fatlabel(8) - phpMan

FATLABEL(8) System Manager's Manual FATLABEL(8)

NAME
fatlabel - set or get MS-DOS filesystem label or volume ID

SYNOPSIS
fatlabel [OPTIONS] DEVICE [NEW]

DESCRIPTION
fatlabel will display or change the volume label or volume ID on the MS-DOS filesystem lo-
cated on DEVICE. By default it works in label mode. It can be switched to volume ID mode
with the option -i or --volume-id.

If NEW is omitted, then the existing label or volume ID is written to the standard output.
A label can't be longer than 11 bytes and should be in all upper case for best compatibil-
ity. An empty string or a label consisting only of white space is not allowed. A volume
ID must be given as a hexadecimal number (no leading "0x" or similar) and must fit into 32
bits.

OPTIONS
-i, --volume-id
Switch to volume ID mode.

-r, --reset
Remove label in label mode or generate new ID in volume ID mode.

-c PAGE, --codepage=PAGE
Use DOS codepage PAGE to encode/decode label. By default codepage 850 is used.

-h, --help
Display a help message and terminate.

-V, --version
Show version number and terminate.

COMPATIBILITY and BUGS
For historic reasons FAT label is stored in two different locations: in the boot sector
and as a special volume label entry in the root directory. MS-DOS 5.00, MS-DOS 6.22, MS-
DOS 7.10, Windows 98, Windows XP and also Windows 10 read FAT label only from the root di-
rectory. Absence of the volume label in the root directory is interpreted as empty or
none label, even if boot sector contains some valid label.

When Windows XP or Windows 10 system changes a FAT label it stores it only in the root di-
rectory -- letting boot sector unchanged. Which leads to problems when a label is removed
on Windows. Old label is still stored in the boot sector but is removed from the root di-
rectory.

dosfslabel prior to the version 3.0.7 operated only with FAT labels stored in the boot
sector, completely ignoring a volume label in the root directory.

dosfslabel in versions 3.0.7-3.0.15 reads FAT labels from the root directory and in case
of absence, it fallbacks to a label stored in the boot sector. Change operation resulted
in updating a label in the boot sector and sometimes also in the root directory due to the
bug. That bug was fixed in dosfslabel version 3.0.16 and since this version dosfslabel
updates label in both location.

Since version 4.2, fatlabel reads a FAT label only from the root directory (like MS-DOS
and Windows systems), but changes a FAT label in both locations. In version 4.2 was fixed
handling of empty labels and labels which starts with a byte 0xE5. Also in this version
was added support for non-ASCII labels according to the specified DOS codepage and were
added checks if a new label is valid.

It is strongly suggested to not use dosfslabel prior to version 3.0.16.

DOS CODEPAGES
MS-DOS and Windows systems use DOS (OEM) codepage for encoding and decoding FAT label. In
Windows systems DOS codepage is global for all running applications and cannot be config-
ured explicitly. It is set implicitly by option Language for non-Unicode programs avail-
able in Regional and Language Options via Control Panel. Default DOS codepage for fatla-
bel is 850. See following mapping table between DOS codepage and Language for non-Unicode
programs:

Codepage Language
437 English (India), English (Malaysia), English (Republic of the Philippines),
English (Singapore), English (South Africa), English (United States), English
(Zimbabwe), Filipino, Hausa, Igbo, Inuktitut, Kinyarwanda, Kiswahili, Yoruba
720 Arabic, Dari, Persian, Urdu, Uyghur
737 Greek
775 Estonian, Latvian, Lithuanian
850 Afrikaans, Alsatian, Basque, Breton, Catalan, Corsican, Danish, Dutch, English
(Australia), English (Belize), English (Canada), English (Caribbean), English
(Ireland), English (Jamaica), English (New Zealand), English (Trinidad and To-
bago), English (United Kingdom), Faroese, Finnish, French, Frisian, Galician,
German, Greenlandic, Icelandic, Indonesian, Irish, isiXhosa, isiZulu, Italian,
K'iche, Lower Sorbian, Luxembourgish, Malay, Mapudungun, Mohawk, Norwegian, Oc-
citan, Portuguese, Quechua, Romansh, Sami, Scottish Gaelic, Sesotho sa Leboa,
Setswana, Spanish, Swedish, Tamazight, Upper Sorbian, Welsh, Wolof
852 Albanian, Bosnian (Latin), Croatian, Czech, Hungarian, Polish, Romanian, Ser-
bian (Latin), Slovak, Slovenian, Turkmen
855 Bosnian (Cyrillic), Serbian (Cyrillic)
857 Azeri (Latin), Turkish, Uzbek (Latin)
862 Hebrew
866 Azeri (Cyrillic), Bashkir, Belarusian, Bulgarian, Kyrgyz, Macedonian, Mongo-
lian, Russian, Tajik, Tatar, Ukrainian, Uzbek (Cyrillic), Yakut
874 Thai
932 Japanese
936 Chinese (Simplified)
949 Korean
950 Chinese (Traditional)
1258 Vietnamese