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 mtools(5)                         MTOOLS                          mtools(5)
 MTOOLS                                                               MTOOLS

                                   09Jan13



 Name
      mtools.conf - mtools configuration files



 Description
      This manual page describes the configuration files for mtools. They
      are called `/usr/local/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
      `/usr/local/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.



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 mtools(5)                         MTOOLS                          mtools(5)
 MTOOLS                                                               MTOOLS

                                   09Jan13



      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





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 mtools(5)                         MTOOLS                          mtools(5)
 MTOOLS                                                               MTOOLS

                                   09Jan13



      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



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 mtools(5)                         MTOOLS                          mtools(5)
 MTOOLS                                                               MTOOLS

                                   09Jan13



      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



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 mtools(5)                         MTOOLS                          mtools(5)
 MTOOLS                                                               MTOOLS

                                   09Jan13



      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



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 mtools(5)                         MTOOLS                          mtools(5)
 MTOOLS                                                               MTOOLS

                                   09Jan13



      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.



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 mtools(5)                         MTOOLS                          mtools(5)
 MTOOLS                                                               MTOOLS

                                   09Jan13



      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 `/usr/local/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 `/usr/local/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.




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 mtools(5)                         MTOOLS                          mtools(5)
 MTOOLS                                                               MTOOLS

                                   09Jan13



           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



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 mtools(5)                         MTOOLS                          mtools(5)
 MTOOLS                                                               MTOOLS

                                   09Jan13



           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.   `/usr/local/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 `/usr/local/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
      `/usr/local/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.




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 mtools(5)                         MTOOLS                          mtools(5)
 MTOOLS                                                               MTOOLS

                                   09Jan13



    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









































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