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mpartition(1)          DragonFly 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 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.

       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      "Desactivates" 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
              neighbouring 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 consistenct 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 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-4.0.10                       10Mar09                      mpartition(1)