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Name
       mtools.conf - mtools configuration files




Description
       This  manpage  describes  the  configuration files for mtools. They are
       called /etc/mtools.conf and ~/.mtoolsrc. If the environmental vari
       able  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

       *  Character translation tables


   Location of the configuration files
       /etc/mtools.conf   is   the   system-wide   configuration  file,  and
       ~/.mtoolsrc is the users private configuration file.

       On  some  systems,  the	system-wide  configuration  file   is	called
       /etc/defaults/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  fol
       low  variable assignments and flags. Variable assignments take the fol
       lowing 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 configu
       ration 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 dont 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	other
	      wise.

       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 file
	      names as lowercase. This has been done to allow a behavior which
	      is  consistent  with  older versions of mtools which didnt know
	      about the case bits.

       MTOOLS_NO_VFAT
	      If this is set to 1, mtools  wont  generate  VFAT  entries  for
	      filenames  which	are  mixed-case, but otherwise legal dos file
	      names.  This is useful when  working  with  DOS  versions  which
	      cant grok VFAT longnames, 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




     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 Unices 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 doesnt 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 pur
	      poses, as I dont 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  mfor
	      mat_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	geome
	      try  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 sup
	      plied 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 config
	      urable 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. Thats 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	cylin
	      ders=80 heads=2 sectors=9

       360k   double  density  5  1/4  disk. Equivalent to: fat_bits=12 cylin
	      ders=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 (file, precmd) or
       an integer (all others)

       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  logi
	      cal partitions, use the more general offset variable. The parti
	      tion variable is intended for removable media such as  Syquests,
	      ZIP  drives, and magneto-optical disks. Although traditional DOS
	      sees Syquests and magneto-optical disks as giant floppy  disks
	      which  are  unpartitioned,  OS/2	and Windows NT treat them like
	      hard disks, i.e. partioned 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 filesystem starts. This
	      is useful for logical partitions in  DOSEMU  hdimages,  and  for
	      ATARI  ram  disks.  By  default,	this is zero, meaning that the
	      filesystem starts right at the beginning of the device or  file.

       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  informa
	      tion  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 autodetected number of fat
	      bits wrong, or if you want to mformat a disk with a weird number
	      of fat bits.

       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,  independantly  of	the  sector  size  registered  in  the
	      filesystems 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 autodetected value is used.


   General Purpose Drive Flags
       A  flag	can either be set to 1 (enabled) or 0 (disabled). If the value
       is ommitted, 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  cant  be accessed using the read and write
	      syscalls, 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 privi
	      leges  to be able to use the scsi option.  Thus mtools should be
	      installed set uid root on Solaris if you want to access  Zip/Jaz
	      drives.  Thus, if the scsi flag is given, privileged is automat
	      ically 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 set-uid and set-
	      gid 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 $MTOOL
	      SRC).  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 explicitely 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 privi
	      leged 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  identi
	      fier  rather  than as a filename.  The vold identifier is trans
	      lated 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  mfor
	      matting and not for filtering.

       filter
	      Tells  mtools  to use the geometry for this drive both for mfor
	      matting 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  doesnt  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.


   Character set translation tables
       If you live in the USA, in Western Europe or in Australia, you may skip
       this section.


     Why character set translation tables are needed
       DOS uses a different character code mapping than Unix. 7-bit characters
       still have the same meaning, only characters with the eight bit set are
       affected.  To  make matters worse, there are several translation tables
       available depending on the country where you are. The appearance of the
       characters  is  defined	using  code pages. These code pages arent the
       same for all countries. For instance, some  code  pages	dont  contain
       upper case accented characters. On the other hand, some code pages con
       tain characters which dont exist in Unix, such as certain line-drawing
       characters  or  accented consonants used by some Eastern European coun
       tries. This affects two things, relating to filenames:

       upper case characters
	      In short names, only upper case  characters  are	allowed.  This
	      also holds for accented characters. For instance, in a code page
	      which  doesnt  contain  accented	uppercase   characters,   the
	      accented	lowercase  characters get transformed into their unac
	      cented counterparts.

       long file names
	      Micro$oft has finally come to their senses and uses a more stan
	      dard mapping for the long file names. They use Unicode, which is
	      basically a 32 bit version of ASCII. Its	first  256  characters
	      are  identical  to  Unix ASCII. Thus, the code page also affects
	      the correspondence between the codes  used  in  long  names  and
	      those used in short names

       Mtools  considers  the  filenames entered on the command line as having
       the Unix mapping, and translates the characters to get short names.  By
       default,  code page 850 is used with the Swiss uppercase/lowercase map
       ping. I chose this code page, because its set  of  existing  characters
       most closely matches Unixs. Moreover, this code page covers most char
       acters in use in the USA, Australia and Western Europe. However, it  is
       still possible to chose a different mapping. There are two methods: the
       country variable and explicit tables.


     Configuration using Country
       The COUNTRY variable is recommended for people which also  have	access
       to  MS-DOS  system files and documentation. If you dont have access to
       these, Id suggest youd rather use explicit tables instead.

       Syntax:

       COUNTRY="country[,[codepage], country-file]"

       This tells mtools to use a Unix-to-DOS translation table which  matches
       codepage and an lowercase-to-uppercase table for country and to use the
       country-file file to get the lowercase-to-uppercase table. The  country
       code  is  most  often the telephone prefix of the country. Refer to the
       DOS help page on "country" for more details. The codepage and the coun
       try-file  parameters  are  optional.  Please  dont  type in the square
       brackets, they are only there to say which parameters are optional. The
       country-file file is supplied with MS-DOS, and is usually called COUN
       TRY.SYS, and stored in the C:\DOS directory. In most cases you dont
       need  it,  as  the  most  common  translation  tables are compiled into
       mtools. So, dont worry if you run a Unix-only  box  which  lacks  this
       file.

       If  codepage  is not given, a per country default code page is used. If
       the country-file parameter isnt given, compiled-in defaults  are  used
       for  the  lowercase-to-uppercase table. This is useful for other Unices
       than Linux, which may have no COUNTRY.SYS file available online.

       The Unix-to-DOS are not contained in the COUNTRY.SYS file,  and	thus
       mtools always uses compiled-in defaults for those. Thus, only a limited
       amount of code pages are supported. If  your  preferred	code  page  is
       missing,  or if you know the name of the Windows 95 file which contains
       this mapping, could you please drop me a line at alain@linux.lu.

       The COUNTRY variable can also be set using the environment.


     Configuration using explicit translation tables
       Translation tables may be described in line in the configuration  file.
       Two tables are needed: first the DOS-to-Unix table, and then the Lower
       case-to-Uppercase table. A DOS-to-Unix table  starts  with  the	tounix
       keyword, followed by a colon, and 128 hexadecimal numbers.  A lower-to-
       upper table starts with the fucase keyword, followed by	a  colon,  and
       128 hexadecimal numbers.

       The  tables  only  show	the translations for characters whose codes is
       greater than 128, because translation for lower codes is trivial.

       Example:


	   tounix:
	     0xc7 0xfc 0xe9 0xe2 0xe4 0xe0 0xe5 0xe7
	     0xea 0xeb 0xe8 0xef 0xee 0xec 0xc4 0xc5
	     0xc9 0xe6 0xc6 0xf4 0xf6 0xf2 0xfb 0xf9
	     0xff 0xd6 0xdc 0xf8 0xa3 0xd8 0xd7 0x5f
	     0xe1 0xed 0xf3 0xfa 0xf1 0xd1 0xaa 0xba
	     0xbf 0xae 0xac 0xbd 0xbc 0xa1 0xab 0xbb
	     0x5f 0x5f 0x5f 0x5f 0x5f 0xc1 0xc2 0xc0
	     0xa9 0x5f 0x5f 0x5f 0x5f 0xa2 0xa5 0xac
	     0x5f 0x5f 0x5f 0x5f 0x5f 0x5f 0xe3 0xc3
	     0x5f 0x5f 0x5f 0x5f 0x5f 0x5f 0x5f 0xa4
	     0xf0 0xd0 0xc9 0xcb 0xc8 0x69 0xcd 0xce
	     0xcf 0x5f 0x5f 0x5f 0x5f 0x7c 0x49 0x5f
	     0xd3 0xdf 0xd4 0xd2 0xf5 0xd5 0xb5 0xfe
	     0xde 0xda 0xd9 0xfd 0xdd 0xde 0xaf 0xb4
	     0xad 0xb1 0x5f 0xbe 0xb6 0xa7 0xf7 0xb8
	     0xb0 0xa8 0xb7 0xb9 0xb3 0xb2 0x5f 0x5f

	   fucase:
	     0x80 0x9a 0x90 0xb6 0x8e 0xb7 0x8f 0x80
	     0xd2 0xd3 0xd4 0xd8 0xd7 0xde 0x8e 0x8f
	     0x90 0x92 0x92 0xe2 0x99 0xe3 0xea 0xeb
	     0x59 0x99 0x9a 0x9d 0x9c 0x9d 0x9e 0x9f
	     0xb5 0xd6 0xe0 0xe9 0xa5 0xa5 0xa6 0xa7
	     0xa8 0xa9 0xaa 0xab 0xac 0xad 0xae 0xaf
	     0xb0 0xb1 0xb2 0xb3 0xb4 0xb5 0xb6 0xb7
	     0xb8 0xb9 0xba 0xbb 0xbc 0xbd 0xbe 0xbf
	     0xc0 0xc1 0xc2 0xc3 0xc4 0xc5 0xc7 0xc7
	     0xc8 0xc9 0xca 0xcb 0xcc 0xcd 0xce 0xcf
	     0xd1 0xd1 0xd2 0xd3 0xd4 0x49 0xd6 0xd7
	     0xd8 0xd9 0xda 0xdb 0xdc 0xdd 0xde 0xdf
	     0xe0 0xe1 0xe2 0xe3 0xe5 0xe5 0xe6 0xe8
	     0xe8 0xe9 0xea 0xeb 0xed 0xed 0xee 0xef
	     0xf0 0xf1 0xf2 0xf3 0xf4 0xf5 0xf6 0xf7
	     0xf8 0xf9 0xfa 0xfb 0xfc 0xfd 0xfe 0xff



       The first table maps DOS character codes to Unix character  codes.  For
       example,  the DOS character number 129. This is a u with to dots on top
       of it. To translate it into Unix, we look at the character number 1  in
       the  first  table  (1  =  129  - 128). This is 0xfc. (Beware, numbering
       starts at 0).  The second table maps lower case DOS characters to upper
       case  DOS characters. The same lower case u with dots maps to character
       0x9a, which is an uppercase U with dots in DOS.


     Unicode characters greater than 256
       If an existing MS-DOS name contains Unicode character greater than 256,
       these are translated to underscores or to characters which are close in
       visual appearance. For example, accented consonants are translated into
       their  unaccented  counterparts.  This translation is used for mdir and
       for the Unix filenames generated by mcopy. Linux does  support  Unicode
       too,  but  unfortunately  too few applications support it yet to bother
       with it in mtools. Most importantly, xterm cant display	Unicode  yet.
       If  there  is sufficient demand, I might include support for Unicode in
       the Unix filenames as well.

       Caution: When deleting files with mtools, the  underscore  matches  all
       characters which cant be represented in Unix. Be careful with mdel!


   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.     /etc/mtools  This  is for backwards compatibility only, and is
	      only parsed if mtools.conf doesnt exist.

       4.     ~/.mtoolsrc.

       5.     $MTOOLSRC (file pointed by the  MTOOLSRC	environmental  vari
	      able)

       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  discour
       age its use, I purposefully omit its description here.


See also
       mtools



MTOOLS				    28Feb05			     mtools(5)




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