MMLS(1)

💖 MMLS(1) — the manual page, but make it cute 💖

okay bestie, so this is mmls, straight out of section 1 of the General Commands Manual, and she's about to tell you exactly how your disk is laid out. no gatekeeping, periodt. 🫶

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✨ NAME ✨

mmls — display the partition layout of a volume system (partition tables) 💅

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🌸 SYNOPSIS 🌸

mmls [-t mmtype ] [-o offset ] [ -i imgtype ] [-b dev_sector_size]
[-BrvV] [-aAmM] image [images]

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🦋 DESCRIPTION 🦋

mmls shows you the layout of the partitions inside a volume system — and yes, "volume system" includes partition tables and disk labels. it's giving full structural tour of your disk. ✨

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🎀 ARGUMENTS 🎀

okay so here's the whole menu, every single one, no skipping, iykyk:

• -t mmtype — pick your media management type. not sure what's even supported? run -t list and it'll tell you the whole roster. if you don't pass this at all, it just uses the autodetection methods instead. lowkey magical. 🔮
• -o offset — the offset into the image where the volume that holds the partition system actually starts. and get this: the relative offset of the partition system gets added to this value. math is mathing. 🧮
• -b dev_sector_size — how big your underlying device sectors are, in bytes. don't pass it? then it uses whatever value is in the image format (if that value even exists), and if it doesn't, it just assumes 512 bytes. default queen. 👑
• -i imgtype — tells it what kind of image file you're dealing with, like raw. want the full list? -i list. skip it entirely and autodetection methods take over. 🕵️
• -B — adds a whole column showing the partition sizes in bytes. numbers girlies rise. 📊
• -r — recurses into DOS partitions looking for other partition tables. this setup is super common when Unix is installed on x86 systems, so like… don't be surprised. 💀
• -v — verbose output, aka debugging statements, and they go to stderr. it will not shut up (affectionate). 🗣️
• -V — displays the version. that's it, that's the whole vibe check.
• -a — show allocated volumes ✨
• -A — show unallocated volumes 🕳️
• -m — show metadata volumes 📝
• -M — hide metadata volumes 🙈
• image [images] — the disk or partition image you want to read, whose format you give with -i. you can hand it multiple image file names if your image is split into multiple segments. and if you only give it one image file and its name is the first in a sequence (like, say, as indicated by ending in .001), the subsequent image segments get pulled in automatically. auto-slaying. 🎀

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mmls is similar to fdisk -lu on Linux, but with a few differences, and honestly the differences are the main character energy here:

• it shows you which sectors are not being used, so you can go search those for hidden data. 🕵️♀️
• it gives the length value so you can plug it into dd more easily when you're extracting partitions. 🔌
• it also shows BSD disk labels for Free, Open, and NetBSD. 🐡
• it displays the output in sectors, not cylinders. no cylinder discourse here.
• lastly: it works on non-Linux systems. inclusivity icon. 🌈

if you don't give it any of -a, -A, -m, or -M, then all volume types get listed. but if you give it any of them, then only the types you specified on the command line get listed. choose your fighter. 🥊

now let's define the volume types, because the words are doing a lot:

• Allocated volumes are the ones listed in a partition table in the volume system AND that can store data. the certified data-storing girlies.
• Unallocated volumes are basically virtually created by mmls just to show you which sectors have not been allocated to a volume. she's fictional but she's serving a purpose. ✨
• The metadata volumes overlap the allocated and unallocated volumes, and they describe where the partition tables and other metadata structures live. in some volume systems these structures sit in allocated space, in others they sit in unallocated space. and in some volume systems their location is explicitly given in the partition tables, and in others it is not. it's giving it depends. 🤷♀️

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🌈 EXAMPLES 🌈

want to list the partition table of a Windows system using autodetect? say less:

# mmls disk_image.dd

want to list the contents of a BSD system that starts in sector 12345 of a split image? obsessed. do this:

# mmls -t bsd -o 12345 -i split disk-1.dd disk-2.dd

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💜 AUTHOR 💜

Brian Carrier <carrier at sleuthkit dot org> — the icon who wrote this. 👑

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and that's the whole page bestie, MMLS(1) from the General Commands Manual, footer and all. go forth and know your partition layout. no cap. 💖✨🎀🦋🌸💅🫶