mpartition(1)                                                                                                      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 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 big-
              gest 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 changes.  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.

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 approxi-
       mative, 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-4.0.13                                                28Feb10                                               mpartition(1)