If you are looking to burn an ISO image to physical media such as a CD or DVD, instead of a conventional method using a GUI application, there are also many ways on how to burn an ISO image from the command line. One way is to use the wodim
command. In this tutorial, we will cover the step by step instructions to burn an ISO image to disc using the wodim
tool on a Linux system.
In this tutorial you will learn:
- How to burn an ISO image to physial disc using
wodim
command

Category | Requirements, Conventions or Software Version Used |
---|---|
System | Any Linux distro |
Software | wodim |
Other | Privileged access to your Linux system as root or via the sudo command. |
Conventions |
# – requires given linux commands to be executed with root privileges either directly as a root user or by use of sudo command$ – requires given linux commands to be executed as a regular non-privileged user |
Using command line wodim tool to burn iso image step by step instructions
- In case it is not already installed, you can use the following commands to install
wodim
on Ubuntu, Debian and Linux Mint:$ sudo apt update $ sudo apt install wodim
- The next step is to identify our CD/DVD burner block device file name with the
wodim --devices
command:$ wodim --devices wodim: Overview of accessible drives (1 found) : ------------------------------------------------------------------------- 0 dev='/dev/scd0' rwrw-- : 'TSSTcorp' 'CD/DVDW SH-S183L' -------------------------------------------------------------------------
- Now we can combine the device file of our burning device with wodim command to write actual ISO image:
$ wodim -eject -tao speed=0 dev=/dev/scd0 -v -data /my/directory/image.iso
- Ff you get an error mesage saying :
wodim: trying to use a high speed medium on low writer
try use higher burning speed such asspeed=1
orspeed=2
:$ wodim -eject -tao speed=1 dev=/dev/scd0 -v -data /my/directory/image.iso
Closing Thoughts
In this tutorial, we saw how to burn an ISO image file to a CD or DVD on a Linux system. The wodim
utility makes this task very painless, and some users may find it more convenient or simple than using a GUI application to perform the same function.