mtools.conf - mtools configuration files
Description
This manpage describes the configuration files for mtools.
They are called `/etc/mtools.conf' and `~/.mtoolsrc'. 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
* Character translation tables
Location of the configuration files
`/etc/mtools.conf' is the system-wide configuration file,
and `~/.mtoolsrc' is the user's private configuration
file.
On some systems, the system-wide configuration file is
called `/etc/defaults/mtools.conf' instead.
General configuration file syntax
The configuration files is made up of sections. Each sec
tion starts with a keyword identifying the section fol
lowed 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 char
acters 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 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 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 san
ity 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 configura
tion file instructs mtools to skip the sanity checks:
MTOOLS_SKIP_CHECK=1
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 drive flags and variables
General 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
Disk Geometry Configuration
Geometry information describes the physical characteris
tics 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 com
mand 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 let
ter.
If no geometry information is supplied in the con
figuration file, all disks are accepted. On Linux
figurable geometry (`/dev/fd0', `/dev/fd1' 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 con
tains the real geometry. If no geometry informa
tion is supplied in the configuration file, or if
the mformat_only flag is supplied, no initial con
figuration 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 pre
ferred 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
mformat_only
The following shorthand geometry descriptions are avail
able:
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
Open 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 architec
tures.
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.
General Purpose Drive Variables
The following general purpose drive variables are avail
able. Depending to their type, these variables can be set
to a string (file, precmd) or an integer (all others)
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
method, and they are numbered from 1 to 4. For log
ical partitions, use the more general offset vari
able. The partition variable is intended for remov
able media such as Syquests, ZIP drives, and mag
neto-optical disks. Although traditional DOS sees
Syquests and magneto-optical disks as `giant floppy
disks' 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.
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.
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.
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 seman
tics. 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 addi
tion
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, privi
leged 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
`/etc/mtools.conf', and not for those described in
`~/.mtoolsrc' or `$MTOOLSRC'.
privileged
When set to 1, this instructs mtools to use its
set-uid and set-gid privileges for opening the
given drive. This option is only valid for drives
described in the system-wide configuration files
(such as `/etc/mtools.conf', not `~/.mtoolsrc' or
`$MTOOLSRC'). 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 privi
leges for a given drive even if scsi=1 is set.
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.
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).
Supplying multiple descriptions for a 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
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 physi
cal 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 descrip
tions 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.
Character set translation tables
If you live in the USA, in Western Europe or in Australia,
you may skip this section.
Why character set translation tables are needed
DOS uses a different character code mapping than Unix.
7-bit characters still have the same meaning, only charac
ters with the eight bit set are affected. To make matters
worse, there are several translation tables available
depending on the country where you are. The appearance of
the characters is defined using code pages. These code
pages aren't the same for all countries. For instance,
some code pages don't contain upper case accented charac
ters. On the other hand, some code pages contain charac
ters which don't exist in Unix, such as certain line-draw
ing characters or accented consonants used by some Eastern
European countries. This affects two things, relating to
filenames:
upper case characters
In short names, only upper case characters are
allowed. This also holds for accented characters.
For instance, in a code page which doesn't contain
accented uppercase characters, the accented lower
case characters get transformed into their unac
cented counterparts.
Micro$oft has finally come to their senses and uses
a more standard mapping for the long file names.
They use Unicode, which is basically a 32 bit ver
sion of ASCII. Its first 256 characters are identi
cal to Unix ASCII. Thus, the code page also affects
the correspondence between the codes used in long
names and those used in short names
Mtools considers the filenames entered on the command line
as having the Unix mapping, and translates the characters
to get short names. By default, code page 850 is used
with the Swiss uppercase/lowercase mapping. I chose this
code page, because its set of existing characters most
closely matches Unix's. Moreover, this code page covers
most characters in use in the USA, Australia and Western
Europe. However, it is still possible to chose a different
mapping. There are two methods: the country variable and
explicit tables.
Configuration using Country
The COUNTRY variable is recommended for people which also
have access to MS-DOS system files and documentation. If
you don't have access to these, I'd suggest you'd rather
use explicit tables instead.
Syntax:
COUNTRY="country[,[codepage], country-file]"
This tells mtools to use a Unix-to-DOS translation table
which matches codepage and an lowercase-to-uppercase table
for country and to use the country-file file to get the
lowercase-to-uppercase table. The country code is most
often the telephone prefix of the country. Refer to the
DOS help page on "country" for more details. The codepage
and the country-file parameters are optional. Please don't
type in the square brackets, they are only there to say
which parameters are optional. The country-file file is
supplied with MS-DOS, and is usually called `COUNTRY.SYS',
and stored in the `C:\DOS' directory. In most cases you
don't need it, as the most common translation tables are
compiled into mtools. So, don't worry if you run a Unix-
only box which lacks this file.
If codepage is not given, a per country default code page
is used. If the country-file parameter isn't given, com
piled-in defaults are used for the lowercase-to-uppercase
table. This is useful for other Unices than Linux, which
may have no `COUNTRY.SYS' file available online.
The Unix-to-DOS are not contained in the `COUNTRY.SYS'
file, and thus mtools always uses compiled-in defaults for
ported. If your preferred code page is missing, or if you
know the name of the Windows 95 file which contains this
mapping, could you please drop me a line at
alain@linux.lu.
The COUNTRY variable can also be set using the environ
ment.
Configuration using explicit translation tables
Translation tables may be described in line in the config
uration file. Two tables are needed: first the DOS-to-Unix
table, and then the Lowercase-to-Uppercase table. A DOS-
to-Unix table starts with the tounix keyword, followed by
a colon, and 128 hexadecimal numbers. A lower-to-upper
table starts with the fucase keyword, followed by a colon,
and 128 hexadecimal numbers.
The tables only show the translations for characters whose
codes is greater than 128, because translation for lower
codes is trivial.
Example:
tounix:
0xc7 0xfc 0xe9 0xe2 0xe4 0xe0 0xe5 0xe7
0xea 0xeb 0xe8 0xef 0xee 0xec 0xc4 0xc5
0xc9 0xe6 0xc6 0xf4 0xf6 0xf2 0xfb 0xf9
0xff 0xd6 0xdc 0xf8 0xa3 0xd8 0xd7 0x5f
0xe1 0xed 0xf3 0xfa 0xf1 0xd1 0xaa 0xba
0xbf 0xae 0xac 0xbd 0xbc 0xa1 0xab 0xbb
0x5f 0x5f 0x5f 0x5f 0x5f 0xc1 0xc2 0xc0
0xa9 0x5f 0x5f 0x5f 0x5f 0xa2 0xa5 0xac
0x5f 0x5f 0x5f 0x5f 0x5f 0x5f 0xe3 0xc3
0x5f 0x5f 0x5f 0x5f 0x5f 0x5f 0x5f 0xa4
0xf0 0xd0 0xc9 0xcb 0xc8 0x69 0xcd 0xce
0xcf 0x5f 0x5f 0x5f 0x5f 0x7c 0x49 0x5f
0xd3 0xdf 0xd4 0xd2 0xf5 0xd5 0xb5 0xfe
0xde 0xda 0xd9 0xfd 0xdd 0xde 0xaf 0xb4
0xad 0xb1 0x5f 0xbe 0xb6 0xa7 0xf7 0xb8
0xb0 0xa8 0xb7 0xb9 0xb3 0xb2 0x5f 0x5f
fucase:
0x80 0x9a 0x90 0xb6 0x8e 0xb7 0x8f 0x80
0xd2 0xd3 0xd4 0xd8 0xd7 0xde 0x8e 0x8f
0x90 0x92 0x92 0xe2 0x99 0xe3 0xea 0xeb
0x59 0x99 0x9a 0x9d 0x9c 0x9d 0x9e 0x9f
0xb5 0xd6 0xe0 0xe9 0xa5 0xa5 0xa6 0xa7
0xa8 0xa9 0xaa 0xab 0xac 0xad 0xae 0xaf
0xb0 0xb1 0xb2 0xb3 0xb4 0xb5 0xb6 0xb7
0xb8 0xb9 0xba 0xbb 0xbc 0xbd 0xbe 0xbf
0xc0 0xc1 0xc2 0xc3 0xc4 0xc5 0xc7 0xc7
0xd1 0xd1 0xd2 0xd3 0xd4 0x49 0xd6 0xd7
0xd8 0xd9 0xda 0xdb 0xdc 0xdd 0xde 0xdf
0xe0 0xe1 0xe2 0xe3 0xe5 0xe5 0xe6 0xe8
0xe8 0xe9 0xea 0xeb 0xed 0xed 0xee 0xef
0xf0 0xf1 0xf2 0xf3 0xf4 0xf5 0xf6 0xf7
0xf8 0xf9 0xfa 0xfb 0xfc 0xfd 0xfe 0xff
The first table maps DOS character codes to Unix character
codes. For example, the DOS character number 129. This is
a u with to dots on top of it. To translate it into Unix,
we look at the character number 1 in the first table (1 =
129 - 128). This is 0xfc. (Beware, numbering starts at 0).
The second table maps lower case DOS characters to upper
case DOS characters. The same lower case u with dots maps
to character 0x9a, which is an uppercase U with dots in
DOS.
Unicode characters greater than 256
If an existing MS-DOS name contains Unicode character
greater than 256, these are translated to underscores or
to characters which are close in visual appearance. For
example, accented consonants are translated into their
unaccented counterparts. This translation is used for mdir
and for the Unix filenames generated by mcopy. Linux does
support Unicode too, but unfortunately too few applica
tions support it yet to bother with it in mtools. Most
importantly, xterm can't display Unicode yet. If there is
sufficient demand, I might include support for Unicode in
the Unix filenames as well.
Caution: When deleting files with mtools, the underscore
matches all characters which can't be represented in Unix.
Be careful with mdel!
Location of configuration files and parsing order
The configuration files are parsed in the following order:
1. compiled-in defaults
2. `/etc/mtools.conf'
3. `/etc/mtools' This is for backwards compatibility
only, and is only parsed if `mtools.conf' doesn't
exist.
4. `~/.mtoolsrc'.
5. `$MTOOLSRC' (file pointed by the MTOOLSRC environ
mental variable)
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
`/etc/mtools.conf' and drives C and D may be defined in
`~/.mtoolsrc' However, if `~/.mtoolsrc' also defines drive
A, this new description would override the description of
drive A in `/etc/mtools.conf' 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 compatibility with old configuration file 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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