Mtools is a
free software
Free software, libre software, libreware sometimes known as freedom-respecting software is computer software distributed open-source license, under terms that allow users to run the software for any purpose as well as to study, change, distribut ...
collection of utilities to allow a
Unix
Unix (, ; trademarked as UNIX) is a family of multitasking, multi-user computer operating systems that derive from the original AT&T Unix, whose development started in 1969 at the Bell Labs research center by Ken Thompson, Dennis Ritchie, a ...
operating system to manipulate files on an
MS-DOS
MS-DOS ( ; acronym for Microsoft Disk Operating System, also known as Microsoft DOS) is an operating system for x86-based personal computers mostly developed by Microsoft. Collectively, MS-DOS, its rebranding as IBM PC DOS, and a few op ...
file system, typically a
floppy disk
A floppy disk or floppy diskette (casually referred to as a floppy, a diskette, or a disk) is a 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 with a ...
or floppy disk image.
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 Computer hardware, computing dev ...
and are released under the
GNU General Public License
The GNU General Public Licenses (GNU GPL or simply GPL) are a series of widely used free software licenses, or ''copyleft'' licenses, that guarantee end users the freedom to run, study, share, or modify the software. The GPL was the first ...
(GPL-3.0-or-later).
Usage
The following refers to mtools usage in floppy images. (Useful for virtual machines such as
QEMU
The Quick Emulator (QEMU) is a free and open-source emulator that uses dynamic binary translation to emulate a computer's processor; that is, it translates the emulated binary codes to an equivalent binary format which is executed by the mach ...
or
VirtualBox
Oracle VirtualBox (formerly Sun VirtualBox, Sun xVM VirtualBox and InnoTek VirtualBox) is a hosted hypervisor for x86 virtualization developed by Oracle Corporation. VirtualBox was originally created by InnoTek Systemberatung GmbH, which was ac ...
.)
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 is a snapshot of a storage device's content typically stored in a file on another storage device.
Traditionally, a disk image was relatively large because it was a bit-by-bit copy of every storage location of a device (i.e. every ...
References
External links
mtools official pageon the
GNU
GNU ( ) is an extensive collection of free software (394 packages ), which can be used as an operating system or can be used in parts with other operating systems. The use of the completed GNU tools led to the family of operating systems popu ...
website
* Boot disk images for DO
DOS disk images
Free file managers
GNU Project software
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