Layer break for DVD+R DL with growisofs / dvd+rw-tools

I’ve started recently to play around with DVD+R DL because they start becoming cheaper and some applications really need them

I was very surprised that the current version of growisofs / dvd+rw-tools (7.1) advertises layer break position setting support but in reality I couldn’t get it to break where I want.

Looking at the code (especially from growisofs_mmc.cpp) I found very strange that the “-use-the-force-luke=break:NNNN” option wasn’t really used either in calculations or cuesheet sending.

Investigating a little bit more in the code I produced the following patch that I have sent upstream to get it included somehow in the next version.

It allows a user (who should be careful of what it does ) to manually force a layer break position for DVD+R DL burning. (For those of you who haven’t had this problem yet please notice that : DVD-R DL (minus) DO NOT allow layer position to be changed, that said you should know what to do … only DVD+R DL (plus) allow that)

For this patch to work you have to specify “-dvd-compat” on the command line, otherwise the cuesheet sending code is not called (I didn’t understand exactly why…) and the layer break wouldn’t be set …

In any case the output of growisofs command should tell you where the layer break is going to be set.

I’ve tested it succesfully for a dozen of DL burns with or without layer break so it should be safe enough (the patch is not very intrusive anyways ; I also tested without the option to see if the normal behavior was preserved…)

Use it this way :

growisofs -dvd-compat [your other options here] -use-the-force-luke=break:XXXX [where XXXX is the layer break in sectors] -Z /dev/[your device]=[image.iso]

for example :

growisofs -dvd-compat -use-the-force-luke=break:2084960 -use-the-force-luke=dao -Z /dev/sr0=/home/johndoe/m.iso

note the dao option usage that will close the session, otherwise the disc would remain “open” if it’s not full and depending on what you burn you’d really want to close the session trust me

Have an happy dual layer with positionned break burning !

Attachment : dvd+rw-tools-7.1-layerbreaksetup.patch

Note: use a command similar to apply (change to -p 1 depending on where you are) :

patch -p 0 < dvdrw-tools-7.1-layerbreaksetup.patch

Getting rid of Computrace on Dell Inspiron mini 10v (Inspiron 1011)

Today I just received my very small and not so shiny Dell Inspiron mini 10v (1011 model). I will possibly make a review later if there is enough popular demand

Playing with the BIOS I activated “Computrace” to see what it means, thinking that it was some sort of TPM module. What a mess !! I didn’t pay attention at all that this setting could not be changed later… or could it ?

Do the following at your own risk of course …

I grabbed a bootdisk (floppy image) with Dell utilities on it (especially ASSET.COM and EE-VALUE.EXE)

(Google is your friend, don’t even try to ask about any non-opensource download here…)

After some fight with those utilities I finally found how to change Service Tag and Asset Tag from my small laptop. I read posts on different forums that it should be enough to reset Computrace but it wasn’t …

So to change Service Tag use

ASSET /S /D (to delete and set it up again in the BIOS menu) or

ASSET /S NEWTAG

Depending on asset version it should work flawlessly, I tried ASSET_A209.EXE and it didn’t work for me (an old version did)

Use similar commands without /S to change Asset Tag.

But the trickiest part was to deactivate the damn Computrace module in BIOS.

This time we would use EE-VALUE that allows to set a value directly on the BIOS NVRAM (not sure about CMOS of NVRAM but anyways…) and looking at different values I finally found (using EE-VALUE /D to display contents) that there was a strange value at offset 0×50.

Using

EE-VALUE /W=50,FF

will reset it to default and then you will be able to select or disable it again.

If you have any doubt or if you have a different laptop check first with

EE-VALUE /D

and try to find any “03″ (activated) or strange value around 0×50.

Very strong protection from Absolute Software guys ! It takes seconds to remove once your laptop has been stolen, very efficient …

I had this error for a long time before discovering I could do it directly with EE-VALUE so I put it here for indexing purposes :

SVCTAG.EXE version 3.3

I told you what I am. But what are you?

EE-CPB.exe: Error 0

Now, then I’m going back to my fresh Slackware 13.0 install again. Thanks for reading and I hope this will help people with Dell laptop to manage their “Computrace” settings like they want.