## 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  filesys
           tems  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  avail
           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 pre
                  vious 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, consider
                  ing 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 ini
           tialization:

           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

           *      To generate a html copy,  run:

                         ./configure; make html

                  A     premade     html    can    be    found    at:
                  `http://mtools.linux.lu'     and      also      at:
                  `http://www.tux.org/pub/knaff/mtools'

           *      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-3.9.8                 02Nov02                mpartition(1)