Writing CDs, DVDs and Blu-ray discs on Linux today

Updated November 2026

To burn a disc on Linux today, use xorriso: one program that builds ISO 9660 images and writes them to CD, DVD and Blu-ray. cdrskin is the choice for audio CDs, and growisofs still works for DVD and BD. If you only want to start a Linux installer, skip the disc and write the ISO file to a USB stick instead.

The tools today

Graphical programs (K3b for KDE, Brasero for GNOME, Xfburn for Xfce) are front ends to these same back ends; when a GUI fails, the command line usually tells you why. This page uses xorriso and cdrskin from the libburnia project, which drive the burner directly with no extra helper programs.

# Debian, Ubuntu
sudo apt install xorriso cdrskin growisofs

# Fedora
sudo dnf install xorriso

# Arch
sudo pacman -S libisoburn libburn dvd+rw-tools

Find the drive

The first optical drive is /dev/sr0; udev also creates /dev/cdrom and similar links. Ask xorriso which drives it can use:

xorriso -devices

A drive appears only if you have read and write permission on it. In a local desktop session, systemd-logind gives the logged-in user access automatically. Over SSH or from a script, check the owning group with ls -l /dev/sr0 (it is cdrom on Debian and Ubuntu and optical on Arch) and add yourself to it with sudo usermod -aG cdrom $USER, then log in again. A drive that another program is using (for example a file manager that mounted the disc) is not listed.

To see what is on the inserted medium:

xorriso -indev /dev/sr0 -toc

Make an ISO image

Put the files in a folder and build an image. The mkisofs-compatible form is familiar from older guides:

xorriso -as mkisofs -V PHOTOS_2026 -r -J -o photos.iso ./photos

• -V sets the volume label. Keep it to 32 characters from A–Z, 0–9 and underscore; it is what desktops show when the disc is mounted.
• -r adds Rock Ridge (long names and Unix permissions, used by Linux).
• -J adds Joliet (Unicode names, used by Windows).

For backups, xorriso's native mode can also record ACLs, extended attributes, hard links and an MD5 checksum per file:

xorriso -outdev backup.iso -for_backup -map /home/me/documents /documents

Check the image before you burn it:

sudo mount -o loop,ro photos.iso /mnt
ls /mnt
sudo umount /mnt

Capacity, roughly: CD 700 MB, single-layer DVD 4.7 GB, dual-layer DVD 8.5 GB, BD 25 GB per layer. xorriso accepts single files of 4 GiB and larger, which current Linux kernels read fine; older systems may not.

Burn an ISO image

This works for any image file, including a Linux distribution's ISO, which stays bootable:

xorriso -as cdrecord -v dev=/dev/sr0 blank=as_needed photos.iso

blank=as_needed erases a rewritable disc first if it contains data and is ignored on blank media. Equivalent commands with the other tools:

cdrskin -v dev=/dev/sr0 -sao photos.iso          # CD, DVD or BD
growisofs -dvd-compat -Z /dev/sr0=photos.iso     # DVD or BD only

Burn files directly

You do not need an image file on disk first. xorriso builds the file system and writes it in one run:

xorriso -outdev /dev/sr0 -blank as_needed \
  -volid PHOTOS_2026 -joliet on \
  -map ./photos /photos -map ./videos /videos

-map takes a folder on disk and the path it should have on the disc. growisofs does the same for DVD and BD:

growisofs -Z /dev/sr0 -V PHOTOS_2026 -r -J ./photos

Add files later (multi-session)

Write-once discs (CD-R, DVD±R, BD-R) can take more sessions until they are full, unless they were closed. With xorriso, use -dev instead of -outdev and do not blank:

xorriso -dev /dev/sr0 -map ./more_photos /photos/2026-11

xorriso loads the existing tree, adds the new files and writes a new session that contains both. With growisofs, use -M instead of -Z: growisofs -M /dev/sr0 -r -J ./more_photos.

Erase or format rewritable discs

xorriso -outdev /dev/sr0 -blank as_needed     # CD-RW, DVD-RW, DVD+RW, BD-RE
cdrskin -v dev=/dev/sr0 blank=fast           # quick erase of CD-RW or DVD-RW
xorriso -outdev /dev/sr0 -format as_needed   # format DVD-RW or BD for overwriting

On Blu-ray, growisofs pre-formats blank BD-R and BD-RE media with a 256 MB spare area for defect management, and the drive's verify-while-writing then makes the burn much slower. To skip the formatting, growisofs accepts -use-the-force-luke=spare:none (an option its manual page does not list). xorriso and cdrskin do not format BD-R by default, and -stream_recording on (xorriso) or stream_recording=on (cdrskin) writes at full speed on formatted media.

Audio CDs

Audio tracks must be uncompressed WAV files at 16-bit, 44,100 Hz, stereo. Convert other formats with sox or ffmpeg, and name files so they sort in track order:

for f in *.flac; do sox "$f" -b 16 -r 44100 -c 2 "${f%.flac}.wav"; done
cdrskin -v dev=/dev/sr0 -sao -audio 01.wav 02.wav 03.wav

-sao (session at once) writes the whole session in one pass. cdrskin treats files ending in .wav as audio even without -audio, checking their headers first. Audio CDs work only on CD media, not DVD or BD. For a BIN/CUE image, use cdrdao write --device /dev/sr0 image.cue.

Check the burned disc

Eject and reinsert the disc so the kernel does not read from its cache. Then compare checksums, reading only as many 2,048-byte blocks as the image has (many discs return extra padding at the end):

sha256sum photos.iso
blocks=$(( $(stat -c %s photos.iso) / 2048 ))
dd if=/dev/sr0 bs=2048 count=$blocks status=progress | sha256sum

The two checksums must match. If dd stops with an I/O error, the burn is bad; sudo journalctl -k shows the failing block.

Copy a disc to an ISO file

Find the size of the file system, then copy exactly that much:

isosize -x /dev/sr0
dd if=/dev/sr0 of=disc.iso bs=2048 count=SECTOR_COUNT status=progress

Replace SECTOR_COUNT with the sector count from the first command. For a scratched disc use ddrescue, which retries bad areas. This works for data discs only; audio CDs have no file system, so rip them with a CD ripper instead. Commercial DVD-Video and Blu-ray discs are usually copy-protected, and the law on copying them differs by country.

Write an ISO to USB instead

New computers rarely have an optical drive, and a USB stick is faster and reusable. Most distribution ISO files are "hybrid" images that boot from either. Identify the stick carefully, then write the image to the whole device (not a partition):

lsblk -o NAME,SIZE,MODEL,TRAN
sudo dd bs=4M if=debian-13.iso of=/dev/sdX conv=fsync oflag=direct status=progress

Graphical tools such as GNOME Disks ("Restore Disk Image") and Fedora Media Writer do the same with fewer chances to pick the wrong disk. See Bootdisk HOWTO for multi-ISO sticks and rescue media.

Mistakes to avoid

• Burning while the disc is mounted: the desktop may auto-mount a disc with a file system. Run sudo umount /dev/sr0 first.
• Burning at maximum speed on cheap media. If discs fail to read, burn again at a lower speed (the speed= option of cdrskin, or -speed in xorriso; see their manuals for the units).
• Using -outdev when you meant to append: -outdev with -blank as_needed starts a new disc and erases rewritable media.
• Expecting long Windows file names without -J (or -joliet on).
• Trusting a burn without checking it. Optical media also age; for long-term archives keep two copies and test them every few years.

The classic CD-Writing HOWTO, from the SCSI-emulation days of 2000, is kept by the Linux Documentation Project at tldp.org.

Sources

• xorriso(1), Debian manual pages
• cdrskin(1), Debian manual pages
• growisofs(1), Debian manual pages
• wodim(1), Debian manual pages
• dd(1), Linux man-pages project
• Optical disc drive, Users and groups and USB flash installation medium, ArchWiki