Cdrkit

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title: "Cdrkit" type: doc version: 1 created: 2026-02-28 author: "Wikipedia contributors" status: active scope: public tags: ["debian", "free-optical-disc-authoring-software", "optical-disc-authoring-software"] description: "Optical disc authoring software" topic_path: "general/debian" source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cdrkit" license: "CC BY-SA 4.0" wikipedia_page_id: 0 wikipedia_revision_id: 0

::summary Optical disc authoring software ::

::data[format=table title="Infobox software"]

Field	Value
name	cdrkit
developer	Debian Project
latest_release_version	1.1.11-5
latest_release_date
operating_system	Unix-like
genre	CD/DVD-writing
license	GPL version 2
::

| name = cdrkit | logo = | developer = Debian Project | latest_release_version = 1.1.11-5 | latest_release_date = | operating_system = Unix-like | genre = CD/DVD-writing | license = GPL version 2 cdrkit is a collection of computer programs for CD and DVD authoring that work on Unix-like systems. cdrkit is released under the GNU General Public License version 2. Fedora, Gentoo Linux, Mandriva Linux, and Ubuntu all include cdrkit. Joerg Jaspert is cdrkit's leader and release manager.

It was created in 2006 by Debian developers as a fork of cdrtools based on the last GPL-licensed version when cdrtools licensing changed.{{cite web |url=http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-announce/2006/09/msg00002.html |title=cdrkit (fork of cdrtools) uploaded to Debian, please test |accessdate=16 August 2011

Major components of cdrkit include:

• wodim (an acronym for write optical disk media), which was forked from the cdrecord program in cdrtools.
• icedax (an acronym for incredible digital audio extractor), which was forked from the cdda2wav program in cdrtools.
• genisoimage (short for "generate ISO image"), which was forked from the mkisofs program in cdrtools.

Features

The cdrkit includes many features for CD and DVD writing, such as

• creation of audio, data, and mixed (audio and data) CDs
• burning CD-R, CD-RW, DVD-R.
• usage without root identity is possible in many cases, some device drivers still may fail, show unexplainable problems
• can use device node instead of SCSI ID numbers on Linux
• Creation of disc images with ISO9660, with optional Rock Ridge and Joliet extensions, and optionally with UDF 1.02 to support files beyond 4 GiB.
• genisoimage can calculate the size of a disk image without having to create one, using the -print-size option.
• Preservation of the last modified date and time attributes of files and folders, which can be seen in file managers. This applies if genisoimage or growisofs are invoked directly as a command line. Third-party tools such as k3b that invoke cdrkit might not preserve this attribute.

The -allow-limited-size option makes it possible to add files whose size exceeds 4 GiB (232 bytes) using the Universal Disk Format (UDF) to an image (or a disc, if invoked from growisofs). It automatically enables -udf. However, the correct sizes of files exceeding 4 GiB are only represented in the UDF file tree, not in ISO9660, therefore such files are only fully accessible while the file system is mounted as UDF. When mounted as ISO9660, only the first 4 GiB of any file that exceeds this size are accessible. The ISO9660 feature that would allow for exceeding the 4 GiB size limitation using multiple entries with the same file name has not yet been implemented.

genisoimage is different from file archival utilities like tar in that it places the files and folders from the specified parent directory directly in the root directory of the disc image, not inside a directory with the name of the parent directory.

Front-ends

Other software can use cdrkit tools in the back-end. cdrkit tools will maintain interface compatibility with cdrtools 2.01.01a08 at least for the near future.{{cite web |url=http://www.cdrkit.org/ |title=cdrkit - portable command-line CD/DVD recorder software |accessdate=2008-09-22

History

A license dispute arose between the Debian maintainers and the (since deceased) cdrtools author Jörg Schilling. The Debian developers said that the GPL license is not compatible with the CDDL license that covers part of the cdrtools code. In contrast, cdrtools maintainer Jörg Schilling stated that there is no problem with the license, and also felt that the Debian fork is not legally redistributable.{{cite web |url=https://cdrtools.sourceforge.net/private/linux-dist.html#violations |title=The Debian fork violates the GPL and the copyright law |accessdate=16 August 2011

Schilling also said that the cdrkit fork reintroduced various bugs from the first versions of cdrtools, which were already fixed in later cdrtools versions. Debian developers considered that some of these changes were necessary to solve existing problems, rather than being bugs.

References

References

1. "wodim(1): data to optical disk media - Linux man page".
2. [https://linux.die.net/man/1/genisoimage genisoimage(1) - Linux man page] - -print-size
3. [https://linux.die.net/man/1/genisoimage genisoimage(1) - Linux man page] - -allow-limited-size. (Note: The manual erroneously states 2 GiB instead of 4 GiB.)
4. "RIP Jörg Schilling".
5. "Debian Bug report logs - #377109".
6. "There is no license problem in the original cdrtools".
7. "Legal CD/DVD/BD writing software for Red Hat and Fedora".
8. "What are the problems when running programs from the broken fork?".
9. "Debian Bug report logs - #361450".

::callout[type=info title="Wikipedia Source"] This article was imported from Wikipedia and is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Content has been adapted to SurfDoc format. Original contributors can be found on the article history page. ::