1FATLABEL(8) System Manager's Manual FATLABEL(8)
2
6 fatlabel - set or get MS-DOS filesystem label or volume ID
7
9 fatlabel [OPTIONS] DEVICE [NEW]
10
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.
16 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.
23
25 -i, --volume-id
26 Switch to volume ID mode.
27 -r, --reset
29 Remove label in label mode or generate new ID in volume ID mode.
30 -c PAGE, --codepage=PAGE
32 Use DOS codepage PAGE to encode/decode label. By default codepage
33 850 is used.
34 -h, --help
36 Display a help message and terminate.
37 -V, --version
39 Show version number and terminate.
40
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.
48 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.
53 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.
57 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.
64 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.
71 It is strongly suggested to not use dosfslabel prior to version 3.0.16.
73
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:
82 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
117
119 fsck.fat(8), mkfs.fat(8)
120
122 The home for the dosfstools project is its GitHub project page
123 ⟨https://github.com/dosfstools/dosfstools⟩.
124
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⟩.
130dosfstools 4.2 2021-01-31 FATLABEL(8)