Re: [Info-mtools] Bug? Links not installed for mread or mdoctorfat

[Alain Knaff]

Hi,

On 05/11/2024 13:03, Lee Thompson wrote:
> 
> Hi All,
> 
> I've noticed while using mtools that the mtools command itself reports
> having the supported commands 'mread' and 'mdoctorfat', though I noticed
> that links aren't installed for these commands like all others.  Of
> course they can still be called using 'mtools -c <command>', but I was
> wondering if there is a reason behind all this?

For mwrite/mread: these commands are obsolete, and date from the early
days of mtools, where mcopy would delegate to these depending on whether
it would read from DOS filesystem (mread) or write to the DOS
filesystem. Nowadays, mcopy just handles everything internally, without
execing another mtools command. The old names were just kept for
backwards compatibility. However, by now it's so long ago, that I
removed them entirely (and one reference in a comment in a script, where
it was not actually used).

For mdoctorfat: this was merely intended as a debugging/testing tool.
However, as it might actually be useful for users, I made a link available.

> 
> I noticed also that these commands don't have info/man pages, which I'd
> expect for mread being just an alias for mcopy (at least as far as I can
> see reading mtools.c), but from my understanding mdoctorfat is a unique
> command.

Indeed. So I added documentation to it, fixed a bug (it failed to set
initial cluster of file), and made sure it runs *without* privileges in
the case where mtools is installed suid root (mostly on non-Linux
platforms, which fail to chown device files to users logged in at console).

> 
> I'd be happy to make up some patches adding links to these commands and
> making info pages maybe but I wanted to check first if anyone had more
> information on this.

Done (for mdoctorfat) in 4.0.46. However, the info page for mdoctorfat
is a bit terse now: if you see the need, feel free to "fluff it up"
somewhat :-)

> 
> Thanks,
> Lee
> 

Regards,

Alain