1mtools.1(3) MTOOLS mtools.1(3)
2
6 mtools.conf - mtools configuration files
7
11 This manpage describes the configuration files for mtools. They are
12 called `/etc/mtools.conf' and `~/.mtoolsrc'. If the environmental vari‐
13 able MTOOLSRC is set, its contents is used as the filename for a third
14 configuration file. These configuration files describe the following
15 items:
16 * Global configuration flags and variables
18 * Per drive flags and variables
20 * Character translation tables
22 Location of the configuration files
24 `/etc/mtools.conf' is the system-wide configuration file, and
25 `~/.mtoolsrc' is the user's private configuration file.
26 On some systems, the system-wide configuration file is called
28 `/etc/defaults/mtools.conf' instead.
29 General configuration file syntax
31 The configuration files is made up of sections. Each section starts
32 with a keyword identifying the section followed by a colon. Then fol‐
33 low variable assignments and flags. Variable assignments take the fol‐
34 lowing form:
35 name=value
36 Flags are lone keywords without an equal sign and value following them.
38 A section either ends at the end of the file or where the next section
39 begins.
40 Lines starting with a hash (#) are comments. Newline characters are
42 equivalent to whitespace (except where ending a comment). The configu‐
43 ration file is case insensitive, except for item enclosed in quotes
44 (such as filenames).
45 Default values
47 For most platforms, mtools contains reasonable compiled-in defaults for
48 physical floppy drives. Thus, you usually don't need to bother with
49 the configuration file, if all you want to do with mtools is to access
50 your floppy drives. On the other hand, the configuration file is needed
51 if you also want to use mtools to access your hard disk partitions and
52 dosemu image files.
53 Global variables
55 Global flags may be set to 1 or to 0.
56 The following global flags are recognized:
58 MTOOLS_SKIP_CHECK
60 If this is set to 1, mtools skips most of its sanity checks.
61 This is needed to read some Atari disks which have been made
62 with the earlier ROMs, and which would not be recognized other‐
63 wise.
64 MTOOLS_FAT_COMPATIBILITY
66 If this is set to 1, mtools skips the fat size checks. Some
67 disks have a bigger FAT than they really need to. These are
68 rejected if this option is not set.
69 MTOOLS_LOWER_CASE
71 If this is set to 1, mtools displays all-upper-case short file‐
72 names as lowercase. This has been done to allow a behavior which
73 is consistent with older versions of mtools which didn't know
74 about the case bits.
75 MTOOLS_NO_VFAT
77 If this is set to 1, mtools won't generate VFAT entries for
78 filenames which are mixed-case, but otherwise legal dos file‐
79 names. This is useful when working with DOS versions which
80 can't grok VFAT longnames, such as FreeDos.
81 MTOOLS_DOTTED_DIR
83 In a wide directory, prints the short name with a dot instead of
84 spaces separating the basename and the extension.
85 MTOOLS_NAME_NUMERIC_TAIL
87 If this is set to one (default), generate numeric tails for all
88 long names (~1). If set to zero, only generate numeric tails if
89 otherwise a clash would have happened.
90 MTOOLS_TWENTY_FOUR_HOUR_CLOCK
92 If 1, uses the European notation for times (twenty four hour
93 clock), else uses the UK/US notation (am/pm)
94 Example: Inserting the following line into your configuration file
96 instructs mtools to skip the sanity checks:
97 MTOOLS_SKIP_CHECK=1
99 Global variables may also be set via the environment:
103 export MTOOLS_SKIP_CHECK=1
105 Global string variables may be set to any value:
109 MTOOLS_DATE_STRING
111 The format used for printing dates of files. By default, is dd-
112 mm-yyyy.
113 Per drive flags and variables
115 General information
116 Per drive flags and values may be described in a drive section. A drive
117 section starts with drive "driveletter" :
118 Then follow variable-value pairs and flags.
120 This is a sample drive description:
122 drive a:
124 file="/dev/fd0" use_xdf=1
125 Disk Geometry Configuration
129 Geometry information describes the physical characteristics about the
130 disk. Its has three purposes:
131 formatting
133 The geometry information is written into the boot sector of the
134 newly made disk. However, you may also describe the geometry
135 information on the command line. See section mformat, for
136 details.
137 filtering
139 On some Unices there are device nodes which only support one
140 physical geometry. For instance, you might need a different node
141 to access a disk as high density or as low density. The geometry
142 is compared to the actual geometry stored on the boot sector to
143 make sure that this device node is able to correctly read the
144 disk. If the geometry doesn't match, this drive entry fails, and
145 the next drive entry bearing the same drive letter is tried. See
146 section multiple descriptions, for more details on supplying
147 several descriptions for one drive letter.
148 If no geometry information is supplied in the configuration
150 file, all disks are accepted. On Linux (and on Sparc) there
151 exist device nodes with configurable geometry (`/dev/fd0',
152 `/dev/fd1' etc), and thus filtering is not needed (and ignored)
153 for disk drives. (Mtools still does do filtering on plain files
154 (disk images) in Linux: this is mainly intended for test pur‐
155 poses, as I don't have access to a Unix which would actually
156 need filtering).
157 If you do not need filtering, but want still a default geometry
159 for mformatting, you may switch off filtering using the mfor‐
160 mat_only flag.
161 If you want filtering, you should supply the filter flag. If
163 you supply a geometry, you must supply one of both flags.
164 initial geometry
166 On devices that support it (usually floppy devices), the geome‐
167 try information is also used to set the initial geometry. This
168 initial geometry is applied while reading the boot sector, which
169 contains the real geometry. If no geometry information is sup‐
170 plied in the configuration file, or if the mformat_only flag is
171 supplied, no initial configuration is done.
172 On Linux, initial geometry is not really needed, as the config‐
174 urable devices are able to auto-detect the disk type accurately
175 enough (for most common formats) to read the boot sector.
176 Wrong geometry information may lead to very bizarre errors. That's why
178 I strongly recommend that you add the mformat_only flag to your drive
179 description, unless you really need filtering or initial geometry.
180 The following geometry related variables are available:
182 cylinders
184 tracks The number of cylinders. (cylinders is the preferred form,
185 tracks is considered obsolete)
186 heads The number of heads (sides).
188 sectors
190 The number of sectors per track.
191 Example: the following drive section describes a 1.44M drive:
193 drive a:
195 file="/dev/fd0H1440"
196 fat_bits=12
197 cylinders=80 heads=2 sectors=18
198 mformat_only
199 The following shorthand geometry descriptions are available:
203 1.44m high density 3 1/2 disk. Equivalent to: fat_bits=12 cylinders=80
205 heads=2 sectors=18
206 1.2m high density 5 1/4 disk. Equivalent to: fat_bits=12 cylinders=80
208 heads=2 sectors=15
209 720k double density 3 1/2 disk. Equivalent to: fat_bits=12 cylin‐
211 ders=80 heads=2 sectors=9
212 360k double density 5 1/4 disk. Equivalent to: fat_bits=12 cylin‐
214 ders=40 heads=2 sectors=9
215 The shorthand format descriptions may be amended. For example, 360k
217 sectors=8 describes a 320k disk and is equivalent to: fat_bits=12
218 cylinders=40 heads=2 sectors=8
219 Open Flags
221 Moreover, the following flags are available:
222 sync All i/o operations are done synchronously
224 nodelay
226 The device or file is opened with the O_NDELAY flag. This is
227 needed on some non-Linux architectures.
228 exclusive
230 The device or file is opened with the O_EXCL flag. On Linux,
231 this ensures exclusive access to the floppy drive. On most other
232 architectures, and for plain files it has no effect at all.
233 General Purpose Drive Variables
235 The following general purpose drive variables are available. Depending
236 to their type, these variables can be set to a string (file, precmd) or
237 an integer (all others)
238 file The name of the file or device holding the disk image. This is
240 mandatory. The file name should be enclosed in quotes.
241 partition
243 Tells mtools to treat the drive as a partitioned device, and to
244 use the given partition. Only primary partitions are accessible
245 using this method, and they are numbered from 1 to 4. For logi‐
246 cal partitions, use the more general offset variable. The parti‐
247 tion variable is intended for removable media such as Syquests,
248 ZIP drives, and magneto-optical disks. Although traditional DOS
249 sees Syquests and magneto-optical disks as `giant floppy disks'
250 which are unpartitioned, OS/2 and Windows NT treat them like
251 hard disks, i.e. partioned devices. The partition flag is also
252 useful DOSEMU hdimages. It is not recommended for hard disks for
253 which direct access to partitions is available through mounting.
254 offset
256 Describes where in the file the MS-DOS filesystem starts. This
257 is useful for logical partitions in DOSEMU hdimages, and for
258 ATARI ram disks. By default, this is zero, meaning that the
259 filesystem starts right at the beginning of the device or file.
260 fat_bits
262 The number of FAT bits. This may be 12 or 16. This is very
263 rarely needed, as it can almost always be deduced from informa‐
264 tion in the boot sector. On the contrary, describing the number
265 of fat bits may actually be harmful if you get it wrong. You
266 should only use it if mtools gets the autodetected number of fat
267 bits wrong, or if you want to mformat a disk with a weird number
268 of fat bits.
269 precmd
271 On some variants of Solaris, it is necessary to call 'volcheck
273 -v' before opening a floppy device, in order for the system to
274 notice that there is indeed a disk in the drive.
275 precmd="volcheck -v" in the drive clause establishes the desired
276 behavior.
277 blocksize
279 This parameter represents a default block size to be always used
281 on this device. All I/O is done with multiples of this block
282 size, independantly of the sector size registered in the
283 filesystem's boot sector. This is useful for character devices
284 whose sector size is not 512, such as for example CD Rom drives
285 on Solaris.
286 Only the file variable is mandatory. The other parameters may be left
288 out. In that case a default value or an autodetected value is used.
289 General Purpose Drive Flags
291 A flag can either be set to 1 (enabled) or 0 (disabled). If the value
292 is ommitted, it is enabled. For example, scsi is equivalent to scsi=1
293 nolock
295 Instruct mtools to not use locking on this drive. This is
296 needed on systems with buggy locking semantics. However,
297 enabling this makes operation less safe in cases where several
298 users may access the same drive at the same time.
299 scsi When set to 1, this option tells mtools to use raw SCSI I/O
301 instead of the standard read/write calls to access the device.
302 Currently, this is supported on HP/UX, Solaris and SunOs. This
303 is needed because on some architectures, such as SunOs or
304 Solaris, PC media can't be accessed using the read and write
305 syscalls, because the OS expects them to contain a Sun specific
306 "disk label".
307 As raw Scsi access always uses the whole device, you need to
309 specify the "partition" flag in addition
310 On some architectures, such as Solaris, mtools needs root privi‐
312 leges to be able to use the scsi option. Thus mtools should be
313 installed set uid root on Solaris if you want to access Zip/Jaz
314 drives. Thus, if the scsi flag is given, privileged is automat‐
315 ically implied, unless explicitly disabled by privileged=0
316 Mtools uses its root privileges to open the device, and to issue
318 the actual SCSI I/O calls. Moreover, root privileges are only
319 used for drives described in a system-wide configuration file
320 such as `/etc/mtools.conf', and not for those described in
321 `~/.mtoolsrc' or `$MTOOLSRC'.
322 privileged
324 When set to 1, this instructs mtools to use its set-uid and set-
325 gid privileges for opening the given drive. This option is only
326 valid for drives described in the system-wide configuration
327 files (such as `/etc/mtools.conf', not `~/.mtoolsrc' or `$MTOOL‐
328 SRC'). Obviously, this option is also a no op if mtools is not
329 installed setuid or setgid. This option is implied by 'scsi=1',
330 but again only for drives defined in system-wide configuration
331 files. Privileged may also be set explicitely to 0, in order to
332 tell mtools not to use its privileges for a given drive even if
333 scsi=1 is set.
334 Mtools only needs to be installed setuid if you use the privi‐
336 leged or scsi drive variables. If you do not use these options,
337 mtools works perfectly well even when not installed setuid root.
338 vold
340 Instructs mtools to interpret the device name as a vold identi‐
342 fier rather than as a filename. The vold identifier is trans‐
343 lated into a real filename using the media_findname() and
344 media_oldaliases() functions of the volmgt library. This flag
345 is only available if you configured mtools with the --enable-
346 new-vold option before compilation.
347 swap
349 Consider the media as a word-swapped Atari disk.
351 use_xdf
353 If this is set to a non-zero value, mtools also tries to access
354 this disk as an XDF disk. XDF is a high capacity format used by
355 OS/2. This is off by default. See section XDF, for more details.
356 mformat_only
358 Tells mtools to use the geometry for this drive only for mfor‐
359 matting and not for filtering.
360 filter
362 Tells mtools to use the geometry for this drive both for mfor‐
363 matting and filtering.
364 remote
366 Tells mtools to connect to floppyd (see section floppyd).
367 Supplying multiple descriptions for a drive
369 It is possible to supply multiple descriptions for a drive. In that
370 case, the descriptions are tried in order until one is found that fits.
371 Descriptions may fail for several reasons:
372 1. because the geometry is not appropriate,
374 2. because there is no disk in the drive,
376 3. or because of other problems.
378 Multiple definitions are useful when using physical devices which are
380 only able to support one single disk geometry. Example:
381 drive a: file="/dev/fd0H1440" 1.44m
383 drive a: file="/dev/fd0H720" 720k
384 This instructs mtools to use /dev/fd0H1440 for 1.44m (high density)
388 disks and /dev/fd0H720 for 720k (double density) disks. On Linux, this
389 feature is not really needed, as the /dev/fd0 device is able to handle
390 any geometry.
391 You may also use multiple drive descriptions to access both of your
393 physical drives through one drive letter:
394 drive z: file="/dev/fd0"
396 drive z: file="/dev/fd1"
397 With this description, mdir z: accesses your first physical drive if it
401 contains a disk. If the first drive doesn't contain a disk, mtools
402 checks the second drive.
403 When using multiple configuration files, drive descriptions in the
405 files parsed last override descriptions for the same drive in earlier
406 files. In order to avoid this, use the drive+ or +drive keywords
407 instead of drive. The first adds a description to the end of the list
408 (i.e. it will be tried last), and the first adds it to the start of the
409 list.
410 Character set translation tables
412 If you live in the USA, in Western Europe or in Australia, you may skip
413 this section.
414 Why character set translation tables are needed
416 DOS uses a different character code mapping than Unix. 7-bit characters
417 still have the same meaning, only characters with the eight bit set are
418 affected. To make matters worse, there are several translation tables
419 available depending on the country where you are. The appearance of the
420 characters is defined using code pages. These code pages aren't the
421 same for all countries. For instance, some code pages don't contain
422 upper case accented characters. On the other hand, some code pages con‐
423 tain characters which don't exist in Unix, such as certain line-drawing
424 characters or accented consonants used by some Eastern European coun‐
425 tries. This affects two things, relating to filenames:
426 upper case characters
428 In short names, only upper case characters are allowed. This
429 also holds for accented characters. For instance, in a code page
430 which doesn't contain accented uppercase characters, the
431 accented lowercase characters get transformed into their unac‐
432 cented counterparts.
433 long file names
435 Micro$oft has finally come to their senses and uses a more stan‐
436 dard mapping for the long file names. They use Unicode, which is
437 basically a 32 bit version of ASCII. Its first 256 characters
438 are identical to Unix ASCII. Thus, the code page also affects
439 the correspondence between the codes used in long names and
440 those used in short names
441 Mtools considers the filenames entered on the command line as having
443 the Unix mapping, and translates the characters to get short names. By
444 default, code page 850 is used with the Swiss uppercase/lowercase map‐
445 ping. I chose this code page, because its set of existing characters
446 most closely matches Unix's. Moreover, this code page covers most char‐
447 acters in use in the USA, Australia and Western Europe. However, it is
448 still possible to chose a different mapping. There are two methods: the
449 country variable and explicit tables.
450 Configuration using Country
452 The COUNTRY variable is recommended for people which also have access
453 to MS-DOS system files and documentation. If you don't have access to
454 these, I'd suggest you'd rather use explicit tables instead.
455 Syntax:
457 COUNTRY="country[,[codepage], country-file]"
459 This tells mtools to use a Unix-to-DOS translation table which matches
461 codepage and an lowercase-to-uppercase table for country and to use the
462 country-file file to get the lowercase-to-uppercase table. The country
463 code is most often the telephone prefix of the country. Refer to the
464 DOS help page on "country" for more details. The codepage and the coun‐
465 try-file parameters are optional. Please don't type in the square
466 brackets, they are only there to say which parameters are optional. The
467 country-file file is supplied with MS-DOS, and is usually called `COUN‐
468 TRY.SYS', and stored in the `C:\DOS' directory. In most cases you don't
469 need it, as the most common translation tables are compiled into
470 mtools. So, don't worry if you run a Unix-only box which lacks this
471 file.
472 If codepage is not given, a per country default code page is used. If
474 the country-file parameter isn't given, compiled-in defaults are used
475 for the lowercase-to-uppercase table. This is useful for other Unices
476 than Linux, which may have no `COUNTRY.SYS' file available online.
477 The Unix-to-DOS are not contained in the `COUNTRY.SYS' file, and thus
479 mtools always uses compiled-in defaults for those. Thus, only a limited
480 amount of code pages are supported. If your preferred code page is
481 missing, or if you know the name of the Windows 95 file which contains
482 this mapping, could you please drop me a line at alain@linux.lu.
483 The COUNTRY variable can also be set using the environment.
485 Configuration using explicit translation tables
487 Translation tables may be described in line in the configuration file.
488 Two tables are needed: first the DOS-to-Unix table, and then the Lower‐
489 case-to-Uppercase table. A DOS-to-Unix table starts with the tounix
490 keyword, followed by a colon, and 128 hexadecimal numbers. A lower-to-
491 upper table starts with the fucase keyword, followed by a colon, and
492 128 hexadecimal numbers.
493 The tables only show the translations for characters whose codes is
495 greater than 128, because translation for lower codes is trivial.
496 Example:
498 tounix:
500 0xc7 0xfc 0xe9 0xe2 0xe4 0xe0 0xe5 0xe7
501 0xea 0xeb 0xe8 0xef 0xee 0xec 0xc4 0xc5
502 0xc9 0xe6 0xc6 0xf4 0xf6 0xf2 0xfb 0xf9
503 0xff 0xd6 0xdc 0xf8 0xa3 0xd8 0xd7 0x5f
504 0xe1 0xed 0xf3 0xfa 0xf1 0xd1 0xaa 0xba
505 0xbf 0xae 0xac 0xbd 0xbc 0xa1 0xab 0xbb
506 0x5f 0x5f 0x5f 0x5f 0x5f 0xc1 0xc2 0xc0
507 0xa9 0x5f 0x5f 0x5f 0x5f 0xa2 0xa5 0xac
508 0x5f 0x5f 0x5f 0x5f 0x5f 0x5f 0xe3 0xc3
509 0x5f 0x5f 0x5f 0x5f 0x5f 0x5f 0x5f 0xa4
510 0xf0 0xd0 0xc9 0xcb 0xc8 0x69 0xcd 0xce
511 0xcf 0x5f 0x5f 0x5f 0x5f 0x7c 0x49 0x5f
512 0xd3 0xdf 0xd4 0xd2 0xf5 0xd5 0xb5 0xfe
513 0xde 0xda 0xd9 0xfd 0xdd 0xde 0xaf 0xb4
514 0xad 0xb1 0x5f 0xbe 0xb6 0xa7 0xf7 0xb8
515 0xb0 0xa8 0xb7 0xb9 0xb3 0xb2 0x5f 0x5f
516 fucase:
518 0x80 0x9a 0x90 0xb6 0x8e 0xb7 0x8f 0x80
519 0xd2 0xd3 0xd4 0xd8 0xd7 0xde 0x8e 0x8f
520 0x90 0x92 0x92 0xe2 0x99 0xe3 0xea 0xeb
521 0x59 0x99 0x9a 0x9d 0x9c 0x9d 0x9e 0x9f
522 0xb5 0xd6 0xe0 0xe9 0xa5 0xa5 0xa6 0xa7
523 0xa8 0xa9 0xaa 0xab 0xac 0xad 0xae 0xaf
524 0xb0 0xb1 0xb2 0xb3 0xb4 0xb5 0xb6 0xb7
525 0xb8 0xb9 0xba 0xbb 0xbc 0xbd 0xbe 0xbf
526 0xc0 0xc1 0xc2 0xc3 0xc4 0xc5 0xc7 0xc7
527 0xc8 0xc9 0xca 0xcb 0xcc 0xcd 0xce 0xcf
528 0xd1 0xd1 0xd2 0xd3 0xd4 0x49 0xd6 0xd7
529 0xd8 0xd9 0xda 0xdb 0xdc 0xdd 0xde 0xdf
530 0xe0 0xe1 0xe2 0xe3 0xe5 0xe5 0xe6 0xe8
531 0xe8 0xe9 0xea 0xeb 0xed 0xed 0xee 0xef
532 0xf0 0xf1 0xf2 0xf3 0xf4 0xf5 0xf6 0xf7
533 0xf8 0xf9 0xfa 0xfb 0xfc 0xfd 0xfe 0xff
534 The first table maps DOS character codes to Unix character codes. For
538 example, the DOS character number 129. This is a u with to dots on top
539 of it. To translate it into Unix, we look at the character number 1 in
540 the first table (1 = 129 - 128). This is 0xfc. (Beware, numbering
541 starts at 0). The second table maps lower case DOS characters to upper
542 case DOS characters. The same lower case u with dots maps to character
543 0x9a, which is an uppercase U with dots in DOS.
544 Unicode characters greater than 256
546 If an existing MS-DOS name contains Unicode character greater than 256,
547 these are translated to underscores or to characters which are close in
548 visual appearance. For example, accented consonants are translated into
549 their unaccented counterparts. This translation is used for mdir and
550 for the Unix filenames generated by mcopy. Linux does support Unicode
551 too, but unfortunately too few applications support it yet to bother
552 with it in mtools. Most importantly, xterm can't display Unicode yet.
553 If there is sufficient demand, I might include support for Unicode in
554 the Unix filenames as well.
555 Caution: When deleting files with mtools, the underscore matches all
557 characters which can't be represented in Unix. Be careful with mdel!
558 Location of configuration files and parsing order
560 The configuration files are parsed in the following order:
561 1. compiled-in defaults
563 2. `/etc/mtools.conf'
565 3. `/etc/mtools' This is for backwards compatibility only, and is
567 only parsed if `mtools.conf' doesn't exist.
568 4. `~/.mtoolsrc'.
570 5. `$MTOOLSRC' (file pointed by the MTOOLSRC environmental vari‐
572 able)
573 Options described in the later files override those described in the
575 earlier files. Drives defined in earlier files persist if they are not
576 overridden in the later files. For instance, drives A and B may be
577 defined in `/etc/mtools.conf' and drives C and D may be defined in
578 `~/.mtoolsrc' However, if `~/.mtoolsrc' also defines drive A, this new
579 description would override the description of drive A in
580 `/etc/mtools.conf' instead of adding to it. If you want to add a new
581 description to a drive already described in an earlier file, you need
582 to use either the +drive or drive+ keyword.
583 Backwards compatibility with old configuration file syntax
585 The syntax described herein is new for version mtools-3.0. The old
586 line-oriented syntax is still supported. Each line beginning with a
587 single letter is considered to be a drive description using the old
588 syntax. Old style and new style drive sections may be mixed within the
589 same configuration file, in order to make upgrading easier. Support for
590 the old syntax will be phased out eventually, and in order to discour‐
591 age its use, I purposefully omit its description here.
592
594 mtools
595MTOOLS 28Feb05 mtools.1(3)