3 mtools \- tools to access FAT file systems
8 .RI [ \-msdos_options ]
16 is a collection of utilities to access MS-DOS (FAT) disks from Unix without
17 mounting them. It supports the long filenames of Windows NT and Windows 95.
18 It does not support NTFS disks.
20 Some versions of mtools for other operating systems provide separate
21 commands, such as mdir, mcopy, etc., to emulate similar MS-DOS and Windows
22 command line commands. The version ported to Minix takes the MS-DOS
23 command (dir, copy, etc.) as its first argument. Supported MS-DOS
50 The MS-DOS options are the same as for DOS commands, except they are prefaced
51 with "-" instead of "\\".
53 Use 'mtools msdos_command -?' for help per command. (This tells you "-?"
54 is an illegal command, but, as with Unix systems, entering an illegal command
55 often is the easiest way to find out what are the legal commands.)
57 Note that a disk argument must be terminate by or separated from a path by
59 If no disk argument is given mtools assumes you meant "/dev/fd0:", the
60 first floppy disk drive.
64 Show the mtools version and configuration
71 .EX "mtools dir" "show directory of MS-DOS floppy in drive A:."
72 .EX "mtools copy /dev/c0d0p0:file.txt ." "copy file.txt from MS-DOS root directory to current Minix directory."
79 Mtools requires a lot of memory. The default on a Minix 3 installation
80 is over 10 MB. A default configured mtools would not run on a system
81 with only 16 MB RAM. You may be able to make do by using chmem to
82 reduce the memory allocation of mtools. On the 16 MB system mentioned
83 mtools still works with a reduction of the memory allocation to half
84 the original value. The amount of memory you need depends upon the
85 size of the MS-DOS or Windows file systems you want to access.
86 Typically systems with big disks also have large amounts of memory. If
87 mtools won't work for you, you may be able to fall back to the old
88 dosdir, dosread, and doswrite Minix utilities if the FAT file system
89 you want to access is small enough (the dos* utilities can access FAT16
90 partitions up to 256 MB size).
92 This man page does not attempt to be complete. A lot of information is
93 available on line. To use mtools well you also need to be familiar with
94 the options for the corresponding MS-DOS commands.
95 For more information see the mtools website, http://mtools.linux.lu/.
97 Mtools-3.9.10 was released on 1 March 2005. The Minix port is of the
98 earlier Mtools version 3.9.7, dated 1 June 2000.
100 The Minix port is configured with the following options: disable-xdf
101 disable-vold disable-new-vold disable-debug disable-raw-term (read the source
102 to understand what these mean).
104 Yes, bugs may exist, but as this man page is written we don't know of any.
105 Please report any you find.
107 As with any program that accesses a foreign file system, reading is probably
108 safe, but you may want to experiment carefully before using these programs to
109 write to a Windows system.
111 Mtools is maintained by David Niemi and Alain Knaff.
113 Ported to Minix 2.0.3 by Kees J. Bot <kjb@cs.vu.nl>.
115 This man page compiled by Al Woodhull <asw@woodhull.com>.