Re: DVD?

[Ralph Giles <giles@raj.phys.sfu.ca>]

On Sun, 7 Nov 1999, Jason Gunthorpe wrote:

> > Well for building DVD images it's not really a problem since the debian-cd
> > script does take as an argument the size limit of the media (that's why
> > debian-cd can be used to create CD with some free space or images for
> > ZIP or whatever media you'd like to use) ... do DVD also use iso9660 fs ?

> DVDs do not use iso9660 IIRC (UFS isn't it?) so some other building tool
> is required, obviosly shipping a 8G image around is impracticle so that
> has to be worked on too, etc. 

Sort of. I understand video DVDs use a hybrid filesystem that can be read
as either iso9660 or UDF. I've only verified the iso half, though. There's
no reason why a dvd-rom couldn't be created with plain isofs, however. UDF
is certainly nicer, but write support is still a bit shaky in linux (and
requires a kernel patch under 2.2) see trylinux.com/projects/udf/ for info 
and http://www.csc.calpoly.edu/~bfennema/udf.html for patches.

I've gotten the impression that DVD press houses usually accept images on
DLT. DVD-RAM and DVD-R drives are now becoming affordable, but they only
support 2.4 or 4.6 GB so you'd have to split the larger images over
several disks, and the media would end up costing more. How big are the
various collections at this point?

FWIW, I asked cheapbytes about their dvd plans last week, and they
said they don't yet see the demand as sufficient to offset the
per-title setup costs. They plan to at some point in the future, but
this suggests we'll have to recruit a vendor specifically to offer dvds.
I'll email a couple of others for a better sampling. :)

Personally, I'm fantasizing about a disk with all-arch binaries on one
side and source, the complete list-archives and documenation on the other.
:)


Cheers,
 -ralph

--
Ralph_Giles@sfu.ca
Let's package the internet, it's barely 2 TB or so.