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 CWmpartition command is used to create MS-DOS filesystems as
partitions. 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.
CWmpartition CW-p drive
CWmpartition CW-r drive
CWmpartition CW-I [CW-B bootSector] drive
CWmpartition CW-a drive
CWmpartition CW-d drive
CWmpartition CW-c [CW-s sectors] [CW-h heads]
[CW-t cylinders] [CW-v [CW-T type] [CW-b
begin] [CW-l length] [CW-f]
Mpartition supports the following operations:
CWp
Prints a command line to recreate the partition for the drive. Nothing
is printed if the partition for the drive is not defined, or an
inconsistency has been detected. If verbose (CW-v) is also set,
prints the current partition table.
CWr
Removes the partition described by drive.
CWI
Initializes the partition table, and removes all partitions.
CWc
Creates the partition described by drive.
CWa
"Activates" the partition, i.e. makes it bootable. Only one partition
can be bootable at a time.
CWd
"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:
CWs sectorsCW
The number of sectors per track of the partition (which is also the
number of sectors per track for the whole drive).
CWh headsCW
The number of heads of the partition (which is also the number of heads
for the whole drive). By default, the geometry information (number of
sectors and heads) is figured out from neighbouring partition table
entries, or guessed from the size.
CWt cylindersCW
The number of cylinders of the partition (not the number of cylinders of
the whole drive.
CWb beginCW
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.
CWl lengthCW
The size (length) of the partition, expressed in sectors. If end is not
given, mpartition figures out the size from the number of sectors, heads
and cylinders. If these are not given either, it gives the partition
the biggest possible size, considering disk size and start of the next
partition.
The following option is available for all operation which modify the
partition table:
CWf
Usually, before writing back any changes to the partition, mpartition
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 changes. The CW-f allows you to override
these safeguards.
The following options are available for all operations:
CWv
Together with CW-p prints the partition table as it is now (no
change operation), or as it is after it is modified.
CWvv
If the verbosity flag is given twice, mpartition will print out a
hexdump of the partition table when reading it from and writing it to
the device.
The following option is available for partition table initialization:
CWB bootSectorCW
Reads the template master boot record from file bootSector.
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
representation 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 following
commands:
./configure; make dvi; dvips mtools.dvi
*
To generate a html copy, run:
./configure; make html
A premade html can be found at:
CWhttp://mtools.linux.lu
and also at:
CWhttp://www.tux.org/pub/knaff/mtools
*
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.
