changing book-type on dvd burn?

[Miles Fidelman <mfidelman@meetinghouse.net>]

Hi Folks,

I have a debian box and a Lite-On SHM-165PS cd/dvd drive.

I'm having a devil of a time burning bootable DVDs - they seem to burn, 
be readable, but when I try to boot, the system crunches a bit, the 
drive lite flashes, then boots from the hard drive.  (It boots from CDs 
just fine.)

It looks like the default software (Nautilus and whatever is behind 
that) sets the book-type to DVD-ROM, and from what I gather by googling 
a bit, that might be my problem - and that I'd have better luck if it 
was setting book-type to DVD+R.  The other suggestion I've received is 
to update the firmware on my drive.

So... a few questions:

- is that likely diagnosis?

- if yes, how might I go about getting things to burn as book type DVD+R?

and/or

- are there any linux tools that I can use to update the firmware 
(Lite-On seems to only distribute Windows tools)

Thanks!

Miles Fidelman