1mpartition(1)               General Commands Manual              mpartition(1)
2
3
4

Name

6       mpartition - partition an MSDOS hard disk
7
8
9

Note of warning

11       This  manpage  has  been  automatically generated from mtools's texinfo
12       documentation, and may not be entirely accurate or complete.   See  the
13       end of this man page for details.
14

Description

16       The  mpartition command is used to create MS-DOS file systems as parti‐
17       tions.  This is intended to be used on non-Linux systems, i.e.  systems
18       where  fdisk  and  easy access to SCSI devices are not available.  This
19       command only works on drives whose partition variable is set.
20
21       mpartition -p drive
22       mpartition -r drive
23       mpartition -I [-B bootSector] drive
24       mpartition -a drive
25       mpartition -d drive
26       mpartition -c [-s sectors] [-h heads]
27       [-t cylinders] [-v [-T type] [-b
28       begin] [-l length] [-f]
29
30
31
32       Mpartition supports the following operations:
33
34       p      Prints a command line to recreate the partition for  the  drive.
35              Nothing  is  printed  if  the  partition  for  the  drive is not
36              defined, or an inconsistency has been detected.  If verbose (-v)
37              is also set, prints the current partition table.
38
39       r      Removes the partition described by drive.
40
41       I      Initializes the partition table, and removes all partitions.
42
43       c      Creates the partition described by drive.
44
45       a      "Activates"  the  partition,  i.e.  makes it bootable.  Only one
46              partition can be bootable at a time.
47
48       d      "Deactivates" the partition, i.e. makes it unbootable.
49
50       If no operation is given, the current settings are printed.
51
52       For partition creations, the following options are available:
53
54       s sectors
55              The number of sectors per track of the partition (which is  also
56              the number of sectors per track for the whole drive).
57
58       h heads
59              The  number  of heads of the partition (which is also the number
60              of heads for the whole drive).  By default, the geometry  infor‐
61              mation  (number of sectors and heads) is figured out from neigh‐
62              boring partition table entries, or guessed from the size.
63
64       t cylinders
65              The number of cylinders of the  partition  (not  the  number  of
66              cylinders of the whole drive.
67
68       b begin
69              The  starting  offset of the partition, expressed in sectors. If
70              begin is not given, mpartition lets the partition begin  at  the
71              start of the disk (partition number 1), or immediately after the
72              end of the previous partition.
73
74       l length
75              The size (length) of the partition, expressed  in  sectors.   If
76              end  is not given, mpartition figures out the size from the num‐
77              ber of sectors, heads and cylinders.  If  these  are  not  given
78              either,  it  gives the partition the biggest possible size, con‐
79              sidering disk size and start of the next partition.
80
81       The following option is available for all operation  which  modify  the
82       partition table:
83
84       f      Usually, before writing back any changes to the partition, mpar‐
85              tition performs certain consistency checks, such as checking for
86              overlaps  and  proper  alignment  of  the partitions.  If any of
87              these checks fails, the partition table is not changes.  The  -f
88              allows you to override these safeguards.
89
90       The following options are available for all operations:
91
92       v      Together  with  -p  prints  the partition table as it is now (no
93              change operation), or as it is after it is modified.
94
95       vv     If the verbosity flag is given twice, mpartition will print  out
96              a  hexdump of the partition table when reading it from and writ‐
97              ing it to the device.
98
99       The following option is available for partition table initialization:
100
101       B bootSector
102              Reads the template master boot record from file bootSector.
103

Choice of partition type

105       Mpartition proceeds as follows to pick a type for the partition:
106
107       -      FAT32 partitions are assigned type 0x0C (``Win95 FAT32, LBA'')
108
109       -      For all others, if the partition fits entirely within the  65536
110              sector  of  the disk, assign 0x01 (``DOS FAT12, CHS'') for FAT12
111              partition and 0x04 (``DOS FAT16, CHS'') for FAT16 partitions
112
113       -      If not covered by the above, assign 0x06 (``DOS BIG FAT16 CHS'')
114              if  partition fits entirely within the first 1024 cylinders (CHS
115              mode)
116
117       -      All remaining cases get 0x0E (``Win95 BIG FAT16, LBA'')
118
119       If number of fat bits is not known (not specified  in  drive's  defini‐
120       tion),  then  FAT12  is assumed for all drives with less than 4096 sec‐
121       tors, and FAT16 for those with more than 4096 sectors.
122
123       This  corresponds  more  or  less  to  the  definitions   outlined   at
124       https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Partition_type#List_of_partition_IDs  and
125       https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/previous-versions/windows/it-pro/win
126       dows-2000-server/cc977219(v=technet.10), with two notable differences:
127
128       -      If fat bits are unknown, the reference documents consider drives
129              with less than 32680 sectors to be FAT12. Mtools uses 4096  sec‐
130              tors  as the cutoff point, as older versions of DOS only support
131              FAT12 on disks with less than 4096 sectors (and these older ver‐
132              sions  are  the  ones which would be most likely to use FAT12 in
133              the first place).
134
135       -      The reference documents use a 8GB (wikipedia) or a  4GB  (Micro‐
136              soft)  cutoff  between 0x06 (DOS BIG FAT16 CHS) and 0x0E. Mtools
137              uses 1024 cylinders. This is because any partition  beyond  1024
138              cylinders must be LBA and cannot be CHS. 8GB works out to be the
139              biggest capacity which can be represented as  CHS  (63  sectors,
140              255  heads  and  1024  cylinders). 4GB is the capacity limit for
141              windows 2000, so it makes sense that a documentation for windows
142              2000  would  specify  this  as the upper limit for any partition
143              type.
144

See Also

146       Mtools' texinfo doc
147

Viewing the texi doc

149       This manpage has been automatically  generated  from  mtools's  texinfo
150       documentation.  However,  this  process is only approximative, and some
151       items, such as crossreferences, footnotes and indices are lost in  this
152       translation process.  Indeed, these items have no appropriate represen‐
153       tation in the manpage format.  Moreover, not all information  has  been
154       translated into the manpage version.  Thus I strongly advise you to use
155       the original texinfo doc.  See the end of this manpage for instructions
156       how to view the texinfo doc.
157
158       *      To  generate a printable copy from the texinfo doc, run the fol‐
159              lowing commands:
160
161                     ./configure; make dvi; dvips mtools.dvi
162
163
164
165       *      To generate a html copy,  run:
166
167                     ./configure; make html
168
169       A premade html can be found at `http://www.gnu.org/software/mtools/man
170       ual/mtools.html'
171
172       *      To  generate  an  info  copy (browsable using emacs' info mode),
173              run:
174
175                     ./configure; make info
176
177
178
179       The texinfo doc looks most pretty when printed or as html.  Indeed,  in
180       the  info  version  certain  examples  are difficult to read due to the
181       quoting conventions used in info.
182
183mtools-4.0.24                       22Mar20                      mpartition(1)
Impressum