Working with MS-DOS Floppys - mtools

  With so many people coming from the MS-DOS/Windows environment, used to adding and removing floppy disks at random, there was quite a need to do something similar on the UNIX side. The result is a suite of programs called mtools. These tools allow the same type of access MS-DOS users are used to, by in effect mounting the device, performing the desired operation, and then unmounting the device.

There are some differences between mtools and the similarly named MS-DOS commands:

• mtools commands use the forward slash ``/'', and not the backward slash ``$$'' (well, you can use $$ if you want, but you need to quote it from the shell).
• mtools will operate on directories just as easily as files, just like UNIX.
• mtools uses proper wildcard expansion, not the broken implementation on MS-DOS. Wildcards referencing MS-DOS filesystems (floppys) should be quoted.
• mtools doesn't regard a period (dot) as separating a name form an extention. Mostly this applies to the use of wildcards.
• Drive A (or a) is the first floppy drive, drive B is the second drive, drive J is a Jaz drive and drive Z is a Zip drive. Jaz/Zip access on SCSI systems may be different.
• MS-DOS filesystems allowing long filenames actually have 2 names associated with each file. Mtools may have name conflicts on either name under some circumstances.
• The most important (IMHO) option to any mtools command is ``-t'', which informs mtools that a MS-DOS text file is involved, and so end-of-line translation should be done.

Mtools commands: mattrib, mbadblocks, mcd, mcopy, mdel, mdeltree, mdir, mdu, mformat, mkmanifest, minfo, mlabel, mmd, mmount, mmove, mpartition, mrd, mren, mshowfat, mtoolstest, mtype, mzip, xcopy. As you can see, most of these commands are just the MS-DOS command name with an m in front (xcopy being an exception). Also, there are a few commands which have no MS-DOS analogue, and are there because they make sense in a UNIX environment.