and
any CVS archive would only disappoint you because the code won't
work at all.
Anyway - I created a CVS-repository at sourceforge. You are free to
drop by.
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Q:
14. 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, a DVD/CDRW MP9120 and a MP7125A
SANYO, which gave me a CRD-RW1, a CD-R CRD-R800S, a CRD-BP2 and CRD-BP1300P
SONY, which gave me a CRX-140S
Also thanks to NETPLACE (www.netplace.de) for hosting my domain.
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Q:
15. 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 questions about the size-calculations of X-CD-Roast
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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Q:
16. All seems to be fine, but I cannot write!!! X-CD-Roast 0.96e always
worked great!
A:
The old version did only write in Track-at-once mode (TAO), because at
that time cdrecord did not support otherwise. X-CD-Roast 0.98 however
does default to DAO (Disc-at-once) because this is the only mode for
good audio copies. Most writers work with cdrecord and DAO fine, but
yours obviously not. Switch to TAO mode in the write-menu and
you have the same behaviour as with the old X-CD-Roast.
(DAO/SAO may work fine with the most recent version of cdrecord and
your drive)
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Q:
17. Uh...I feel stupid but how to write downloaded ISO-images?
A:
If you downloaded an ISO-image (e.g. a linux distribution) you have
to copy that big file (extension should be .iso) first to an
image-directory of X-CD-Roast. You specify these directories in Setup
at the "HD Settings" tab. These are the places where X-CD-Roast will
look for audio (.wav) or data tracks.
Now you enter the "Create CD" menu and you will see your image-file
displayed nicely in the "Image-Information" window. Go to
"Write Tracks" -> click on "Layout tracks" tab, add your image-file,
click on "Accept track layout" and finally a click at "Write tracks"
will write that image perfectly to your CD-R/RW.
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Q:
18. Can I write an audio CD from mp3? Or from wav-files I created myself?
A:
As X-CD-Roast 0.98alpha8 is not yet able to handle mp3-files directly,
you have to convert the files yourself into wav-format. There are a
lot of ways to do this - you can try "mpg123 -w myfile.wav myfile.mp3".
In the end you have a lot of wav-files which should be written as
audio-CD. Just make sure X-CD-Roast does find your wav-files in its
image-directories and then just go ahead like described in FAQ Question 17.
Note: X-CD-Roast can only write CD-quality wav-files (44.1khz, 16 bit,
stereo) - If your files do not meet this requirements they will be
displayed with an audio-icon with a red slash through it. This files
can't be written and will be ignored until you convert them into a
proper format.
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Q:
19. How to see the commands X-CD-Roast generates to learn something
about cdrecord?
A:
In order to learn how X-CD-Roast does call the cdrecord-tools you can
start X-CD-Roast with the -d 1 flag, or set in the setup the loglevel
to "verbose" and see the logfile.
This way its easy for you to try out new versions of cdrecord on the
commandline to see if some problem is already fixed there.
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Q:
20. Hmm...CD-Text not working yet?
A:
Indeed is writing CD-Text not yet supported. X-CD-Roast can read
CD-Text fine and we have to wait until cdrecord includes that feature
to write CD-Text.
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Q:
21. Why are the tooltips no longer yellow?
A:
Former versions of X-CD-Roast 0.98 set the tooltip color manually to
yellow, overriding each setting that may came by a theme. This also
broke multibyte fonts. If you no longer have yellow tooltips and you
want them back, you have to edit your or the systemwide gtkrc file.
Add the following lines to your ~/.gtkrc file, or to
/usr/etc/gtk/gtkrc (or /etc/gtk/gtkrc - depends where you installed
GTK):
style "gtk-tooltips-style" {
bg[NORMAL] = "#ffffc0"
}
widget "gtk-tooltips" style "gtk-tooltips-style"
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Any FAQ I forgot? Please contact me...
17.07.2001 Thomas Niederreiter <tn@xcdroast.org>
