mpartition(1)						      General Commands Manual						     mpartition(1)

Name
       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 file systems 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      "Deactivates" the partition, i.e. makes it unbootable.

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

       For partition creations, the following options are available:

       s sectors
	      The number of sectors per track of the partition (which is also the number of sectors per track for 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 sectors and heads) is figured out from neighboring 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 previous 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, considering 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 consistency  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 initialization:

       B bootSector
	      Reads the template master boot record from file bootSector.

See Also
       Mtools' texinfo doc

Viewing the texi doc
       This  manpage  has  been automatically generated from mtools's texinfo documentation. However, this process is only approximative, and some
       items, such as crossreferences, footnotes and indices are lost in this translation process.  Indeed, these items have no appropriate repre-
       sentation  in  the manpage format.  Moreover, not all information has been translated into the manpage version.	Thus I strongly advise you
       to use the original texinfo doc.  See the end of this manpage for instructions how to view the texinfo doc.

       *      To generate a printable copy from the texinfo doc, run the following commands:

		     ./configure; make dvi; dvips mtools.dvi

       *      To generate a html copy,	run:

		     ./configure; make html

       A premade html can be found at `http://www.gnu.org/software/mtools/manual/mtools.html'

       *      To generate an info copy (browsable using emacs' info mode), run:

		     ./configure; make info

       The texinfo doc looks most pretty when printed or as html.  Indeed, in the info version certain examples are difficult to read due  to  the
       quoting conventions used in info.

mtools-4.0.13							      28Feb10							     mpartition(1)