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Name

       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

   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
       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

     Location information
       For each drive, you need to  describe  where  its  data  is  physically
       stored (imag 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
              Syquests,   ZIP  drives,  and  magneto-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.

     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  (‘/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
              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
              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.

       codepage
              Describes  the  DOS codepage used for short filenames. This is a
              number between 1 and 999. By default, codepage 850 is used.  The
              reason  for  this  is because this codepage contains most of the
              characters that are also available in ISO-Latin-1. You may  also
              specify  a  global  codepage  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,  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 ‘/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 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.     ‘/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   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
       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