mtools(5) MTOOLS mtools(5)
Name
mtools.conf - mtools configuration files
Description
This manual page 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 fol-
lowing items:
* Global configuration flags and variables
* Per drive flags and variables
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/default/mtools.conf' 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 fol-
low 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 configu-
ration 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 long names, 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
Location information
For each drive, you need to describe where its data is physically stored (image file, physical device, partition, offset).
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 Syquest disks, ZIP drives, and magneto-optical disks. Although traditional DOS sees
Syquest disks and magneto-optical disks as `giant floppy disks' which are unpartitioned, OS/2 and Windows NT treat them like hard
disks, i.e. partitioned 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 file system starts. This is useful for logical partitions in DOSEMU hdimages, and for ATARI
ram disks. By default, this is zero, meaning that the file system starts right at the beginning of the device or file.
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 infor-
mation on the command line. See section mformat, for details.
filtering
On some Unixes 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 (`/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 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:
drive a:
file="/dev/fd0H1440"
fat_bits=12
cylinders=80 heads=2 sectors=18
mformat_only
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 archi-
tectures, 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 (precmd) or
an integer (all others)
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 auto-detected number of fat bits wrong, or if you want to mformat a disk with a weird number of fat bits.
codepage
Describes the DOS code page used for short filenames. This is a number between 1 and 999. By default, code page 850 is used. The
reason for this is because this code page contains most of the characters that are also available in ISO-Latin-1. You may also spec-
ify a global code page for all drives by using the global default_codepage parameter (outside of any drive description). This param-
eters exists starting at version 4.0.0
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,
independently of the sector size registered in the file system'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 auto-detected value is used.
General Purpose Drive Flags
A flag can either be set to 1 (enabled) or 0 (disabled). If the value is omitted, 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. Cur-
rently, 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 system calls, 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 setuid 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 `/etc/mtools.conf', and not for those described in `~/.mtoolsrc' or
`$MTOOLSRC'.
privileged
When set to 1, this instructs mtools to use its setuid and setgid privileges for opening the given drive. This option is only valid
for drives described in the system-wide configuration files (such as `/etc/mtools.conf', not `~/.mtoolsrc' or `$MTOOLSRC'). Obvi-
ously, 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 explicitly 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:
drive a: file="/dev/fd0H1440" 1.44m
drive a: file="/dev/fd0H720" 720k
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.
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. `~/.mtoolsrc'.
4. `$MTOOLSRC' (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 `/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 sin-
gle 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 dis-
courage its use, I purposefully omit its description here.
See also
mtools
MTOOLS
28Feb10 mtools(5)