Standard Mischief

K3b DVD burn bug in live CDs like Knoppix, Ubuntu or MEPIS

Part of the recent problem I had with a hard disk crashing is that I have not been properly backing up my data. I’ve got several options, but I wanted to burn plain text data DVDs and keep them under lock and key. The problem is that there has been a long term bug in a few live Linux CDs regarding running K3b as root. You get a message like this:

K3b bug in many live Linux CDs
(clickable photo)

for Google’s sake, it says the following:

Unable to find cdrdao executable
K3b uses growisofs to actually write dvds. Without growisofs you won’t be able to write dvds. Make sure to install at least version 5.10.
Solution: Install the dvd+rw-tools package.

The problem only shows up when you are root, which is what you want to be if you are backing up files. If you want to back up everything, you want to be sure you have rights to read everything. Suggested solutions such as using sudo or kdesu fail also.

One would think from reading the error message that all you would need to do is install the proper package, but as far as I can tell it’s installed properly. You seem to be able to burn DVDs on the command line with growisofs too, although you lose that nice drag-and-drop interface.

Sorry, I’ve as of yet got no answers, but I’ll repost if I find a solution or there is a useful work-around.

also:
Ubuntu bug #91417
Newsgroup linux.debian.user
Newsgroup lucky.freebsd.questions

2007-04-26 13:00 by Standard Mischief, Filed under:deranged rants   2 Comments »

Comments

  1. TD Says :

    Are you trying to back up the entire disk? I just back up /home and any relevant .conf files; everything else is easily restored by installing the relevant packages.

    2007-04-26 17:13 Permalink
  2. Standard Mischief Says :

    Yea, I’m just backing up /home, so hopefully everything in my /home/SM/ directory I have rights to. It’s still possible that I moved something in there as root, and forgot to change ownership.

    The other workaround was after I did the recovery on that drive, I changed permissions on the entire drive to 777.

    Both of these are workarounds though.

    2007-04-26 23:20 Permalink

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