In this lesson you need a CD burner and a blank CD (when you want to try it out).

Burning CDs with K3b or mkisofs/cdrecord

To burn CDs you can use the programs K3b and mkisofs/cdrecord.

Remark: "clicking" means in general clicking with the left mouse button.

  Three Remarks for burning CDs under Knoppix:

1. Be sure that the Knoppix-CD from which you have booted Knoppix is not in the CD player (burner) on which you want to toast your CD.

2. Burning CDs under Knoppix is a bit tricky: The Knoppix CD itself needs a player, you have not very much memory left, as Knoppix does not use the hard disk of your system (it uses RAM disk)...
   These limitations can be overcome with more or less effort, when you install Knoppix on your Hard disk (see e.g. Lesson 1) or when you allow Knoppix to write files on your hard disk (See Lesson 2). But be also creative, be patient and don't give up easily!

3. On a single CD fits, dependent on the size, about 650 Mbytes.
   All the files on the CD that will be burned are first stored in a so called .iso-file (e.g. in the folder /tmp) (unless you burn "on the fly").  The space in /tmp is, however, very limited. (Roughly, it is a part of the main memory, that in general cannot be larger than 512 Mbytes, usually it is between 64 and 256 Mbytes).
   Click at the "Konsole" icon, that you can find on your screen at the bottom left in the control list.
   In the opened "Shell - Konsole" window enter the command "df /tmp":

   When you divide the number after "Available"  by 1000, then you have roughly the amount of memory that is available in  /tmp in  MBytes. In the example this is 352008/1000 = ca. 352 Mbytes.

   When you need more space, then you cannot avoid anymore to enable Knoppix to write onto the hard disk of your PC (see Lesson 2) and to configure the toast program such that the (temporary) .iso-file can be stored onto the hard disk of your CD (or you have to burn "on the fly" without first storing to an .iso-file).

Burning CDs with K3b

Starting K3b

Click at the Knoppix-KDE-Desktop at the bottom left at the "K" icon.

Click in the menu that opened at the entry "Multimedia".

Click in the sub menu that opened at the entry "K3b".

Sometimes the "Tip of the Day - K3b" window pops up. Close this by clicking on <Close>.

 Now have a look at the "K3b"-Window:

(1) Click at the top right at the "arrow" icon, to maximize the  "K3b" window.

(2) Click on "Create Data CD Project."

Burning data on CD with K3b

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(1) Top left in the directory tree you can change the directory of which you want to burn the data.

(2) At the top right the contents of the selected directory are shown. In our example the content of the root directory is shown.
With "Drag & Drop" (click on the file you want, keep the mouse button pressed drag the file to the destination you want and drop the file by releasing the button)  place the data items to burn (directories and files) in the frame at the bottom of the window. In our case the directory etc. was selected.

(3) When you have dragged all items to burn in the frame then click on the burn symbol, to start the toasting of the CD.

Now the "Data Project" window shows:

You can now, using the tags Writing, Settings etc., set all kind of options such as burning speed, name of the CD, etc. Have you set all options, then click on <Burn> and the toasting of your CD starts.

Now the "Waiting for disk" window shows:

Follow the message and place a blank CD in the CD burner. When done, the window closes automatically

The "Writing Data CD" window pops up:

At the end of a successful burning session, the drawer of the CD player opens and you can take out your freshly toasted CD :-) Click at <Close>, to close the "Writing Data-CD" window.

Ending K3b

End the program K3b with a click on the symbol "X" icon at the top right of the window.

When the "Closing Project" window pops up, then click on  <Discard>.

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Burning CDs with mkisofs/cdrecord

mkisofs and cdrecord are commands that can best be issued with root permission. Hence, open a "root" window (root shell) as follows:

Click at the Knoppix-KDE-Desktop at the bottom left at the "K" icon.

Click in the menu that opened at the entry "Knoppix".

Click in the sub menu that opened at the entry "Root shell".

A root window opens that can be used to give linux commands (with root permission).

First enter the command: "cdrecord -scanbus" to see if the CD player is recognized and which SCSI-ID it has. SCSI-IDs have the format N,N,N such as 0,0,0 or 0,4,0 or 1,7,0 etc.
(Note that: Knoppix treats CD-players as SCSI devices).

An introduction to burning CDs with mkisofs and cdrecord can be found in the CD-Writing HOWTO.

With the commands "man mkisofs" and "man cdrecord" you can also read the manual pages of both commands. (Where you can use the space bar to turn a page and the "q" key to quit reading the manual page.)

The command "exit" in the root window (root shell) closes the root window.

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