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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