Name


mtools.conf - mtools configuration files

Description


This manpage describes the configuration files for mtools. They are called

oo/usr/local/etc/mtools.confI
and
oo~/.mtoolsrcI
. If the environmental variable
MTOOLSRC
is set, its contents is used as the filename for a third configuration file. These configuration files describe the following items:
* Global configuration flags and variables
* Per drive flags and variables
 

Location_SPACE_of_SPACE_the_SPACE_configuration_SPACE_files

oo/usr/local/etc/mtools.confI
is the system-wide configuration file, and
oo~/.mtoolsrcI
is the user’s private configuration file.

On some systems, the system-wide configuration file is called

oo/etc/default/mtools.confI
instead.

_SPACE__SPACE_General_SPACE_configuration_SPACE_file_SPACE_syntax

The configuration files is made up of sections. Each section starts with a keyword identifying the section followed 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 characters 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_SPACE_values

For most platforms, mtools contains reasonable compiled-in defaults for physical floppy drives. Thus, you usually don’t need to bother with the configuration file, if all you want to do with mtools is to access your floppy drives. On the other hand, the configuration file is needed if you also want to use mtools to access your hard disk partitions and dosemu image files.

Global_SPACE_variables

Global flags 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 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.
MTOOLS_NO_VFAT
 If this is set to 1, mtools won’t generate VFAT entries for filenames which are mixed-case, but otherwise legal dos filenames. This is useful when working with DOS versions which can’t grok VFAT longnames, such as FreeDos.
MTOOLS_DOTTED_DIR
 In a wide directory, prints the short name with a dot instead of spaces separating the basename and the extension.
MTOOLS_NAME_NUMERIC_TAIL
 If this is set to one (default), generate numeric tails for all long names (~1). If set to zero, only generate numeric tails if otherwise a clash would have happened.
MTOOLS_TWENTY_FOUR_HOUR_CLOCK
 If 1, uses the European notation for times (twenty four hour clock), else uses the UK/US notation (am/pm)
Example: Inserting the following line into your configuration 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

Global string variables may be set to any value:
MTOOLS_DATE_STRING
 The format used for printing dates of files. By default, is dd-mm-yyyy.

Per_SPACE_drive_SPACE_flags_SPACE_and_SPACE_variables

_SPACE__SPACE_General_SPACE_information

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.

This is a sample drive description:

drive a: file="/dev/fd0" use_xdf=1

_SPACE__SPACE_Location_SPACE_information

For each drive, you need to describe where its data is physically stored (imag file, physical device, partition, offset).
file
 The name of the file or device holding the disk image. This is mandatory. The file name should be enclosed in quotes.
partition
 Tells mtools to treat the drive as a partitioned device, and to use the given partition. Only primary partitions are accessible using this method, and they are numbered from 1 to 4. For logical partitions, use the more general
offset
variable. The
partition
variable is intended for removable media such as Syquests, ZIP drives, and magneto-optical disks. Although traditional DOS sees Syquests and magneto-optical disks as
oogiant floppy disksI
which are unpartitioned, OS/2 and Windows NT treat them like hard disks, i.e. partioned devices. The
partition
flag is also useful DOSEMU hdimages. It is not recommended for hard disks for which direct access to partitions is available through mounting.
offset
 Describes where in the file the MS-DOS 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 starts right at the beginning of the device or file.

_SPACE__SPACE_Disk_SPACE_Geometry_SPACE_Configuration

Geometry information describes the physical characteristics about the disk. Its has three purposes:
formatting
 The geometry information is written into the boot sector of the newly made disk. However, you may also describe the geometry information on the command line. See section mformat, for details.
filtering
 On some Unices there are device nodes which only support one physical geometry. For instance, you might need a different node to access a disk as high density or as low density. The geometry is compared 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 section multiple descriptions, for more details on supplying several descriptions for one drive letter.
If no geometry information is supplied in the configuration file, all disks are accepted. On Linux (and on Sparc) there exist device nodes with configurable geometry (
oo/dev/fd0I
,
oo/dev/fd1I
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).
If you do not need filtering, but want still a default geometry for mformatting, you may switch off filtering using the
mformat_only
flag.
If you want filtering, you should supply the
filter
flag. If you supply a geometry, you must supply one of both flags.
initial geometry
 On devices that support it (usually floppy devices), the geometry information is also used to set the initial geometry. This initial geometry is applied while reading the boot sector, which contains the real geometry. If no geometry information is supplied in the configuration file, or if the
mformat_only
flag is supplied, no initial configuration is done.
On Linux, initial geometry is not really needed, as the configurable devices are able to auto-detect the disk type accurately enough (for most common formats) to read the boot sector.
Wrong geometry information may lead to very bizarre errors. That’s why I strongly recommend that you add the
mformat_only
flag to your drive description, unless you really need filtering or initial geometry.
The following geometry related variables are available:
cylinders
 
tracks
 The number of cylinders. (
cylinders
is the preferred form,
tracks
is considered obsolete)
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 cylinders=80 heads=2 sectors=18 mformat_only

The following shorthand geometry descriptions are available:
1.44m
 high density 3 1/2 disk. Equivalent to:
fat_bits=12 cylinders=80 heads=2 sectors=18
1.2m
 high density 5 1/4 disk. Equivalent to:
fat_bits=12 cylinders=80 heads=2 sectors=15
720k
 double density 3 1/2 disk. Equivalent to:
fat_bits=12 cylinders=80 heads=2 sectors=9
360k
 double density 5 1/4 disk. Equivalent to:
fat_bits=12 cylinders=40 heads=2 sectors=9
The shorthand format descriptions may be amended. For example,

360k sectors=8
describes a 320k disk and is equivalent to:
fat_bits=12 cylinders=40 heads=2 sectors=8

_SPACE__SPACE_Open_SPACE_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 architectures.
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.

_SPACE__SPACE_General_SPACE_Purpose_SPACE_Drive_SPACE_Variables

The following general purpose drive variables are available. Depending to their type, these variables can be set to a string (precmd) or an integer (all others)
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.
codepage
 Describes the DOS codepage used for short filenames. This is a number between 1 and 999. By default, codepage 850 is used. The reason for this is because this codepage contains most of the characters that are also available in ISO-Latin-1. You may also specify a global codepage for all drives by using the global
default_codepage
parameter (outside of any drive description). This parameters exists starting at version 4.0.0
precmd
 On some variants of Solaris, it is necessary to call ’volcheck -v’ before opening a floppy device, in order for the system to notice that there is indeed a disk in the drive.
precmd="volcheck -v"
in the drive clause establishes the desired behavior.
blocksize
 This parameter represents a default block size to be always used on this device. All I/O is done with multiples of this block size, independantly of the sector size registered in the filesystem’s boot sector. This is useful for character devices whose sector size is not 512, such as for example CD Rom drives on Solaris.
Only the

file
variable is mandatory. The other parameters may be left out. In that case a default value or an autodetected value is used.

_SPACE__SPACE_General_SPACE_Purpose_SPACE_Drive_SPACE_Flags

A flag can either be set to 1 (enabled) or 0 (disabled). If the value is ommitted, it is enabled. For example,

scsi
is equivalent to
scsi=1
nolock
 Instruct mtools to not use locking on this drive. This is needed on systems with buggy locking semantics. However, enabling this makes operation less safe in cases where several users may access the same drive at the same time.
scsi
 When set to 1, this option tells mtools to use raw SCSI I/O instead of the standard read/write calls to access the device. Currently, this is supported on HP/UX, Solaris and SunOs. This is needed because on some architectures, such as SunOs or Solaris, PC media can’t be accessed using the
read
and
write
syscalls, because the OS expects them to contain a Sun specific "disk label".
As raw Scsi access always uses the whole device, you need to specify the "partition" flag in addition
On some architectures, such as Solaris, mtools needs root privileges to be able to use the
scsi
option. Thus mtools should be installed set uid root on Solaris if you want to access Zip/Jaz drives. Thus, if the
scsi
flag is given,
privileged
is automatically implied, unless explicitly disabled by
privileged=0
Mtools uses its root privileges to open the device, and to issue the actual SCSI I/O calls. Moreover, root privileges are only used for drives described in a system-wide configuration file such as
oo/usr/local/etc/mtools.confI
, and not for those described in
oo~/.mtoolsrcI
or
oo$MTOOLSRCI
.
privileged
 When set to 1, this instructs mtools to use its set-uid and set-gid privileges for opening the given drive. This option is only valid for drives described in the system-wide configuration files (such as
oo/usr/local/etc/mtools.confI
, not
oo~/.mtoolsrcI
or
oo$MTOOLSRCI
). Obviously, this option is also a no op if mtools is not installed setuid or setgid. This option is implied by ’scsi=1’, but again only for drives defined in system-wide configuration files. Privileged may also be set explicitely to 0, in order to tell mtools not to use its privileges for a given drive even if
scsi=1
is set.
Mtools only needs to be installed setuid if you use the
privileged
or
scsi
drive variables. If you do not use these options, mtools works perfectly well even when not installed setuid root.
vold
 
Instructs mtools to interpret the device name as a vold identifier rather than as a filename. The vold identifier is translated into a real filename using the
media_findname()
and
media_oldaliases()
functions of the
volmgt
library. This flag is only available if you configured mtools with the
--enable-new-vold
option before compilation.
swap
 
Consider the media as a word-swapped Atari disk.
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. See section XDF, for more details.
mformat_only
 Tells mtools to use the geometry for this drive only for mformatting and not for filtering.
filter
 Tells mtools to use the geometry for this drive both for mformatting and filtering.
remote
 Tells mtools to connect to floppyd (see section floppyd).

_SPACE__SPACE_Supplying_SPACE_multiple_SPACE_descriptions_SPACE_for_SPACE_a_SPACE_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:

drive z: file="/dev/fd0" drive z: file="/dev/fd1"

With this description,

mdir z:
accesses your first physical 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 descriptions 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 (i.e. it will be tried last), and the first adds it to the start of the list.

Location_SPACE_of_SPACE_configuration_SPACE_files_SPACE_and_SPACE_parsing_SPACE_order

The configuration files are parsed in the following order:
1. compiled-in defaults
2.
oo/usr/local/etc/mtools.confI
3.
oo/etc/mtoolsI
This is for backwards compatibility only, and is only parsed if
oomtools.confI
doesn’t exist.
4.
oo~/.mtoolsrcI
.
5.
oo$MTOOLSRCI
(file pointed by the
MTOOLSRC
environmental variable)
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

oo/usr/local/etc/mtools.confI
and drives C and D may be defined in
oo~/.mtoolsrcI
However, if
oo~/.mtoolsrcI
also defines drive A, this new description would override the description of drive A in
oo/usr/local/etc/mtools.confI
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.

Backwards_SPACE_compatibility_SPACE_with_SPACE_old_SPACE_configuration_SPACE_file_SPACE_syntax

The syntax described herein is new for version

mtools-3.0
. The old line-oriented syntax is still supported. Each line beginning with a single letter is considered 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 purposefully omit its description here.

See also


mtools

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