Filed under: Hardware, Terminal Tips, TUAW Tips
Terminal Tip: Burning a disc
drutil burn filehere
Don't type the "filehere" -- that's where you put the path to the file/folder that you wish to burn. You can either type the location manually or drag and drop the file onto the Terminal window. But that's not all you can do with drutil; you can also eject media from the optical drive by typing "drutil eject." To see all of the available drutil options, just type in drutil for a quick list or man drutil for a full description.
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Corgy said 11:06PM on 8-12-2008
Yay! Please keep the terminal tips coming!
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iankanderson said 11:40PM on 8-12-2008
Or...
hdiutil burn (filehere.iso/filehere.dmg)
if you want to burn disk images and have them appear as install dvds/cds or other data dvds/cds
there's other extras such as burning disks without verifying, which is useful if you plan on burning a lot of disks with the same file...
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Aaron Davies said 3:22AM on 8-13-2008
Are you a terminal geek? Then you find advice like "Don't type the 'filehere' -- that's where you put the path to the file/folder that you wish to burn" insulting. Seriously, can we tone down the newb-coddling around here?
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Rowan Pope said 5:06AM on 8-13-2008
Relax. OK, so he shouldn't have said Terminal geek, but at least he then implied the post was really aimed at wannabe Terminal geeks.
Some people may not be aware if they're used to another OS that you can use so much drag & drop in Terminal if you desire.
Personally, I didn't know there was a single 'burn this folder' type command vs doing it with an image, so I found this post helpful for that.
Lee said 8:24AM on 8-13-2008
I with you on this. I am a complete noob, having switched after 20 years of DOS/Windows. I knew DOS commands like the back of my hand, and know almost NOTHING about Terminal commands. That said, I still knew enough not to think filehere was part of the command, especially since it was in italics
Lee said 8:25AM on 8-13-2008
On the other hand, we've all heard stories of people looking for the [Any] key, as in "Press any key to continue"
Unclejerry said 9:40AM on 8-13-2008
So... I don't know anything really about using the terminal for OSX so dont think of this as a stupid question, but one where you can enlighten somebody... Why would you want to burn a disk from the terminal; inserting a disk, typing in the command and hopefully the right file path correctly; instead of just inserting a disk and dragging the file to the CD and clicking the burn button?
Are there any extra/hidden benefits to using the terminal to do this?
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Christina Warren said 3:50PM on 8-13-2008
If you are already doing terminal work and you don't want to switch gears, it could be helpful -- but I think the real benefit would be if you were accessing a machine remotely. Granted, you would need to verify that a disk was in the drive, but barring that, you have a much faster way to burn a disc than using screen sharing.
badtzmaru said 3:33PM on 8-13-2008
OK so how do I prevent my Mac from verifying a disc that I've burned? I don't seen an option for it. This happens when I burn a disc using Finder.
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