1FATLABEL(8)                 System Manager's Manual                FATLABEL(8)
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NAME

6       fatlabel - set or get MS-DOS filesystem label or volume ID
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SYNOPSIS

9       fatlabel [OPTIONS] DEVICE [NEW]
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DESCRIPTION

12       fatlabel  will  display  or change the volume label or volume ID on the
13       MS-DOS filesystem located on DEVICE.  By  default  it  works  in  label
14       mode.   It  can  be  switched  to  volume ID mode with the option -i or
15       --volume-id.
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17       If NEW is omitted, then the existing label or volume ID is  written  to
18       the  standard output.  A label can't be longer than 11 bytes and should
19       be in all upper case for best compatibility.  An empty string or a  la‐
20       bel consisting only of white space is not allowed.  A volume ID must be
21       given as a hexadecimal number (no leading "0x" or similar) and must fit
22       into 32 bits.
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OPTIONS

25       -i, --volume-id
26           Switch to volume ID mode.
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28       -r, --reset
29           Remove label in label mode or generate new ID in volume ID mode.
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31       -c PAGE, --codepage=PAGE
32           Use  DOS codepage PAGE to encode/decode label.  By default codepage
33           850 is used.
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35       -h, --help
36           Display a help message and terminate.
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38       -V, --version
39           Show version number and terminate.
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COMPATIBILITY and BUGS

42       For historic reasons FAT label is stored in two different locations: in
43       the  boot sector and as a special volume label entry in the root direc‐
44       tory.  MS-DOS 5.00, MS-DOS 6.22, MS-DOS 7.10, Windows  98,  Windows  XP
45       and  also  Windows 10 read FAT label only from the root directory.  Ab‐
46       sence of the volume label in the root directory is interpreted as empty
47       or none label, even if boot sector contains some valid label.
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49       When  Windows  XP or Windows 10 system changes a FAT label it stores it
50       only in the root directory —  letting  boot  sector  unchanged.   Which
51       leads  to  problems  when  a label is removed on Windows.  Old label is
52       still stored in the boot sector but is removed from the root directory.
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54       dosfslabel prior to the version 3.0.7 operated  only  with  FAT  labels
55       stored  in  the  boot sector, completely ignoring a volume label in the
56       root directory.
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58       dosfslabel in versions 3.0.7–3.0.15 reads FAT labels from the root  di‐
59       rectory  and  in case of absence, it fallbacks to a label stored in the
60       boot sector.  Change operation resulted in updating a label in the boot
61       sector  and  sometimes also in the root directory due to the bug.  That
62       bug was fixed in dosfslabel version 3.0.16 and since this version dosf‐
63       slabel updates label in both location.
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65       Since version 4.2, fatlabel reads a FAT label only from the root direc‐
66       tory (like MS-DOS and Windows systems), but changes a FAT label in both
67       locations.   In  version 4.2 was fixed handling of empty labels and la‐
68       bels which starts with a byte 0xE5.  Also in  this  version  was  added
69       support  for  non-ASCII  labels according to the specified DOS codepage
70       and were added checks if a new label is valid.
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72       It is strongly suggested to not use dosfslabel prior to version 3.0.16.
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DOS CODEPAGES

75       MS-DOS and Windows systems use DOS (OEM) codepage for encoding and  de‐
76       coding  FAT  label.   In Windows systems DOS codepage is global for all
77       running applications and cannot be configured explicitly.   It  is  set
78       implicitly by option Language for non-Unicode programs available in Re‐
79       gional and Language Options via Control Panel.   Default  DOS  codepage
80       for  fatlabel is 850.  See following mapping table between DOS codepage
81       and Language for non-Unicode programs:
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83       Codepage   Language
84         437      English (India), English (Malaysia),  English  (Republic  of
85                  the   Philippines),   English  (Singapore),  English  (South
86                  Africa), English (United States), English  (Zimbabwe),  Fil‐
87                  ipino,   Hausa,  Igbo,  Inuktitut,  Kinyarwanda,  Kiswahili,
88                  Yoruba
89         720      Arabic, Dari, Persian, Urdu, Uyghur
90         737      Greek
91         775      Estonian, Latvian, Lithuanian
92         850      Afrikaans, Alsatian, Basque, Breton, Catalan, Corsican, Dan‐
93                  ish,  Dutch,  English (Australia), English (Belize), English
94                  (Canada), English (Caribbean),  English  (Ireland),  English
95                  (Jamaica),  English (New Zealand), English (Trinidad and To‐
96                  bago), English (United Kingdom), Faroese,  Finnish,  French,
97                  Frisian,  Galician,  German, Greenlandic, Icelandic, Indone‐
98                  sian, Irish, isiXhosa, isiZulu, Italian, K'iche, Lower  Sor‐
99                  bian,  Luxembourgish,  Malay, Mapudungun, Mohawk, Norwegian,
100                  Occitan,  Portuguese,  Quechua,  Romansh,   Sami,   Scottish
101                  Gaelic,   Sesotho  sa  Leboa,  Setswana,  Spanish,  Swedish,
102                  Tamazight, Upper Sorbian, Welsh, Wolof
103         852      Albanian, Bosnian (Latin), Croatian, Czech, Hungarian,  Pol‐
104                  ish, Romanian, Serbian (Latin), Slovak, Slovenian, Turkmen
105         855      Bosnian (Cyrillic), Serbian (Cyrillic)
106         857      Azeri (Latin), Turkish, Uzbek (Latin)
107         862      Hebrew
108         866      Azeri  (Cyrillic),  Bashkir,  Belarusian, Bulgarian, Kyrgyz,
109                  Macedonian, Mongolian,  Russian,  Tajik,  Tatar,  Ukrainian,
110                  Uzbek (Cyrillic), Yakut
111         874      Thai
112         932      Japanese
113         936      Chinese (Simplified)
114         949      Korean
115         950      Chinese (Traditional)
116         1258     Vietnamese
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SEE ALSO

119       fsck.fat(8), mkfs.fat(8)
120

HOMEPAGE

122       The  home  for  the  dosfstools  project  is  its  GitHub  project page
123https://github.com/dosfstools/dosfstools⟩.
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AUTHORS

126       dosfstools were  written  by  Werner  Almesberger  ⟨werner.almesberger@
127       lrc.di.epfl.ch⟩,  Roman Hodek ⟨Roman.Hodek@informatik.uni-erlangen.de⟩,
128       and others.  Current maintainers are Andreas Bombe ⟨aeb@debian.org⟩ and
129       Pali Rohár ⟨pali.rohar@gmail.com⟩.
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133dosfstools 4.2                    2021-01-31                       FATLABEL(8)
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