AARU(1)

NAME
aaru - data preservation suite for optical, magnetic and solid-state media

SYNOPSIS
aaru [command] [options...]

aaru gui

DESCRIPTION
Aaru is a cross-platform data preservation suite. It dumps optical and removable media (CD, DVD, HD-DVD, Blu-ray, UMD, GameCube/Wii optical, floppy disks, magneto-optical) to byte-perfect images, decodes their filesystems, validates checksums, and produces metadata in the CICM format used by preservation projects.

The same aaru binary serves both a command-line interface (default) and an Avalonia-based graphical interface, the latter launched as aaru gui.

DRIVE ACCESS
aaru ships with the cap_sys_rawio file capability set, so vendor SCSI passthrough commands work without sudo.

The invoking user still needs read/write access to the device node. On a desktop session at the local seat this is granted automatically by a systemd-logind uaccess ACL: for optical drives (/dev/sr*, /dev/sg*) by systemd itself, for floppy nodes by the udev rule this package ships.

Headless use (SSH, cron, systemd --user, NFS-mounted device nodes) has no seat and therefore no ACL. Optical drives remain reachable through the cdrom group:

        sudo usermod -aG cdrom $USER
        newgrp cdrom

Floppy nodes stay root:disk, so dumping a floppy headlessly needs root. The disk group would grant access to every block device on the system and is not a safe substitute.

COMMAND REFERENCE
The following is the complete command tree of the aaru binary shipped in this package, reproduced verbatim from its --help output. It is regenerated from the binary at package build time, so it always matches the installed version; run aaru COMMAND --help for the same text interactively.

@AARU_COMMAND_REFERENCE@

FILES

/usr/bin/aaru
    Symlink to the real binary /usr/lib/aaru/aaru; the kernel follows it for cap_sys_rawio inheritance on exec.

/usr/lib/aaru/
    Real binary, dependent .NET assemblies, native libraries (SkiaSharp, Avalonia native), and runtime-specific extras.

/usr/share/applications/aaru.desktop
    Desktop launcher entry ( Exec=aaru gui ) that picks up the Avalonia GUI.

~/.config/Aaru.json
    Per-user settings written by aaru configure.

~/.local/share/Aaru/
    Per-user device/media database, statistics and device reports.

/usr/share/doc/aaru/
    Upstream README, Changelog and contributor guide.

NOTES
The command reference above is generated mechanically from the shipped binary's --help output during packaging, so it cannot drift from the installed version. The surrounding sections (drive access, files, see also) are maintained by hand as part of the distribution packaging — upstream provides no manpage.

SEE ALSO
aaru5(1), redumper(1), discimagecreator(1)

Upstream documentation, bug tracker and release notes: https://github.com/aaru-dps/Aaru.

AUTHOR
Upstream lead: Natalia Portillo (https://github.com/claunia).

Distribution packaging maintained as part of the media-preservation packaging repository gmipf/packaging-media-preservation .

LICENSE
The aaru binary aggregates code under multiple licenses:

•   GPL-3.0-or-later (main application and most subprojects)

•   LGPL-2.1-or-later (selected library components)

•   MIT (third-party vendored components)

Each component retains its individual license; full license texts are under /usr/share/doc/aaru/.