MKFATIMAGE16(1)

📦 version 1.4.0.1.r2065, in opensuse-leap 16.0

💖 NAME 💖

Okay bestie, this is the MKFATIMAGE16(1) page, and the whole point of mkfatimage16 is literally to generate a virtual drive image suitable for DOSEMU. That’s the name section, periodt. 🎀

✨ SYNOPSIS ✨

The synopsis is giving:

mkfatimage16 [ -b bsectfile ] [{ -t tracks | -k Kbytes }] [ -l volume-label ] [ -f outfile ] [ -p ] [ file...  ]

🦋 DESCRIPTION 🦋

So mkfatimage16 creates an hdimage file for DOSEMU that is pre-loaded with the files specified on the command line. Iconic behavior, honestly. 💅

The output is either written to stdout — hence do not forget to append " > hdimagefile", else you will see garbage on the screen 😭 — or to the file specified by the -f option.

For the latter, you may also use option -p in order to force padding up to the given size. This padding will result in so-called holes on an ext2-FS, hence the actual disk usage will not be greater. The file created by mkfatimage16 then can be used as a virtual drive, when defined in /etc/dosemu.conf. 🦋

As long as -k is not given, the number of heads is always 4 and you have 17 sectors per head; else it is adjusted accordingly. To vary the size, you may either use the -t option or specify the total amount of Kbytes via the -k option. 🌸

All files given behind the options will be copied onto the hdimage. In addition, a DOSEMU suitable master boot record (MBR) is established, and via option -b you may specify a boot sector that gets inserted as first sector of the partition. To later access the hdimage outside of DOSEMU you should use mtools (/etc/mtools.conf parameters partition=1 and offset=128). iykyk. 👑

💅 OPTIONS 💅

  • -b file — Insert the first 512 bytes of file into the bootsector of the partition.
  • -t num — Make the virtual disk have num tracks. This is the one way to define the size of the disk.
  • -k Kbytes — Make the virtual disk be Kbytes in size. Using -t and -k are mutual exclusive.
  • -l label — Insert label as volume label for the disk.
  • -f outfile — The hdimage is written to outfile instead of stdout.
  • -p — Pad the hdimage with zero up to the total size given by -t or -k (only in conjunction with -f).

🌸 AUTHOR 🌸

Pasi Eronen (pe@iki.fi) and Peter Wainwright. Shoutout to the icons who made this page happen. 🫶

💀 BUGS 💀

Bestie, listen, there are some lowkey caveats:

  • This program doesn’t support name mangling and does very little checking for non-DOS filenames.
  • Disk full condition isn’t detected (and probably causes erratic behaviour). 💀
  • Duplicate files aren’t detected.

Not me pretending that’s not a little chaotic, but now you know. 🙈

🌈 AVAILABILITY 🌈

Comes with DOSEMU. Slay. ✨

👑 SEE ALSO 👑

Okay that’s the whole page, bestie — cute little sign-off: this one is rockin’ Version ALPHA 0.98, September, 1998. Mwah. 💖

📦 where this page comes from