your life with cdrecord can be made easier by giving it a config file, /usr/local/etc/cdrecord:
Code:
CDR_DEVICE=panasonic
# drive name device speed fifosize driveropts
panasonic= 0,0,0 -1 -1 burnfree
see the default config file for more information.
Setting cdrecord suid (chmod u+s /usr/local/bin/cdrecord) makes things easier, but it does put you at a risk of privilege escalation if there are bugs in cdrecord.