MTOOLS(5) Linux Programmer's Manual MTOOLS(5)NAMEmtools - table of DOS devices
DESCRIPTION
/etc/mtools.conf and ~/.mtoolsrc are the configuration
files for mtools. These configuration file describes the
following items:
o Global configuration flags and variables
o Per drive flags and variables
o Character translation tables
/etc/mtools.conf is the system-wide configuration file,
and ~/.mtoolsrc is the user's private configuration file.
General Syntax
The configuration files is made up of sections. Each sec-
tion starts with a keyword identifying the section fol-
lowed by a colon. Then follow variable assignments and
flags. Variable assignments take the following form:
name=value
Flags are lone keywords without an equal sign and value
following them. A section either ends at the end of the
file or where the next section begins.
Lines starting with a hash (#) are comments. Newline char-
acters are equivalent to whitespace (except where ending a
comment). The configuration file is case insensitive,
except for item enclosed in quotes (such as filenames).
Default values
For most platforms, mtools contains reasonable compiled-in
defaults. You usually don't need to bother with the con-
figuration file, if all you want to do with mtools is to
access your floppy drives. On the other hand, the configu-
ration file is needed if you also want to use mtools to
access your hard disk partitions and dosemu image files.
GLOBAL VARIABLES
Global variables may be set to 1 or to 0.
The following global flags are recognized:
MTOOLS_SKIP_CHECK
If this is set to 1, mtools skips most of its
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sanity checks. This is needed to read some Atari
disks which have been made with the earlier ROMs,
and which would not be recognized otherwise.
MTOOLS_FAT_COMPATIBILITY
If this is set to 1, mtools skips the fat size
checks. Some disks have a bigger FAT than they
really need to. These are rejected if this option
is not set.
MTOOLS_LOWER_CASE
If this is set to 1, mtools displays all-upper-case
short filenames as lowercase. This has been done to
allow a behavior which is consistent with older
versions of mtools which didn't know about the case
bits.
Example: Inserting the following line into your configura-
tion file instructs mtools to skip the sanity checks:
MTOOLS_SKIP_CHECK=1
Global variables may also be set via the environment:
export MTOOLS_SKIP_CHECK=1
PER DRIVE FLAGS AND VARIABLES
Per drive flags and values may be described in a drive
section. A drive section starts with drive driveletter :
Then follow variable-value pairs and flags.
General Purpose Drive Variables
The following variables are available:
file The name of the file or device holding the disk
image. This is mandatory. The file name should be
enclosed in quotes. use_xdf If this is set to a
non-zero value, mtools also tries to access this
disk as an Xdf disk. Xdf is a high capacity format
used by OS/2. This is off by default.
partition
Tells mtools to treat the drive as a partitioned
device, and to use the given partition. Only pri-
mary partitions are accessible using this method,
and they are numbered from 1 to 4. For logical par-
titions, use the more general offset variable. The
partition variable is intended for Syquests, ZIP
drives, and DOSEMU hdimages. It is not recommended
for hard disks to which direct access to partitions
is available.
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offset Describes where in the file the MSDOS filesystem
starts. This is useful for logical partitions in
DOSEMU hdimages, and for ATARI ram disks. By
default, this is zero, meaning that the filesystem
start right at the beginning of the device or file.
fat_bits
The number of FAT bits. This may be 12 or 16. This
is very rarely needed, as it can almost always be
deduced from information in the boot sector. On the
contrary, describing the number of fat bits may
actually be harmful if you get it wrong. You should
only use it if mtools gets the autodetected number
of fat bits wrong, or if you want to mformat a disk
with a weird number of fat bits.
Only the file option is mandatory. The other parameters
may be left out. In that case a default value or an
autodetected value is used.
Drive Geometry Configuration
Geometry information describes the physical characteris-
tics about the disk. Its has three purposes:
mformat
The geometry information is written into the boot
sector of the newly made disk. However, you may
also describe the geometry information on the com-
mand line. See mformat(1) for details.
filtering
On some Unices there are device nodes which only
support one physical geometry. The geometry is com-
pared to the actual geometry stored on the boot
sector to make sure that this device node is able
to correctly read the disk. If the geometry doesn't
match, this drive entry fails, and the next drive
entry bearing the same drive letter is tried. See
the next section "Supplying multiple descriptions
for a drive" for more details on supplying several
descriptions for a drive letter.
If no geometry information is supplied in the con-
figuration file, all disks are accepted. On Linux
(and on Sparc) there exist device nodes with con-
figurable geometry (/dev/fd0, /dev/fd1 etc), and
thus filtering is not needed (and ignored) for disk
drives. (Mtools still does do filtering on plain
files (disk images) in Linux: this is mainly
intended for test purposes, as I don't have access
to a Unix which would actually need filtering).
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initial geometry
The geometry information (if available) is also
used to set the initial geometry on configurable
device nodes. This initial geometry is used to read
the boot sector, which contains the real geometry.
If no geometry information is supplied in the con-
figuration file, no initial configuration is done.
On Linux, this is not really needed either, as the
configurable devices are able to autodetect the
disk type accurately enough (for most common for-
mats) to read the boot sector.
Wrong geometry information may lead to very bizarre
errors. That's why I strongly recommend that you don't use
geometry configuration unless you really need it.
The following geometry related variables are available:
cylinders
The number of cylinders.
heads The number of heads (sides).
sectors
The number of sectors per track.
Example: the following drive section describes a 1.44M
drive:
drive a:
file="/dev/fd0H1440"
fat_bits=12
tracks=80 heads=2 sectors=18
The following shorthand geometry descriptions are avail-
able:
1.44m high density 3 1/2 disk. Equivalent to: fat_bits=12
tracks=80 heads=2 sectors=18
1.2m high density 5 1/4 disk. Equivalent to: fat_bits=12
tracks=80 heads=2 sectors=15
720k double density 3 1/2 disk. Equivalent to:
fat_bits=12 tracks=80 heads=2 sectors=9
360k double density 5 1/4 disk. Equivalent to:
fat_bits=12 tracks=40 heads=2 sectors=9
The shorthand format descriptions may be amended. For
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example, 360k sectors=8 describes a 320k disk and is
equivalent to: fat_bits=12 tracks=40 heads=2 sectors=8
Open Flags
Moreover, the following flags are available:
sync All i/o operations are done synchronously
nodelay
The device or file is opened with the O_NDELAY
flag. This is needed on some non-Linux architec-
tures.
exclusive
The device or file is opened with the O_EXCL flag.
On Linux, this ensures exclusive access to the
floppy drive. On most other architectures, and for
plain files it has no effect at all.
Supplying multiple descriptions for a drive
It is possible to supply multiple descriptions for a
drive. In that case, the descriptions are tried in order
until one is found that fits. Descriptions may fail for
several reasons:
1 because the geometry is not appropriate,
2 because there is no disk in the drive,
3 or because of other problems.
Multiple definitions are useful when using physical
devices which are only able to support one single disk
geometry. Example:
drive a: file="/dev/fd0H1440" 1.44m
drive a: file="/dev/fd0H720" 720k
This instructs mtools to use /dev/fd0H1440 for 1.44m (high
density) disks and /dev/fd0H720 for 720k (double density)
disks. On Linux, this feature is not really needed, as the
/dev/fd0 device is able to handle any geometry.
You may also use multiple drive descriptions to access
both of your physical drives through one drive letter:
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drive z: file="/dev/fd0"
drive z: file="/dev/fd1"
With this description, mdir z: accesses your first physi-
cal drive if it contains a disk. If the first drive
doesn't contain a disk, mtools checks the second drive.
When using multiple configuration files, drive descrip-
tions in the files parsed last override descriptions for
the same drive in earlier files. In order to avoid this,
use the drive+ or +drive keywords instead of drive . The
first adds a description to the end of the list (will be
tried last), and the first adds it to the start of the
list.
CHARACTER TRANSLATION TABLES
If you live in the USA, in Western Europe or in Australia,
you may skip this section.
Introduction
DOS uses a different character code mapping than Unix.
7-bit characters still have the same meaning, only charac-
ters with the eight bit set are affected. To make matters
worse, there are several translation tables available
depending on the country where you are. The appearance of
the characters is defined using code pages. These code
pages aren't the same for all countries. For instance,
some code pages don't contain upper case accented charac-
ters. On the other hand, some code pages contain charac-
ters which don't exist in Unix, such as certain line-draw-
ing characters or accented consonants used by some Eastern
European countries. This affects two things, relating to
filenames:
upper case characters
In short names, only upper case characters are
allowed. This also holds for accented characters.
For instance, in a code page which doesn't contain
accented uppercase characters, the accented lower-
case characters get transformed into their unac-
cented counterparts.
long file names
Micro$oft has finally come to their senses and uses
a more standard mapping for the long file names.
They use Unicode, which is basically a 32 bit ver-
sion of ASCII. Its first 256 characters are identi-
cal to Unix ASCII. Thus, the code page also affects
the correspondence between the codes used in long
names and those used in short names
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Mtools considers the filenames entered on the command line
as having the Unix mapping, and translates the characters
to get short names. By default, code page 850 is used
with the Swiss uppercase/lowercase mapping. I chose this
code page, because its set of existing characters most
closely matches Unix's. Moreover, this code page covers
most characters in use in the USA, Australia and Western
Europe. However, it is still possible to chose a different
mapping. There are two methods: the country variable and
explicit tables.
Configuration using Country
The COUNTRY variable is recommended for people which also
have access to MSDOS system files and documentation. If
you don't have access to these, I'd suggest you'd rather
use explicit tables instead.
Syntax: COUNTRY="country[,[codepage],country.sys]"
This tells mtools to use a Unix-to-DOS translation table
which matches codepage and an lowercase-to-uppercase table
for country and to use the country.sys file to get the
lowercase-to-uppercase table. The country code is most
often the telephone prefix of the country. Refer to the
DOS help page on "country" for more details. The codepage
and the country.sys parameters are optional. Please don't
type in the square brackets, they are only there to say
which parameters are optional. The country.sys file is
supplied with MSDOS. In most cases you don't need it, as
the most common translation tables are compiled into
mtools. So, don't worry if you run a Unix-only box which
lacks this file.
If codepage is not given, a per country default code page
is used. If the country.sys parameter isn't given, com-
piled-in defaults are used for the lowercase-to-uppercase
table. This is useful for other Unices than Linux, which
may have no country.sys file available online.
The Unix-to-DOS are not contained in the country.sys file,
and thus mtools always uses compiled-in defaults for
those. Thus, only a limited amount of code pages are sup-
ported. If your preferred code page is missing, or if you
know the name of the Windows 95 file which contains this
mapping, could you please drop me a line at
Alain.Knaff@inrialpes.fr .
The COUNTRY variable can also be set using the environ-
ment.
Configuration using explicit translation tables
Translation tables may be described in line in the
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configuration file. Two tables are needed: first the DOS-
to-Unix table, and then the Lowercase-to-Uppercase table.
A DOS-to-Unix table starts with the tounix keyword, fol-
lowed by a colon, and 128 hexadecimal numbers. A lower-
to-upper table starts with the fucase keyword, followed by
a colon, and 128 hexadecimal numbers.
The tables only show the translations for characters whose
codes is greater than 128, because translation for lower
codes is trivial.
Example:
tounix:
0xc7 0xfc 0xe9 0xe2 0xe4 0xe0 0xe5 0xe7
0xea 0xeb 0xe8 0xef 0xee 0xec 0xc4 0xc5
0xc9 0xe6 0xc6 0xf4 0xf6 0xf2 0xfb 0xf9
0xff 0xd6 0xdc 0xf8 0xa3 0xd8 0xd7 0x5f
0xe1 0xed 0xf3 0xfa 0xf1 0xd1 0xaa 0xba
0xbf 0xae 0xac 0xbd 0xbc 0xa1 0xab 0xbb
0x5f 0x5f 0x5f 0x5f 0x5f 0xc1 0xc2 0xc0
0xa9 0x5f 0x5f 0x5f 0x5f 0xa2 0xa5 0xac
0x5f 0x5f 0x5f 0x5f 0x5f 0x5f 0xe3 0xc3
0x5f 0x5f 0x5f 0x5f 0x5f 0x5f 0x5f 0xa4
0xf0 0xd0 0xc9 0xcb 0xc8 0x69 0xcd 0xce
0xcf 0x5f 0x5f 0x5f 0x5f 0x7c 0x49 0x5f
0xd3 0xdf 0xd4 0xd2 0xf5 0xd5 0xb5 0xfe
0xde 0xda 0xd9 0xfd 0xdd 0xde 0xaf 0xb4
0xad 0xb1 0x5f 0xbe 0xb6 0xa7 0xf7 0xb8
0xb0 0xa8 0xb7 0xb9 0xb3 0xb2 0x5f 0x5f
fucase:
0x80 0x9a 0x90 0xb6 0x8e 0xb7 0x8f 0x80
0xd2 0xd3 0xd4 0xd8 0xd7 0xde 0x8e 0x8f
0x90 0x92 0x92 0xe2 0x99 0xe3 0xea 0xeb
0x59 0x99 0x9a 0x9d 0x9c 0x9d 0x9e 0x9f
0xb5 0xd6 0xe0 0xe9 0xa5 0xa5 0xa6 0xa7
0xa8 0xa9 0xaa 0xab 0xac 0xad 0xae 0xaf
0xb0 0xb1 0xb2 0xb3 0xb4 0xb5 0xb6 0xb7
0xb8 0xb9 0xba 0xbb 0xbc 0xbd 0xbe 0xbf
0xc0 0xc1 0xc2 0xc3 0xc4 0xc5 0xc7 0xc7
0xc8 0xc9 0xca 0xcb 0xcc 0xcd 0xce 0xcf
0xd1 0xd1 0xd2 0xd3 0xd4 0x49 0xd6 0xd7
0xd8 0xd9 0xda 0xdb 0xdc 0xdd 0xde 0xdf
0xe0 0xe1 0xe2 0xe3 0xe5 0xe5 0xe6 0xe8
0xe8 0xe9 0xea 0xeb 0xed 0xed 0xee 0xef
0xf0 0xf1 0xf2 0xf3 0xf4 0xf5 0xf6 0xf7
0xf8 0xf9 0xfa 0xfb 0xfc 0xfd 0xfe 0xff
The first table maps DOS character codes to Unix character
codes. For example, the DOS character number 129. This is
a u with to dots on top of it. To translate it into Unix,
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we look at the character number 1 in the first table (1 =
129 - 128). This is 0xfc. (Beware, numbering starts at 0).
The second table maps lower case DOS characters to upper
case DOS characters. The same lower case u with dots maps
to character 0x9a, which is an uppercase U with dots in
DOS.
Unicode characters greater than 256
If an existing MSDOS name contains Unicode character
greater than 256, these are translated to underscores or
to characters which are close in visual appearance. For
example, accented consonants are translated into their
unaccented counterparts. This translation is used for mdir
and for the Unix filenames generated by mcopy. Linux does
support Unicode too, but unfortunately too few applica-
tions support it yet to bother with it in mtools. Most
importantly, xterm can't display Unicode yet. If there is
sufficient demand, I might include support for Unicode in
the Unix filenames as well.
Caution: When deleting files with mtools, the underscore
matches all characters which can't be represented in Unix.
Be careful before mdel!
LOCATION OF CONFIGURATION FILES AND PARSING ORDER
The configuration files are parsed in the following order:
1 compiled-in defaults
2 /etc/mtools.conf
3 /etc/mtools This is for backwards compatibility
only, and is only parsed if mtools.conf doesn't
exist.
4 ~/.mtoolsrc.
Options described in the later files override those
described in the earlier files. Drives defined in earlier
files persist if they are not overridden in the later
files. For instance, drives A and B may be defined in
/etc/mtools.conf and drives C and D may be defined in
~/.mtoolsrc However, if ~/.mtoolsrc also defines drive A,
this new description would override the description of
drive A in /etc/mtools.conf instead of adding to it. If
you want to add a new description to a drive already
described in an earlier file, you need to use either the
+drive or drive+ keyword.
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The syntax described herein is new for version
mtools-2.5.4. The old line-oriented syntax is still sup-
ported. Each line beginning with a single letter is con-
sidered to be a drive description using the old syntax.
Old style and new style drive sections may be mixed within
the same configuration file, in order to make upgrading
easier. Support for the old syntax will be phased out
eventually, and in order to discourage its use, I purpose-
fully omit its description here.
FILES
/etc/mtools.conf, ~/.mtoolsrc
SEE ALSOmtools(1)
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