Mtools is an open source

Open source

The term open source describes practices in production and development that promote access to the end product's source materials. Some consider open source a philosophy, others consider it a pragmatic methodology...

 collection of tools to allow a Unix

Unix

Unix is a multitasking, multi-user computer operating system originally developed in 1969 by a group of AT&T employees at Bell Labs, including Ken Thompson, Dennis Ritchie, Brian Kernighan, Douglas McIlroy, and Joe Ossanna...

 operating system

Operating system

An operating system is a set of programs that manage computer hardware resources and provide common services for application software. The operating system is the most important type of system software in a computer system...

 to manipulate files on an MS-DOS filesystem, typically a floppy disk

Floppy disk

A floppy disk is a disk storage medium composed of a disk of thin and flexible magnetic storage medium, sealed in a rectangular plastic carrier lined with fabric that removes dust particles...

 or floppy disk image

Disk image

A disk image is a single file or storage device containing the complete contents and structure representing a data storage medium or device, such as a hard drive, tape drive, floppy disk, CD/DVD/BD, or USB flash drive, although an image of an optical disc may be referred to as an optical disc image...

.

The mtools are part of the GNU Project

GNU Project

The GNU Project is a free software, mass collaboration project, announced on September 27, 1983, by Richard Stallman at MIT. It initiated GNU operating system development in January, 1984...

 and are released under the GPL licence.

Usage

The following refers to mtools usage in floppy images. (Useful for virtual machines such as Qemu

QEMU

QEMU is a processor emulator that relies on dynamic binary translation to achieve a reasonable speed while being easy to port on new host CPU architectures....

 or VirtualBox

VirtualBox

Oracle VM VirtualBox is an x86 virtualization software package, originally created by software company Innotek GmbH, purchased by Sun Microsystems, and now developed by Oracle Corporation as part of its family of virtualization products...

.)

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.

External links

• mtools official page on the GNU
  GNU
  GNU is a Unix-like computer operating system developed by the GNU project, ultimately aiming to be a "complete Unix-compatible software system"...
  
  web site
• Boot disk images for DOS dos disk images