mpartition

mpartition(1)               General Commands Manual              mpartition(1)

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 parti-
       tions.  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 de-
              fined, 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  infor-
              mation  (number of sectors and heads) is figured out from neigh-
              boring 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 num-
              ber of sectors, heads and cylinders.  If these are not given ei-
              ther,  it gives the partition the biggest possible size, consid-
              ering 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, mpar-
              tition 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 changed.  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 writ-
              ing it to the device.

       The following option is available for partition table initialization:

       B bootSector
              Reads the template master boot record from file bootSector.

Choice of partition type
       Mpartition proceeds as follows to pick a type for the partition:

       -      FAT32 partitions are assigned type 0x0C (``Win95 FAT32, LBA'')

       -      For all others, if the partition fits entirely within the  first
              65536  sectors of the disk, assign 0x01 (``DOS FAT12, CHS'') for
              FAT12 partition and 0x04 (``DOS FAT16, CHS'') for  FAT16  parti-
              tions

       -      If not covered by the above, assign 0x06 (``DOS BIG FAT16 CHS'')
              if partition fits entirely within the first 1024 cylinders  (CHS
              mode)

       -      All remaining cases get 0x0E (``Win95 BIG FAT16, LBA'')

       If  number  of  fat bits is not known (not specified in drive's defini-
       tion), then FAT12 is assumed for all drives with less  than  4096  sec-
       tors, and FAT16 for those with more than 4096 sectors.

       This   corresponds   more  or  less  to  the  definitions  outlined  at
       https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Partition_type#List_of_partition_IDs  and
       https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/previous-versions/windows/it-pro/win-
       dows-2000-server/cc977219(v=technet.10), with two notable differences:

       -      If fat bits are unknown, the reference documents consider drives
              with  less than 32680 sectors to be FAT12. Mtools uses 4096 sec-
              tors as the cutoff point, as older versions of DOS only  support
              FAT12 on disks with less than 4096 sectors (and these older ver-
              sions are the ones which would be most likely to  use  FAT12  in
              the first place).

       -      The  reference  documents use a 8GB (wikipedia) or a 4GB (Micro-
              soft) cutoff between 0x06 (DOS BIG FAT16 CHS) and  0x0E.  Mtools
              uses  1024  cylinders. This is because any partition beyond 1024
              cylinders must be LBA and cannot be CHS. 8GB works out to be the
              biggest  capacity  which  can be represented as CHS (63 sectors,
              255 heads and 1024 cylinders). 4GB is  the  capacity  limit  for
              windows 2000, so it makes sense that a documentation for windows
              2000 would specify this as the upper  limit  for  any  partition
              type.

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 represen-
       tation  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  fol-
              lowing 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/man-
       ual/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-4.0.32                       10Jul21                      mpartition(1)