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  representation 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
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