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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 vari‐
       able  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

   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 fol‐
       lowing 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	other‐
	      wise.

       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 file‐
	      names 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 file‐
	      names.  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	 logi‐
	      cal partitions, use the more general offset variable. The parti‐
	      tion variable is intended for removable media  such  as  Syquest
	      disks,  ZIP  drives,  and magneto-optical disks. Although tradi‐
	      tional 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 recom‐
	      mended 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
	      information  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 pur‐
	      poses, 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	 mfor‐
	      mat_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	geome‐
	      try  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 sup‐
	      plied 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 config‐
	      urable 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	cylin‐
	      ders=80 heads=2 sectors=9

       360k   double  density  5  1/4  disk. Equivalent to: fat_bits=12 cylin‐
	      ders=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  (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  informa‐
	      tion  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
	      specify  a  global  code page for all drives by using the global
	      default_codepage parameter (outside of any  drive	 description).
	      This parameters 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.
	      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
	      system calls, because the OS expects them to contain a Sun  spe‐
	      cific "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 privi‐
	      leges  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 automat‐
	      ically 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  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 `$MTOOL‐
	      SRC').  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 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 privi‐
	      leged 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 identi‐
	      fier rather than as a filename.  The vold identifier  is	trans‐
	      lated  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	 mfor‐
	      matting and not for filtering.

       filter
	      Tells  mtools  to use the geometry for this drive both for mfor‐
	      matting 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	 vari‐
	      able)

       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
       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  discour‐
       age its use, I purposefully omit its description here.

See also
       mtools

MTOOLS				    29Jun11			     mtools(5)
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