Free DVD Command Line Burner Needed

Check the following site, if you are going to use this under linux:

http://fy.chalmers.se/~appro/linux/DVD+RW/

Sorry, no.  I should have been more clear - I need this for Windows.

Do you need to write arbitrary DVDs -- or are you writing from an ISO image?

If an ISO image, DVDBurn.exe from the Windows resource kit works nicely "dvdburn <drive> <image>"

If you need to write arbitrary content on the disks - perhaps driven by CUE files - I'm not aware of any free utilities to do that.   There are, however, free ISO-creation utilities; so you could combine one of those with dvdburn and do what you want to do in a single batch file.

I'm not aware of a windows commandline DVD burning tool.

For the time being I could script the creation of ISO image (if anyone has ideas on that) the script burning the ISO image.  Basically, I'm trying to setup a CHEAP backup system, backing up, at present, about 2 GB of data to a DVD Burner.

Not the most user friendly app, but mkisofs is available in a couple of Windows incarnations that will create an ISO from the command line.   A much friendlier (but not command line) version is at http://opensource.ebswift.com/DoISO/

... another alternative (although I'm not a big fan of UDF formatted discs) is to install a UDF package, and just format your backup DVDs as UDF discs.    Then you could use any free backup utilities (an excellent one is the free version of SyncBack from www.syncback.com) to do your backups.   This would let you use all of the available options in the backup software and create much more flexible backups.

Particularly since your backups total well under the capacity of a single DVD, this could work very well.

Well, I know nero has this capability, as I have done this for a client of mine.  It backs up about 1.5 gig to a DVD.  It first runs ntbackup to create the backup file, then burns to a DVD.

Now I know Nero is not free, but it is cheap.

Let me dig up my batch file for that to give you an example.

Lots of options for this if you ignore the requirement that "... I need something ... that's free ..."

this part creates my backup:
C:\WINDOWS\system32\ntbackup.exe backup "@C:\Documents and Settings\Administrator\Local Settings\Application Data\Microsoft\Windows NT\NTBackup\data\Weekly.bks" /n "Backup.bkf created 11/27/2005 at 10:04 AM" /d "Set created 5/27/2005 at 10:04 AM" /v:no /r:no /rs:no /hc:off /m normal /j "Weekly" /l:s /f "D:\Weekly Backup\Backup.bkf"

then this part burns to DVD:
"C:\Program Files\Ahead\Nero\nerocmd.exe" --write --drivename E --real --iso backup --underrun_prot --create_iso_fs --verify --dvd --disable_eject --dvd_high_compatibility --close_session "d:\weekly backup\backup.bkf"




Now, I think with the command line tool you can pick and choose not only files but entire folders as well.

Here's a link to the nerocmd switches information, didn't want to clutter up the thread: http://tidder.rudyatek.com/nerocmd.txt

"Lots of options for this if you ignore the requirement that "... I need something ... that's free ...""

Yeah, no kidding.

I found nero for $5.  http://store.yahoo.com/5dollarsoftware/neexburom.html

I wouldn't trust $5 software as being legal.

And I might be able to do it with commercial software, such as my favorite, Nero.

But I want to find a solution without spending money.

I will say, I hadn't thought of the UDF format, in large part because I too, hate it.  BUT, it might be worth a try.  I'll probably give that a go (hoping that Roxio's limited edition 7.0 (or whatever they call it) has a UDF app like InCD built in (I know they used to have DirectCD, but I'm not sure they still do).

Anyway, as soon as I get a working solution, I'll accept SOMETHING as an answer (maybe even split).

Of course, if someone else comes across something, I'm still looking for the free DVD command line burner (GUI app with command line interface will suffice).

Since Nerocmd.exe is a command line version of nero, there shouldn't be any need to use UDF, it should work directly. Do a nerocmd /? to get the list of possible options. As a lot of boxed DVD-RW drives come with an OEM version of nero, it might even equate to being "free". You could probably combine this with robocopy to get a good backup.

Excellent - that looks like something I can use, Purple_Tidder.  Will test it and get back to you all.

Purple Tidder,

Works perfectly.  Well, almost.  There appears to be a bug where if you enclose a folder without spaces in quotes, it chokes.  But that's not your fault.  And it's not a show stopper.

Thanks for your help!

-Lee

To be clear, I ran this command:

cmdburn burn /d "d:\users shared folders" /l Backup

and the program burned to my DVD burner, no problem.

I ran:

cmdburn burn /d "d:\everyone"

And got a "Runtime Error 9: Subscript out of range" pop-up box.

So I then ran:

cmdburn burn /d d:\everyone

And it burned fine.

Nice find Purple Tidder.

Lee -- now you should check out SyncBack to create the backup in your backup folder.   Once you understand the structure of the "profiles" it's very easy to make it do some very complex backups.   And once you have a single "group profile" to execute all of the individual ones, you can execute it from a command line (e.g. if the profile was named "Syncback Backup for Lee's Stuff" the command line would be  "C:\Program Files\2BrightSparks\SyncBack\SyncBack.exe" -i  "Syncback Backup for Lee's Stuff") -- so you can have your little batch file that will (a) do the backups and (b) burn the DVD; while at the same time having a nice Windows utility that you can modify whenever necessary to update your backup structure.

Strange, so you get an error if your path does not have spaces and you enclose it in quotes?  Weird, I guess you could always use the 8.3 dos paths instead.  So instead of c:\documents and settings use c:\docume~1

That's all I got. :D

... no need to use DOS paths if I understand lee correctly.   It appears to work just fine with quotes IF you have spaces -- but simply doesn't require (or work with) quotes if the name does not have spaces.  

Lee -- have you tried it with a name without spaces that exceeds 8 characters??

Good point - I haven't tried that.  I promise to one day, but for now it's doing everything I need it to do (and I'm at the client right now).

well, I was thinking from a programming standpoint.  If the path is going to vary, it may be better to have the program shorten the paths to dos names than to decide if there are or are not spaces in the path, to decide if it needs to use quotes or not.  This way, just forget about the quotes.

But, I don't know the application, so this may not even apply.

I guess if the path is going to be hard coded, it doesn't matter.  :D