K3b – How to ‘write’ CDs

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K3b is as famous as Nero in the GNU/Linux world as a GUI for burning CDs. It works with both GNOME as well as in KDE (which is its native). I have been using it for more than 3 years now. Its another wonderful piece of software that makes life easier. But, since I got it on my Laptop I had not used it really to ‘burn’ CDs/DVDs because it failed to write.

Whenever I select an image/file to burn into a disk, and click the ‘burn’ button, it does something for sometime and then pops up a message saying I do not have enough permissions over cdrecord to write into the disk. So, cdrecord command had become my favourite.

A couple of days ago, I got determined to end this issue as I have to show them at the up coming GNU/Linux demo at a Coimbatore college. So, I sought the help of my buddies in KDE-In. Thankfuly floyd_n_milan came to my rescue. It was actually a problem of proper permission for the device to be writable. If you are facing the same problem this is what you have to do…

1. On the top menu, Settings –> k3b Setup. It opens up a window, where permissions on various devices are listed. Look for the device named cdrecord and its permissions. It should be ‘4710 root.burning’. If its not having ‘burning’ in it, then the burning group does not exists.

2. Now to add the burning group, open up a terminal and enter the following commands


$ groupadd burning
$ gpasswd -a username burning

3. Now we have a burning group. Check the top of the k3b setup window, where there will be a checkbox labelled ‘Use burning group’ and with a value ‘burning’. Check that one and press apply.

Thus, we have enabled a burning group and made it active. Now, try to burn a CD/DVD. Hurray! We would be able to 🙂

6 thoughts on “K3b – How to ‘write’ CDs”

  2. Daka,

    i missed to add something, try this out after doing what I said in the post..
    * Go to Settings –> Users and Groups –> Manage Groups
    * Select ‘burning’ group
    * click ‘Properties’ for the group and add the user (i.e. your user name) to that group

    Now, try burning using k3b as the ‘user’ you added to the ‘burning’ group. You should be able to burn now 🙂

    Reply

  4. aha! works now – but you have to NOT use the burning group OR your own username on the setup page.

    I had this set up previously but the addition of the burning group and adding my user to it seemed to have done the trick

    Thanks!

    Reply

  6. however the idea that this has to be done in the first place, is total BS. “OUT-OF-BOX” just with that think of how wonderful that would be easier.

    Reply

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