[ale] Using 'tar' directly to a DVD

[Michael B. Trausch]

On Fri, 2008-08-08 at 21:58 -0400, Benjie wrote:
> I am not sure that it is possible with tar by itself.  Under Linux an
> application would need to send a command to the dvd hardware to set
> the laser to burn.  Filesystem activity alone wont do that.

Right... I wasn't thinking about filesystem activity, per sé.  I was
thinking direct-tar to the device, like you can do with floppies or
tapes.

Though, that gets me to thinking... maybe there is a driver mode or
ioctl or even an alternate driver that enables such access.  It need not
be random access, of course, just sequential, but then the driver itself
would "rewind" laser and start the burn, exposing a tape-drive-like
interface to the DVD burning hardware.

Anyone here play with the kernel at all and know how to find the answer
to that, or know how feasible it'd be to create a driver that exposes a
tape-drive like interface (or, hell, maybe it could be done in userspace
if you expose it as a named pipe or something, I think).

	--- Mike

-- 
My sigfile ran away and is on hiatus.
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