Provided by: mtools_4.0.48-1_amd64 
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 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.
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 defined, 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 information (number of sectors and heads) is figured out from neighboring
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 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:
f 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 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 writing 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 partitions
- 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 definition), then FAT12 is assumed for all
drives with less than 4096 sectors, 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/windows-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 sectors as the cutoff point, as older versions of DOS only support
FAT12 on disks with less than 4096 sectors (and these older versions 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 (Microsoft) 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 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 `http://www.gnu.org/software/mtools/manual/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-4.0.48 22Feb25 mpartition(1)