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Hi!
Well, I like mplayer (www.mplayerhq.hu) a lot! Conversion and all that. But - for a quick copy of a dvd to harddisk I didn't find the right tools under linux (back then - something similar to vobdec under win). So, I hacked together a copy program using heavily the libdvdread library (which is really great).
It should also now work on FreeBSD (many thanks to Takeshi HIYAMA!!) and Solaris (also many thanks to Erik Hovland!!) and a little on MacOSX (either straight from this source or get it via fink - that really works)

What you need in advance is libdvdread(-devel) installed. This will only copy css-unencrypted dvd's (take a GOOD look at http://freshmeat.net/projects/libdvdread). There are also rpm and deb packages available!

**IMPORTANT**

        I receive nearly NO bugreports, so either vobcopy (and therefore I) 
        are near-perfect (yeah, right) or your problems have a real slim chance
        of getting fixed. Bugreporting is really simple, add "-v -v" to your 
        vobcopy call to have vobcopy create a bugreport file you can mail me at
        robos@muon.de along with a small description of your system (OS,
        hardware, ...) and the problem.
        I did receive some questions which I answer in the FAQ. Take a look
        there before you mail me a bugreport. 

It should compile then via:
(Configure: ./configure.sh

            is a self-written configure script. Try it. It isn't necessary
            but it tries to find some things. If it fails skip it :)

For rpm based systems the commands should be something link this: The src.rpm should rebuild cleanly on any RPM-based distro with "rpmbuild --rebuild vobcopy-0.5.8-1.src.rpm" (or replace "rpmbuild" with "rpm" on older distributions), so it's distribution-neutral. Alternatively this will build the binary package for them automagically: rpmbuild -ta vobcopy-0.5.8.tar.gz

Compile

make (if you want to disable large file support during compilation, use make disable_lfs instead)

Install

as root: make install

Handling

vobcopy (without any options)

should copy the correct /path/to/dvd/video_ts/vts_0x_01.vob to vts_0x_yy.vob to the directory you are invoking vobcopy from. (vobcopy takes the title with the most chapters by default if no title is specified) The vobs will be merged up to 2 gigs and then a new file will be started. So what you get is: name-of-moviex-1.vob (2 gig size) name-of-moviex-2.vob ... During copying there is a .partial appended to the filename to indicate that the files are not done yet. If for some reason the sizes don't match the one on dvd the .partial will stay to indicate that something is wrong.

For more infos on the options see "man vobcopy"

Newest addition:
vobcopy -O <filename of single files you want to copy, more than one have to

        be separated by comma>
        e.g. -O video_ts.vob,vts_01_01.ifo,vts_01_01.vob
        or -O bup,ifo will copy all files containing ifo and bup in their names

vobcopy -F <fast_factor= 1..64> (--fast)

        Speed up the copying (experimental)
        (in my case it went from 10:43 min to 9:40 with 1x to 10x, so not 
        THAT much, maybe with faster drives...)

vobcopy -m (or --mirror, long-options are possible now)

Mirror the content of /dvd/video_ts/ to a dir named after the dvd.

        Optionally you can provide which vts_xx_01 (which title) should be 
        copied via
vobcopy -n 3
        will copy vts_03_xx.vob to harddisk.
vobcopy -o /tmp/, "-" or "stdout"
        will copy the output to /tmp/, or to stdout for piping to another program
        (like bbtools, see the vobcopy page)
vobcopy -1/tmp1/
        will continue to write the data to this directory if the first one 
        (behind -o) is full. Additionally there are -2, -3 and -4 available.
        (watch out that there are no spaces behind the number and the dir, 
        might not work otherwise) 
vobcopy -l 
        will copy the data into only one really large file (probably larger
        than 2 GB). This large-file-support has to be met by your system. No 
        autodetection yet.
vobcopy -h
        gives you the available command options (help)

If parts of vobcopy work buggy you can override some things: vobcopy -f

        force vobcopy to write to the destination directory even if vobcopy 
        thinks there is not enough free space. 
vobcopy -i /path/to/the/mounted/dvd/
        if vobcopy fails to autodetect the mounted dvd you can provide the path
        like that.
vobcopy -I
        will give you some infos on the dvd data and on the output directory
vobcopy -v -v 
        will write a log-file to /tmp/ which you can send to me as a bugreport
        (along with a few words by you about the problem)
vobcopy -b
        begins to copy from the specified offset-size. Modifiers like b for 
        512-bytes, k for kilo-bytes, m for mega- and g for giga-bytes can be 
        appended to the number. Example: vobcopy -b 500m will start to copy 
        from 500MB onward till the end.
vobcopy -e size[bkmg]
        similar to -b, this options lets you specify some size to stop before 
        the end.        
vobcopy -V 
        prints the version number of vobcopy
vobcopy -t name
        changes the name of the output file or writes to stdout for pipeing
        (deprecated, use -o instead now)

vobcopy -q

        all info and error messages of vobcopy go to /tmp/vobcopy.bla
        instead of stderr

The options can be combined and arranged as you like. It worked for me, hope with you too.
Have fun!
Robos (robos@muon.de)