UDF Tools
Introduction
This document gives hints and tips for dealing with the UDF file system (DVD-RAM etc).
Packet writing may improve performance. See https://www.kernel.org/doc/html/latest/cdrom/packet-writing.html for more information.
Installation
For Debian 3.1 (Sarge) -> Debian 10 (Buster)
# apt-get install udftools
Alternatively get it from http://linux-udf.sourceforge.net
Information
$ udfinfo /dev/sr0
Format
In Debian 7.x (Wheezy) read /usr/share/doc/udftools/README.Debian.gz
To format a DVD-RAM disk (assuming device is /dev/sr0) that
should be readable in Windows 2000, Mac OS 9 and Linux 2.4:
# mkudffs --utf8 --media-type=dvdram --udfrev=0x0150 /dev/sr0
Note: on macOS Tahoe 26.5 that the driver performance is extremely poor when accessing a UDF version 1.50 formatted disc.
To format a DVD-RAM disk (assuming device is /dev/sr0) that should be
readable and writable in Windows 7 and newer, Mac OS 10.4 and newer, and Linux
2.6.26 and newer:
# mkudffs --utf8 --media-type=dvdram --udfrev=0x0201 /dev/sr0
-- Frank Dean - 28 May 2026
See the man page for mkudffs re the options for --udfrev and also
the section on OPERATING SYSTEMS SUPPORT to choose the most
appropriate UDF revision for your expected usage.
-- Frank Dean - 05 Oct 2014
Mounting
Make sure you mount with the noatime option to avoid repeated writes
to inodes.
# mount -t udf -o rw,noatime /dev/sr0 /media/cdrom0
-- Frank Dean - 05 Oct 2014
Linux Kernel 2.6 Bug
From Wikipedia Entry: Before 2.6.17, there's a bug in writing files bigger than 1GB; between 2.6.17 and 2.6.21 (inclusive), this is disabled, as a workaround; and in 2.6.22 this bug is fixed.
macOS
I gave up trying to get a third-party external DVD-RAM drive to work acceptably on macOS 11 (Big Sur). Instead I used the drive with a Raspberry Pi Model B+ which did the job superbly.
See man diskutil.
$ diskutil list
$ diskutil list external
$ diskutil info /dev/diskN
$ diskutil unmountDisk /dev/diskN
$ diskutil eject /dev/diskN
$ diskutil mount readOnly /dev/diskN
Resources
- https://www.kernel.org/doc/html/latest/cdrom/packet-writing.html
- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universal_Disk_Format
-- Frank Dean - 13 Mar 2007