create a virtual floppy image without mount?

Question

There are a lot of posts to show to create a virtual floppy image file as a super user or users can run sudo command. The basic steps are:

create empty 1.44MB image file by dd command
format the image file by mkfs.msdos
mount the image file to some mount point
copy something to the mount point
umount the virtual floppy image file

my question is, in case I am just a common user who cannot run sudo command, how can I follow above steps to create a virtual floppy image and write something in it?

Thanks a lot.

score 30 · Accepted Answer · edited Mar 25 '15 at 14:00

30

Yes, of course you can do this. Use mtools for the FAT and e2tools or genext2fs for the ext2 filesystems.

$ dd if=/dev/zero of=/tmp/disk1.img count=1440 bs=1k 
1440+0 records in
1440+0 records out
1474560 bytes (1.5 MB) copied, 0.00569719 s, 259 MB/s

$ /sbin/mkfs.msdos /tmp/disk1.img 
mkfs.msdos 3.0.12 (29 Oct 2011)

$ mdir -i /tmp/disk1.img
 Volume in drive : has no label
 Volume Serial Number is 9913-BFF6
Directory for ::/

No files
                          1 457 664 bytes free

$ mcopy -i /tmp/disk1.img /etc/issue.net ::/
$ mdir -i /tmp/disk1.img
 Volume in drive : has no label
 Volume Serial Number is 9913-BFF6
Directory for ::/

issue    net        28 2012-06-26  10:49 
        1 file                   28 bytes
                          1 457 152 bytes free

And of course, I have no root rights.

edited Mar 25 '15 at 14:00

Janus Troelsen

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answered Jun 26 '12 at 07:41

Igor Chubin

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Although `mdir` command not works for me, `mcopy` does work. Thank you. – Congbin Guo Jul 04 '12 at 08:57
1

Very elegant and simple solution. It worked very well to make an image for use in VirtualBox image of DOS 6.22. – kuzavas Jun 15 '15 at 10:24
how do I make this bootable? – Blub Oct 05 '17 at 16:28
@Blub: Use for example FreeDOS for that – Igor Chubin Oct 07 '17 at 11:14
For a DOS filesystem, you can combine the image/filesystem create with `mkfs.msdos -C /tmp/disk1.img 1440`. Where `-C ` will *"Create the file given as device on the command line."* – David C. Rankin Dec 17 '17 at 21:17
You don't need `mkfs.vfat`. mtools includes an `mformat` command. – ssokolow Sep 05 '22 at 14:42

create a virtual floppy image without mount?

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