A portable set of tools exist, called mtools, which allow various operating systems including Linux, to copy files and directories to and from standard DOS disks. This can be very useful for moving files to or from a DOS environment or for moving files between systems which otherwise do not share a common filesystem format. The main set of commands available in the mtools set are:
| mcd dname | change directory on DOS disk; |
| mcopy path dname | copy files to DOS disk |
| mcopy dname path | copy files from DOS disk; |
| mdel dname | delete a DOS file; |
| mdir dname | display a DOS directory; |
| mformat drive | DOS format a low level formatted diskette; |
| mlabel drive | change DOS disk volume label; |
| mmd dname | make a DOS disk directory; |
| mrd dname | remove a DOS disk directory; |
| mren dname dname | rename an existing file on DOS disk; |
| mtype dname | display contents of DOS text file. |
These commands are very similar to their DOS equivalents which have the same name but without the first letter m. In the table, path is any standard Linux file padiname, drive is a DOS disk drive letter followed by a colon and dname is a DOS disk file name. DOS file names are made up of a disk drive letter followed by a colon and then a pathname to a file or directory. The directory separator used in these pathnames can be either the Linux slash (/) character or the DOS backslash (\) character, though, if the backslash is used it will need to be quoted from the shell. To see the contents of the top level directory of a DOS disk:
$ mdir a:
Volume in drive A has no labal
Directory for A:/
BOOK <DIR> 4-13-95 1O:58a
FDR 70 4-13-95 11:00a
FDW 83 4-13-95 11:00a
DOT <DIR> 6-05-95 6:00p
LTI DOC 5732 5-02-95 9:02a
8 File(s) 828928 bytes free
or the contents of a subdirectory on the same disk:
$ mdir a:/dot
Volume in driva A has no label
Directory for A:/DOT
. <DIR> 6-05-95 6:O1p
.. <DIR> 6-05-95 6:O1p
D1O TGZ 65317 6-05-95 6:02p
3 File(s) 828928 bytes free
Having discovered a file of interest on the disk it is a simple matter to copy the file from the DOS disk into the current Linux directory, and verify that this has, indeed, taken place:
$ mcopy a:/dot/dlO.tgz Copying D1O.TGZ $ ls -l -rw-r--r-- 1 pc book 65317 Jun 6 23:13 dlO.tgz
All this is cheating a bit! In another tutorial I shall show you the preffered method of using both floppy disks and DOS filesystems, as well as a variety of other filesystems available for use with linux.
Please be patient though, at present this site is being updated on an almost daily basis!