mpartition - partition an MSDOS hard disk


Note of warning

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


Description

       The mpartition command is used to create  MS-DOS  filesys­
       tems  as  partitions.  This is intended to be used on non-
       Linux systems, i.e. systems where fdisk and easy access to
       Scsi  devices  are not available.  This command only works
       on drives whose partition variable is set.

       mpartition -p drive mpartition -r drive mpartition -I  [-B
       bootSector]  drive mpartition -a drive mpartition -d drive
       mpartition -c [-s sectors] [-h heads] [-t  cylinders]  [-v
       [-T type] [-b begin] [-l length] [-f]

       Mpartition supports the following operations:

       p      Prints a command line to recreate the partition for
              the drive.  Nothing is printed if the partition for
              the  drive  is not defined, or an inconsistency has
              been detected.  If verbose (-v) is also set, prints
              the current partition table.

       r      Removes the partition described by drive.

       I      Initializes  the  partition  table, and removes all
              partitions.

       c      Creates the partition described by drive.

       a      "Activates" the partition, i.e. makes it  bootable.
              Only one partition can be bootable at a time.

       d      "Desactivates"   the   partition,   i.e.  makes  it
              unbootable.

       If  no  operation  is  given,  the  current  settings  are
       printed.

       For  partition creations, the following options are avail­
       able:

       s sectors
              The number of sectors per track  of  the  partition

              the whole drive).

       h heads
              The number of heads of the partition (which is also
              the  number  of  heads  for  the  whole drive).  By
              default, the geometry information (number  of  sec­
              tors  and  heads)  is figured out from neighbouring
              partition table entries, or guessed from the  size.

       t cylinders
              The  number  of cylinders of the partition (not the
              number of cylinders of the whole drive.

       b begin
              The starting offset of the partition, expressed  in
              sectors. If begin is not given, mpartition lets the
              partition begin at the start of the disk (partition
              number 1), or immediately after the end of the pre­
              vious partition.

       l length
              The size (length) of the  partition,  expressed  in
              sectors.   If  end is not given, mpartition figures
              out the size from the number of sectors, heads  and
              cylinders.  If these are not given either, it gives
              the partition the biggest possible size,  consider­
              ing disk size and start of the next partition.

       The  following option is available for all operation which
       modify the partition table:

       f      Usually, before writing back  any  changes  to  the
              partition,  mpartition performs certain consistenct
              checks, such as checking for  overlaps  and  proper
              alignment  of  the  partitions.   If  any  of these
              checks fails, the partition table is  not  changes.
              The -f allows you to override these safeguards.

       The following options are available for all operations:

       v      Together  with  -p prints the partition table as it
              is now (no change operation), or as it is after  it
              is modified.

       vv     If  the  verbosity  flag is given twice, mpartition
              will print out a hexdump  of  the  partition  table
              when  reading it from and writing it to the device.

       The following option is available for partition table ini­
       tialization:

       B bootSector
              Reads  the  template  master  boot record from file



See Also

       Mtools' texinfo doc


Viewing the texi doc

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