Mtools is an open source collection of tools to allow a Unix operating system to manipulate files on an MS-DOS file system, typically a
floppy disk
A floppy disk or floppy diskette (casually referred to as a floppy, or a diskette) is an obsolescent type of disk storage composed of a thin and flexible disk of a magnetic storage medium in a square or nearly square plastic enclosure lined w ...
or floppy disk image.
[https://www.gnu.org/software/mtools/ Homepage]
The mtools are part of the
GNU Project
The GNU Project () is a free software, mass collaboration project announced by Richard Stallman on September 27, 1983. Its goal is to give computer users freedom and control in their use of their computers and computing devices by collaborati ...
and are released under the
GNU General Public License
The GNU General Public License (GNU GPL or simply GPL) is a series of widely used free software licenses that guarantee end users the four freedoms to run, study, share, and modify the software. The license was the first copyleft for general ...
(GPL-3.0-or-later).
Usage
The following refers to mtools usage in floppy images. (Useful for virtual machines such as
QEMU
QEMU is a free and open-source emulator (Quick EMUlator). It emulates the machine's processor through dynamic binary translation and provides a set of different hardware and device models for the machine, enabling it to run a variety of guest ...
or
VirtualBox
Oracle VM VirtualBox (formerly Sun VirtualBox, Sun xVM VirtualBox and Innotek VirtualBox) is a type-2 hypervisor for x86 virtualization developed by Oracle Corporation.
VirtualBox was originally created by Innotek GmbH, which was acquired b ...
.)
Copying a file to floppy image:
$ mcopy -i Disk.img file_source ::file_target
Copying a file from floppy image to the current directory:
$ mcopy -i Disk.img ::file_source file_target
Deleting all files in the disk image
$ mdel -i Disk.img ::*.*
The drive character
: (colon) has a special meaning. It is used to access image files which are directly specified on the command line using the
-i options.
See also
*
Disk image
A disk image, in computing, is a computer file containing the contents and structure of a disk volume or of an entire data storage device, such as a hard disk drive, tape drive, floppy disk, optical disc, or USB flash drive. A disk image is usua ...
References
External links
mtools official pageon the
GNU website
* Boot disk images for DO
DOS disk images
Free file managers
GNU Project software
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