mtools.conf

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 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  recog
          nized 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)

   MTOOLS_LOCK_TIMEOUT
          How long, in seconds, to wait for a locked device to become free.  Defaults to 30.

   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-opti
          cal 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 mfor‐
          mat, 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  den‐
          sity.  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  de
          scriptions 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  fil
   tering 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 ef
          fect 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, postcmd) 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  con
          tains 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 (out
          side of any drive description). This parameters exists starting at version 4.0.0

   data_map
          Remaps  data  from  image file. This is useful for image files which might need additional zero-filled sectors to be inserted. Such is the case for instance for IBM 3174 floppy
          images. These images represent floppy disks with fewer sectors on their first cylinder. These missing sectors are not stored in the image, but are still counted in the filesys
          tem layout. The data_map allows to fake these missing sectors for the upper layers of mtools. A data_map is a comma-separated sequence of source type and size. Source type  may
          be  zero  for zero-filled sectors created by map, skip for data in raw image to be ignored (skipped), and nothing for data to be used as is (copied) from the raw image. Datamap
          is automatically complemented by an implicit last element of data to be used as is from current offset to end of file. Each size is a number followed by a unit:  s  for  a  512
          byte sector, K for Kbytes, M for megabytes, G for gigabytes, and nothing for single bytes.

          Example:

          data_map=1s,zero31s,28s,skip1s  would  be  a  map  for  use  with  IBM 3174 floppy images. First sector (1s, boot sector) is used as is. Then follow 31 fake zero-filled sectors
          (zero31s), then the next 28 sectors from image (28s) are used as is (they contain FAT and root directory), then one sector from image is skipped (skip1s), and finally the  rest
          of image is used as is (implicit)

   precmd
          Executes  the given command before opening the device.  On some variants of Solaris, it is necessary to call 'volcheck -v' before opening a floppy device, in order for the sys
          tem to notice that there is indeed a disk in the drive. precmd="volcheck -v" in the drive clause establishes the desired behavior.

   postcmd
          Executes the given command after closing the device.  May be useful if mtools shares the image file with some other application, in order to release the image file to that  ap
          plication.

   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 sev‐
          eral 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 con
          figuration 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  in
          stalled 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  in‐
   stance,  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  de
   scription  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

MTOOLS 22Feb25 mtools(5)