mkfatimage16(1)

mkfatimage161

Generate a virtual drive image suitable for dosemu

Usage

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

Overview

mkfatimage16 creates a hdimage file for DOSEMU that is pre-loaded with the files specified on the command line. 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 -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).

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).

Releases

11 releases since Debian 2.0 (Hamm); the text changed 4 times.

  1. 2.0
  2. 2.1–2.2
  3. 3.1
  4. 4.0–5.0
  5. 6.0–Arch

Author

Pasi Eronen ([email protected]) and Peter Wainwright.

Bugs

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.

Availability

Comes with DOSEMU

From dosemu 1:1.4.0.8+753+g18f6f5cd-4 in Arch Linux 2026-11-01. Parsed by carta from the page's man source.