[ILUG] Backing up a CD

[Kenn Humborg]

> No need to be. All I wanted was to get a few ideas to start looking into.
> Can you point me in the right direction for the raw device drivers? Then
> I'll see where I can go from there. 

Oops, I didn't properly explain the raw I/O stuff.  Under
Linux, anyway, it won't give you what you are looking for.

It seems to be intended for things like databases where
they database is doing its own caching and just wants to
get chunks of data on and off the disk, without the kernel
trying to cache it as well (wasting memory) or delaying 
writes (because the database wants to have guarantees of the
order writes happen in so that it can guarantee consistency
of the data actually on the disk).

(The merits of this is a discussion for another thread.  Talking
about this with Kevin Lyda a few weeks ago didn't enlighten
either of us on why this is a good thing.  So if anyone wants
to educate me (or provide URLs) on the rationale behind this
raw I/O, fire ahead.)

The raw access that you are looking for is different.  The CD
burning tools to it by sending special SCSI commands to the
CD drive that allow for all sorts of funky stuff, such as reading
tracks and sessions and sub codes (I'd guess) and whatnot...

I'm just warning you to watch out for the term "raw" when 
applied to I/O in Linux.  It doesn't mean what you want it
to mean :-(

Later,
Kenn