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Terminal Tip: Burning a disc


Are you a Terminal geek (or wannabe, but not the pop star type)? If so, did you know that you can burn discs right from the Terminal window with a simple command and a drag/drop? Just enter the following command followed by the path to a folder or disk image:

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.

Are you a Terminal geek (or wannabe, but not the pop star type)? If so, did you know that you can burn discs right from the Terminal...
 

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badtzmaru

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.

August 13 2008 at 3:32 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Uncle Jerry

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?

August 13 2008 at 9:40 AM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
1 reply to Uncle Jerry's comment
Christina Warren

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.

August 13 2008 at 3:50 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Aaron Davies

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?

August 13 2008 at 3:19 AM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
3 replies to Aaron Davies's comment
iankanderson

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...

August 12 2008 at 11:39 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Cory

Yay! Please keep the terminal tips coming!

August 12 2008 at 11:01 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
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