This manpage describes the configuration files for mtools. They
are called Infinity/etc/mtools.confIntegral and Infinity~/.mtoolsrcIntegral. 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
Infinity/etc/mtools.confIntegral is the system-wide configuration file,
and Infinity~/.mtoolsrcIntegral is the user's private configuration file.
On some systems, the system-wide configuration file is called
Infinity/etc/defaults/mtools.confIntegral instead.
General configuration file 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 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 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 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 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 (Infinity/dev/fd0Integral, Infinity/dev/fd1Integral 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:
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
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 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.
General Purpose Drive Variables
The following general purpose drive variables are available. 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 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 Infinitygiant floppy disksIntegral 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.
General Purpose Drive 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
Infinity/etc/mtools.confIntegral, and not for those described in
Infinity~/.mtoolsrcIntegral or Infinity$MTOOLSRCIntegral.
privileged
When set to 1, this instructs mtools to use its set-uid and set-gid
privileges for opening the given drive. This option is only valid for
drives described in the system-wide configuration files (such as
Infinity/etc/mtools.confIntegral, not Infinity~/.mtoolsrcIntegral or
Infinity$MTOOLSRCIntegral). 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).
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:
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.
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 characters 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
characters. On the other hand, some code pages contain characters which
don't exist in Unix, such as certain line-drawing 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 lowercase
characters get transformed into their unaccented counterparts.
long file names
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 version of ASCII. Its first 256 characters are identical 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 InfinityCOUNTRY.SYSIntegral, and
stored in the InfinityC:\DOSIntegral 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, compiled-in
defaults are used for the lowercase-to-uppercase table. This is useful
for other Unices than Linux, which may have no InfinityCOUNTRY.SYSIntegral file
available online.
The Unix-to-DOS are not contained in the InfinityCOUNTRY.SYSIntegral file, and
thus mtools always uses compiled-in defaults for those. Thus, only a
limited amount of code pages are supported. 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 environment.
Configuration using explicit translation tables
Translation tables may be described in line in the configuration
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.
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 applications 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.
Infinity/etc/mtools.confIntegral
3.
Infinity/etc/mtoolsIntegral
This is for backwards compatibility only, and is only parsed if
Infinitymtools.confIntegral
doesn't exist.
4.
Infinity~/.mtoolsrcIntegral.
5.
Infinity$MTOOLSRCIntegral (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 Infinity/etc/mtools.confIntegral and drives C and D may be
defined in Infinity~/.mtoolsrcIntegral However, if Infinity~/.mtoolsrcIntegral also
defines drive A, this new description would override the description of
drive A in Infinity/etc/mtools.confIntegral 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.
