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✏️ Editing: Release.notes

[See Changelog for more recent changes]

2.5.1	29 Aug 1995

Bug fixes to allow compiling and running on SINIX-D 5.41, thanks to
Martin Kraemer <Martin.Kraemer@mch.sni.de>.

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2.5	21 Aug 1995

First public Alpha Test release of the newly rewritten Mtools.
Summary of the many major changes:

XDF support, ANSIfication, major restructuring, and debugging (Alain Knaff)
VFAT support, new prompts for overwrites, and debugging (David Niemi)

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Patch #7alk ... 4 Dec 94

This patch adds the following features:

1) mbadblocks program to mark bad blocks
	2) uses fat_type field of boot block to find out the number
	of fat bits.
	3) is able to format hard disk partitions (untested)
	4) sets _all_ standard fields in boot sector, even without 2m mode.
	5) adds boot code to the boot sector (which transfers booting to
	the hard drive. In most cases, that's what the user wants.)

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Patch #7alk ... 4 Nov 94

This patch adds the following features:

1) Use even disk buffer size whenever possible to workaround a
	bug in Linux blockdev code [???]
	2) Clearer error message on failed sanity check
	3) Removal of BOGUS Notes file

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Patch #7alk quinter, 2 Nov 94

This patch adds the following features:

1) O_EXCL flag when opening the device to ensure it is not mounted
	2) Sanity checks to avoid accessing non msdos disks
Both features were suggested by Karl Eichwalder (ke@pertron.central.de)

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Patch #7alk quater, 1 Oct 94

This patch adds the following features:

1) disk serial number support.
	2) mcheck works for every drive.

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Patch #7alk ter, 10 Sep 94

This patch adds the following features:

1) mformat works again.
	2) mmount allows the user to pass arbitrary arguments to mount.
	Floppy disks are no longer mounted by default on /mount/A /mount/B 
	etc.

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Patch #7alk bis, 18 jul 94

This patch adds the following features:

1) Support for variable sector sizes.
	2) Support for "2m" formats.
	3) Support for formatting 16-bit fat disks.
	4) Support for formatting ED disks (Their capacity is too big to
	   use a 12 bit FAT and 1 sector clusters. Either use bigger
	   clusters or a 16 bit FAT)
        5) Mcopying from one DOS drive to another works now. (It used to
	   call mktemp on a non-writable string)

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Patch #7alk, 16 feb 94

This patch adds the following features:

1) Mtools can now set the disk geometry on Linux. (Useful for
	reading 1.72 Mb disks. This was already possible on unixpc and
	SPARC )
	2) New mmount command. Reads the boot sector, sets the geometry
	and finally mounts the disk. Only available for Linux.
	3) Mwrite can now write stdout to a DOS file: mwrite - a:test
	4) Mread now also acts as mtype: mread a:test -
	5) Mtools now tries 3 sources to get its drive geometry.
	configuration: first ~/.mtoolsrc, then /etc/mtools, and finally 
	compiled-in. ( The two first are conditional on LOADDEVS being
	defined ). LOADDEVS is now compatibles with the various geometry
	setting routines (init_linux, init_sparc and init_unixpc).
	6) Bug fixes for -t mode of mwrite and mread. ( For certain file sizes
	the trailing DOS end-of-file character wasn't correctly written.)
	7) Bug fixes for "drive probing code." (Now failure to lock onto a disk
	causes always trial of the next configuration. Before, mtools used
	to abort on certain cases). Similar fixes in mformat.
	8) Optimization/bug fix of cluster/fat repartition in mformat.c
	9) Made fat checking code optional. (1.72mb disks mformatted with old 
        mtools were almost always rejected) To bypass fat-checking set the
	environment variable MTOOLS_FAT_COMPATIBILITY
	10) Mtools now opens /dev/tty to ask for confirmation messages. This
        way, it doesn't interfere with mreading/mwriting from/to stdin/stdout.

CAUTION: I only tested this with Sparc and Linux. Although I left #ifdefs
for other OS's in devices.c, that doesn't mean that it works on these OS's.

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Patch #7+, 19 sep 93

This patch merges in the mods against 2.05 under Linux. Two are the main
changes: that all commands are linked as a single executable, which can
be linked as different name, and that the device specs are no longer
hardcompiled but are read dynamically from /etc/mtools (the latter change
is conditional on LOADDEVS being defined).

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Patch #7, 6 Sep 92

This patch will change the method of determining if the FAT encoding
scheme in the devices.c file is correct.  The method introduced by patch
#6 was naive and easily fooled.

A pre-processor variable called CHK_FAT has been added to the fat_read.c
file just in case this new method isn't appropriate for all disks.

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Patch #6, 21 Aug 92

This patch will add the following features:

1) Mtools commands now use advisory locks to preclude two
	processes from writing to the same DOS filesystem.  You must
	edit the Makefile to choose one of the 3 lock methods:
		-DLOCKF, -DFLOCK, or -DFCNTL.
	See the Configure file for more details.

2) An error detection routine has been added to determine if the
	FAT encoding scheme in the devices.c file is correct.

3) Mtools commands now return exit codes with the following
	meaning:
		0 = success
		1 = utter failure
		2 = partial success/failure.  (at least one successful
		    operation, but at least one failure)

It also corrects a bug when Mtools is used on machines that have 16 bit
integers.  However, machines with 16 bit integers are limited to FAT
tables that are less than 64k in length.
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Patch #5, 25 Aug 91

This patch will add a few new features:

1) Mtools will now work properly on MSDOS partitions that are
	greater than 32M.

2) If the "current working directory" information (contained in
	the $HOME/.mcwd file) is more than 6 hours old, Mtools will
	issue a warning and ignore the old information.

3) The mcopy command will now copy files between 2 MS-DOS file
	systems (such as mcopy "a:*" b:).

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Patch #4, 11 Apr 91

This patch will fix a bug in the mmd command where directories
	inherited the file name extension of the parent directory.  It
	also adds a feature that will allow the copying of zero length
	files.

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Patch #3, 28 Nov 90

This patch will fix a bug where Mtools sometimes bypasses the
	disk "cache" and reads/writes to the disk directly.

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Patch #2, 21 Nov 90

This patch will fix a bug in the folding of MS-DOS filenames to
	lower case, and will fix a bug that could prevent the detection
	of a full disk.

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Patch #1, 12 Oct 90

This patch will fix a few problems on Berkeley flavors of Unix,
	and will fix the floating point exception bug when Mtools is
	used with diskettes that have been formatted under very old DOS
	(or formatted by some other non-DOS system).

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New in the v2.0 release....

1) Support for multiple devices.  Mtools now supports:
		multiple floppy disks (A:, B:, etc)
		DOS partitions on a hard disk
		DOS "images" such as those VP/ix uses.

2) Wildcards are supported anywhere in a pathname (not just
	in the "filename" part as before)

3) Reads and writes to slow devices are now "cylinder buffered"
	when appropriate.

4) Versions of CD, FORMAT, LABEL, and ATTRIB have been added.

5) A Mtools.1 manual page has been added for an overview of Mtools.

6) The mkmanifest command has been added.  Although not an 'mtool'
	command, it makes life easier when fixing up Unix filenames that
	get clobbered by MS-DOS file name restrictions.

7) The mkdfs program of the "fast-mtools" release for the Sun
	SparcStation can be replaced with mformat.

8) The Configure file has been included to help those who must add
	devices to the devices.c file.

Many thanks to Viktor Dukhovni (viktor@math.princeton.edu) for
	many of the ideas in the new release.