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 certain  examples
       are difficult to read due to the quoting conventions used in info.

mtools-4.0.18                                        09Jan13                                       mpartition(1)