Erase a CD-RW via Command Line?

[Ahunt]

This question is one that arose as part of a slightly more complex issue on another thread. Since it is really a separate issue I started a new thread on it.

Is it possible to erase (or blank) a CD-RW from the command line? If so what is the command syntax?

Thank you for any assistance you can render.

[hwychld]

Should be possible using wodim

wodim dev=/dev/cdrom blank=fast

Make sure you replace /dev/cdrom with whatever the proper device is on your system.

To write an ISO image

wodim dev=/dev/cdrom image.iso

[sisco311]

To get the device name of the CD/DVD drive, run:

sudo lshw -class disk

and check out the community documentation:
community/CdDvd/Burning
the ArchWiki pages are usually good:
https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/CD_Burning

[Ahunt]

Thank you for that reply!

I am using Lubuntu 10.10. I started off by trying:

$ wodim -scanbus

to get the identity of the CD drive and it returned:

The program 'wodim' is currently not installed.  You can install it by typing:
sudo apt-get install wodim

I thought all Ubuntu flavours had wodim, but perhaps Lubuntu doesn't? Is there any reason not to go ahead and install wodim?

[sisco311]

Is there any reason not to go ahead and install wodim?

Nope, you can remove it if you don't need it anymore.

[Ahunt]

To get the device name of the CD/DVD drive, run:

sudo lshw -class disk

and check out the community documentation:
community/CdDvd/Burning
the ArchWiki pages are usually good:
https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/CD_Burning

Thank you for that hint! As you can see I was going to try that as a first step, but using wodim!

I entered the command you suggested:

sudo lshw -class disk

and it returned a lot of info. Which CD drive ID do I use?

*-disk                  
       description: ATA Disk
       product: WDC WD1600AAJB-0
       vendor: Western Digital
       physical id: 0
       bus info: scsi@0:0.0.0
       logical name: /dev/sda
       version: 01.0
       serial: WD-WCAV2U881476
       size: 149GiB (160GB)
       capabilities: partitioned partitioned:dos
       configuration: ansiversion=5 signature=000ec423
  *-cdrom
       description: DVD-RAM writer
       product: DVD-RAM GH22NP20
       vendor: HL-DT-ST
       physical id: 1
       bus info: scsi@1:0.0.0
       logical name: /dev/cdrom
       logical name: /dev/cdrw
       logical name: /dev/dvd
       logical name: /dev/dvdrw
       logical name: /dev/scd0
       logical name: /dev/sr0
       logical name: /media/disk
       version: 2.00
       capabilities: removable audio cd-r cd-rw dvd dvd-r dvd-ram
       configuration: ansiversion=5 mount.fstype=iso9660 mount.options=ro,nosuid,nodev,relatime,uid=1000,gid=1000,iocharset=utf8,mode=0400,dmode=0500 state=mounted status=ready
     *-medium
          physical id: 0
          logical name: /dev/cdrom
          logical name: /media/disk
          configuration: mount.fstype=iso9660 mount.options=ro,nosuid,nodev,relatime,uid=1000,gid=1000,iocharset=utf8,mode=0400,dmode=0500 state=mounted
  *-disk
       description: SCSI Disk
       physical id: 0.0.0
       bus info: scsi@2:0.0.0
       logical name: /dev/sdb

[Ahunt]

Nope, you can remove it if you don't need it anymore.

Not sure what you mean by "remove it". Wodim is not installed apparently. Is there another way to erase the CD from the command line then without wodim?

[sisco311]

Not sure what you mean by "remove it". Wodim is not installed apparently. Is there another way to erase the CD from the command line then without wodim?

I mean, you can uninstall (remove) wodim.

You can use any logical name listed in the *-cdrom stanza.

Usually /dev/sr0 (/dev/sr[0-9]) is the device name and all the others (/dev/cdrom, /dev/cdrw...) are just symlinks to it.

[Ahunt]

Okay thank you for the explanation on the nomenclature, so it sounds like hwychld's suggestion above of "/dev/cdrom" would work fine.

I am still not clear what you mean by "I mean, you can uninstall (remove) wodim." According to the command reply I got it is not currently installed. hwychld's suggestion was to use wodim to erase the CD-RW, so wouldn't I need to install wodim, rather than remove it?

I only ask because Lubuntu 10.10 uses XFburn as the default CD burner application and I wanted to make sure wodim wouldn't conflict with it.

[sisco311]

Okay thank you for the explanation on the nomenclature, so it sounds like hwychld's suggestion above of "/dev/cdrom" would work fine.

Yes.

I am still not clear what you mean by "I mean, you can uninstall (remove) wodim." According to the command reply I got it is not currently installed. hwychld's suggestion was to use wodim to erase the CD-RW, so wouldn't I need to install wodim, rather than remove it?

You can install wodim and when you don't need it anymore you can uninstall it.

I only ask because Lubuntu 10.10 uses XFburn as the default CD burner application and I wanted to make sure wodim wouldn't conflict with it.

They don't; anyway the package manager takes care of conflicting packages. It will prompt you if a package conflicts with another.