Command Line DVD Burning (for data backup)

[bob at rsi.com (Bob Gorman)]

At 04:06 PM 10/19/2004, nmeyers at javalinux.net wrote:
>On Tue, Oct 19, 2004 at 04:52:25PM -0400, Bob Gorman wrote:
>> I've been looking into burning small data backups onto DVDs, from the command line.
>> 
>> Any recommendations for command line tools?
>
>growisofs works well for me. Is there something about it that isn't
>meeting your needs?

growisofs depends upon mkisofs.  mkisofs is a little brain-damaged, in that it disregards directories in path names.  For example, if I want to backup a couple of random user directories I would use a command like this:

  mkisofs -R -D -J /home/user1/ /home/user2/

This will take all files in the two directories and smush them together under a single root directory.  Not a desirable feature.  Oddly, subdirectories will be maintained.

The use of -graft-points and related switches seem to be a major kludge, and difficult to work with.

I've been working around this with symbolic links, like this:

        mkdir /tmp/backup/
        for d in "$@" ; do
                ln -s "$d" /tmp/backup/
                done
        mkisofs -R -D -J -f /tmp/backup/ >/tmp/backup.iso
        rm -r /tmp/backup/

But this gets into trouble if one of the user directories contains a symbolic link.

A less desirable option is to create a tarball and backup that. However, it negates the random access feature of the media and reduces perusability.

Is there a simple aspect of mkisofs that I have overlooked?  Is there a better command line tool for backing up to a dvd or for creating ISOs?

Pointers to docs, faqs, urls appreciated.

>So far, for tools I've been using readily available RPMs from RedHat (RHEL3): cdrecord, dvdrecord and dvd+rw-tools.
>
>I've had success with growisofs from dvd+rw-tools. With cdrecord, and the fork dvdrecord, there has been no luck.