cdstatus

• cdstatus is a diagnostic tool:

cdstatus is a tool for diagnosing cdrom drive and cd problems, and for performing digital data (music audio) extraction. It will query the drive status, and report what the system thinks the status is. Due to problems, systems have been known to disagree with users as to the status of a drive. (The user says "the cd is in there" the drive says "door open". Time to try another cdrom drive (or close the door).

Among other things, cdstatus will list the following:

• disc (cd) type from: audio, data mode 1, data mode 2, XA mode 1, XA mode 2, and mixed mode (audio + data). If you have just tried to burn an audio cd, but what you really did was burn the wav files as data files rather than as audio tracks, this will let you know that the system is interpreting it as a data disc, not an audio one. (Time to re-burn, and be careful with options.)
• the full table of contents, giving all track info for the cd (note: most cd-burning software writes the table of contents before writing the actual data. It is possible to have the table of contents show all the tracks properly, yet not actually have them be present on the disc. cdstatus can help detect such problems.).
• starting points in minutes and seconds for each track on the cd, and the global frame offset (you probably don't need this, but if you do, it is good to have).

• cdstatus is a cd ripper:

For both audio cd's, and the audio tracks of mixed mode cd's, the program is capable of reading every frame of audio, one frame at a time. There are 75 frames in each second of audio. What this means is that you can isolate exactly where problems lie. Say you know a cd is scratched, but you aren't sure which tracks are affected. Using cdstatus, you can read every frame of the cd, one frame at a time. If cdstatus encounters a frame it can't read, it will tell you about it. Note that even if you have retries enabled for failed reads (see the readme file), you will still be told if the initial read fails. Many programs will simply retry automatically, and hide the fact that there was a failed read at all. This leaves you thinking that the cd is fine, when it is actually borderline for that frame. This will still read the audio if at all possible on the retries, but let you know that there was a problem.

cdstatus offers the following ripping features:

• Ripping any given number of sectors (data chunks) in a single read operation: although reading one frame at a time (the default) is still fast the way cdstatus does it, I have added a --readchunk X option which allows you to specify a number of frames to read at once. This gives up some of the fine-grained error detection in favor of higher speed extraction. Don't go nuts with this, 500 is probably about the most that makes sense.
• cddb lookup capabilities (see below)
• Different output formats:
  • with --rawout:
    The raw audio data that was read for each track is saved to a file called trackXX.raw (where XX is the track number) in the current directory. Please note that this is not a wav file. Some audio programs are capable of playing the raw output (if you specify the info. for "play", the tool that comes with RedHat, you will need to specify a line like: # play -c 2 -f s -r 44100 -s w trackXX.raw This is because the raw output is "headerless" and doesn't tell programs how to play it, so you must tell them manually. BladeEnc does a fine job of encoding .raw output into mp3's. I have not tried with LAME. This format is very useful for testing. If you were to read track 1 off of a scratched cd, and then off of a good cd (or using a questionable cdrom drive, and a good one), and then compare them (using "cmp" or "diff"), then you would know that an exact match meant that the questionable media/drive was good, and the more variation, the worse it would be. Please see the readme file for more info on using options (like retry count and track range selection) with the --readtest option.
  • with --waveout:
    (or unspecified since this is now the default) but not the --cddb option (see below):
    The files created will be in the form trackXX.wav. These are your every day, reverse intel field format, pulse code modulated, two-channel 16-bit signed audio files, that we love to call wav files. (Yeah, the wave file format spec is a pain.) They should be playable by just about anything you can imagine. Note that the wav format allows programs to "sub-chunk" the data differently, meaning that two perfectly extracted wav files of the same track are not neccessarily identical from different programs, whereas the raw output format would be.
  • with --cddb:
    cdstatus now (as of version 0.94a) has the capability to lookup album and track information of audio cds via remote cddb (cd database). With an active internet connection, use of --cddb will automatically retrieve and populate this information. To complement this, I implemented a system to allow the user to specify how to convert this information to a filename, including the support for on-the-fly directory creation for artist and album directories. This is the --format option, documented in the readme file. Please note that cdstatus will convert all spaces to underscores (_) in the names, and remove any non-alphanumeric characters from them (unless --nomangle is used). This is to protect against trying to create files with names that the filesystem can't handle. Right now the --cddb capabilities are functional, but fairly rigid. There is no option to change the lookup server (except in the source code) etc. These will be added in the future. As per the cddb protocol guidelines, in cases where more than one exact or inexact match is found for a cd, a list is presented and the user is given the option to select a match numerically. These files will of course be normal wav files, but the automatic naming helps identify them clearly.
• Configurable number of retries
• On-the-fly directory creation for both a base output directory and directories specified by the --format spec for output.
• specification of input drive, if other than /dev/cdrom
• --silent operation mode to emit no output (under most circumstances) except the files.

• A semi-recent cdrom drive. This is required due to the way that cdstatus reads the data. Older cdrom drives didn't have the support for reading audio frame-by-frame.
• Semi-recent linux. I am not sure exactly what the minimum here is. It shouldn't need to even be in the last half dozen releases. The cdrom interface that this program makes use of relies on a semi-standardized interface that was not available with much older linux versions. This allows me to avoid having to program in individual cd driver support. If you are interested in helping to port to another operating system, please email me at nathanaelhoyle at users dot sourceforge dot net. I will be happy to help with any serious porting attempts. There are NO plans to port to Windows. If you want to do this, wonderful; however, the interface is so different as to make it an almost complete rewrite. If you wish to incorporate any portion of cdstatus code in another work please notify me via email. I have no objections at all to use of its codebase in any non-commercial product, but will have to discuss other applications, and will at any rate be interested in its use.

• Do I need to be root to use cdstatus?

That depends on your system configuration. On some systems, yes, you will need to be root to access the drive in this way. On many systems, you will be able to perform all functions except for the drive reset as a non-root user. The --reset option resets the drive internals without rebooting your computer, and will need root priviledges in almost all cases. Note that on many versions of linux with automount running a successful --reset will cause the associated autorun program to launch (such as a cd player).

• Why doesn't cdstatus support <feature>?

There are a couple of possible reasons. Most likely is that it is not central to the reason behind the design of the program. Don't expect direct-to-mp3 output, ever. (Note: I'm now contemplating support for handing off the cddb info to an encoder for the id3 tagging. Check the todo document for a list of planned additions. Finally, if you think you have a relavent feature not listed there that you would like to see, then email me at nathanaelhoyle at users dot sourceforge dot net, and I will try to respond to you and let you know whether it sounds like something I may include. I will be unlikely to promise a specific date for a new feature.

• Is there support/a warranty/any guarantee for cdstatus?

There is absolutely no warranty of any kind, nor any guarantee as to the operation, behavior of, or fitness for any use. There IS minor support in that if you have a problem with it, I will try to help you. Please first read this page carefully, and try basic stuff to get it working. Do not contact me because "I can't get this to work on Windows ...". This is not a Windows application.

• What is the license status of cdstatus?

This program is the intellectual property of Nathanael Hoyle. You are granted non-exclusive rights to modify and redistribute this utility as per the terms of the General Public License (GPL). If you are interested in bundling this software in any distribution, whether archival (i.e. CD) or downloadable, I would prefer to be contacted and informed, via email, although this is not a license requirement. Alternate License: If you wish to obtain license to use cdstatus in a derivative work which is to become closed-source, you may contact me to discuss terms. I make no guarantee that I will grant the right to do so, and I would almost certainly charge for this right, although the cost would be very reasonable. If you make any additions, modifications, or front-ends, port it, etc. please contact me, and provide a copy of the new work. I can be reached at nathanaelhoyle at users dot sourceforge dot net

• Who are you?

I am yet another linux geek. I work for a small company as a systems and network administrator at an ISP. I do write code there, but this program is completely unrelated to my employer. It was written in my time, using no ideas from, or based on, any proprietary information available to me through my work at my employer. They posses no rights over the work in any form. I wrote cdstatus to diagnose a problem I was having with a buggy cdrom drive. Sometimes it wouldn't even act as though there was a cd in the drive, even when there was. If I opened and then closed it, sometimes it would then work. In attempting to better understand the problem, I wrote the beginnings of this tool. Realizing how much of the work was already done for creating something much larger and better, I expanded it into the forerunner of the tool you have before you now. I have continued to expand and make additions to it over the last couple of years since the first release in July of 2001.

• I have another question that you didn't answer here!

I guessed as much. The cdstatus user forums are the main way to get support on cdstatus, and the best place to discuss everything related to it. Come ask a question, read what people are doing with cdstatus or just hang out. --Forums are down at the moment, sorry.

• Where can I get cdstatus?

Ahh! An intelligent question. The current version of cdstatus is 0.96.05 and is available as a gzipped tar file here. The tar includes source code and a pre-built executable.

Actually, it's probably a much better bet at this point the get the lastest version of cdstatus from cvs than it is to download the latest official release. Due to an unfortunate excess of other tasks keeping me busy, I've had little time to formally update documentation and put out official releases. However, the code in cvs is usually perfectly good and often contains new features and bugfixes not found in the latest official release. As of the current writing, it includes for instance the ability to have and use a .cdstatus config file in the user's home directory to specify your common settings choices, rather than having to specify them on the command line constantly. Try it! And send in feedback, including about cvs versions.