| mkdosfs - Make DOS file system utilty. |
| |
| |
| I wrote this, partially to complement the dosfsck utility written by Werner |
| Almesberger (who graciously gave me some pointers when I asked for some |
| advice about writing this code), and also to avoid me having to boot DOS |
| just to create data partitions (I use Linux to back up DOS :-) ). |
| |
| The code is really derived from Remy Card's mke2fs utility - I used this as a |
| framework, although all of the file system specific stuff was removed and the |
| DOS stuff inserted. I believe originally mke2fs was based on Linus' mkfs |
| code, hence the acknowledgements in the source code. |
| |
| Neither Remy nor Linus have had any involvement with mkdosfs, so if there are |
| any bugs they're almost certainly "all my own work". |
| |
| The code has been available for ftp since 1st September 1993, and I have yet |
| to receive any bug reports from users. I don't know of any bugs, but if you |
| do find a bug or have any constructive comments, please mail me! |
| |
| The only bug I found with version 0.1 was an obscure fault that could lead |
| to an invalid (for MS-DOS, not Linux's dos fs) number of sectors used in the |
| file allocation table(s). |
| |
| |
| Dave Hudson |
| dave@humbug.demon.co.uk |
| |
| |
| FAT32 support |
| ============= |
| |
| mkdosfs now can also create filesystems in the new FAT32 format. To do |
| this, give mkdosfs a "-F 32" option. FAT32 isn't selected |
| automatically (yet), even if very large clusters are needed with |
| FAT16. With FAT32 you have two additional options, -R to select the |
| number of reserved sectors (usually 32), and -b to select the location |
| of the backup boot sector (default 6). Of course such a backup is |
| created, as well as the new info sector. On FAT32, the root directory |
| is always created as a cluster chain. Sorry, there's no switch to |
| generate an old static root dir. |
| |
| One bigger bug fix besides FAT32 was to reject filesystems that need a |
| 16 bit FAT to fit all possible clusters, but the bigger FAT needs some |
| more sectors, so the total number of clusters drop below the border |
| where MS-DOS expects a 12 bit FAT. So such filesystems would be FAT16, |
| but interpreted as FAT32 by DOS. The fix is to reduce filesystem size |
| a bit. |
| |
| - Roman <roman@hodek.net> |