MTOOLS(1)

NAME
mtools - tools to access FAT file systems

SYNOPSIS
mtools [-V] msdos_command [-msdos_options] arguments ...

DESCRIPTION
Mtools is a collection of utilities to access MS-DOS (FAT) disks from Unix without mounting them. It supports the long filenames of Windows NT and Windows 95. It does not support NTFS disks.

Some versions of mtools for other operating systems provide separate commands, such as mdir, mcopy, etc., to emulate similar MS-DOS and Windows command line commands. The version ported to Minix takes the MS-DOS command (dir, copy, etc.) as its first argument. Supported MS-DOS commands are: attrib, badblocks, cat, cd, copy, del, deltree, dir, doctorfat, du, format, info, label, md, mkdir, partition, rd, rmdir, read, move, ren, showfat, type, write

The MS-DOS options are the same as for DOS commands, except they are prefaced with "-" instead of "\".

Use 'mtools msdos_command -?' for help per command. (This tells you "-?" is an illegal command, but, as with Unix systems, entering an illegal command often is the easiest way to find out what are the legal commands.)

Note that a disk argument must be terminate by or separated from a path by a colon (":"). If no disk argument is given mtools assumes you meant "/dev/fd0:", the first floppy disk drive.

OPTIONS

-V  Show the mtools version and configuration

EXAMPLES

SEE ALSO
dosdir(1). dosread(1). doswrite(1).

NOTES

Mtools requires a lot of memory. The default on a Minix 3 installation is over 10 MB. A default configured mtools would not run on a system with only 16 MB RAM. You may be able to make do by using chmem to reduce the memory allocation of mtools. On the 16 MB system mentioned mtools still works with a reduction of the memory allocation to half the original value. The amount of memory you need depends upon the size of the MS-DOS or Windows file systems you want to access. Typically systems with big disks also have large amounts of memory. If mtools won't work for you, you may be able to fall back to the old dosdir, dosread, and doswrite Minix utilities if the FAT file system you want to access is small enough (the dos* utilities can access FAT16 partitions up to 256 MB size).

This man page does not attempt to be complete. A lot of information is available on line. To use mtools well you also need to be familiar with the options for the corresponding MS-DOS commands. For more information see the mtools website, http://mtools.linux.lu/.

Mtools-3.9.10 was released on 1 March 2005. The Minix port is of the earlier Mtools version 3.9.7, dated 1 June 2000.

The Minix port is configured with the following options: disable-xdf disable-vold disable-new-vold disable-debug disable-raw-term (read the source to understand what these mean).

BUGS
Yes, bugs may exist, but as this man page is written we don't know of any. Please report any you find.

As with any program that accesses a foreign file system, reading is probably safe, but you may want to experiment carefully before using these programs to write to a Windows system.

AUTHOR
Mtools is maintained by David Niemi and Alain Knaff.

Ported to Minix 2.0.3 by Kees J. Bot <kjb@cs.vu.nl>.

This man page compiled by Al Woodhull <asw@woodhull.com>.