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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 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 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 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 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 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 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').  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 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 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