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disk/misc/diskimage.lha

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Showing:m68k-amigaosppc-amigaosppc-morphosi386-arosi386-amithlonppc-warpupppc-powerupgeneric
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Short:Mount any disk image file as a DOS device
Author:Thore Böckelmann <tboeckel at gmx.de>
Uploader:Thore Böckelmann <tboeckel gmx de>
Type:disk/misc
Version:37.7
Architecture:m68k-amigaos >= 2.0.4
Date:2006-02-03
Download:http://aminet.net/disk/misc/diskimage.lha - View contents
Readme:http://aminet.net/disk/misc/diskimage.readme
Downloads:14747

TITLE
  DiskImage


VERSION
  37.7


AUTHOR
  Thore Böckelmann <tboeckel at gmx dot de>


REQUIREMENTS
  Any Amiga® (compatible) computer with at least OS2.04 and 68020+ cpu.


DESCRIPTION
  A long time ago I found a device called "fmsdisk.device" on Aminet. It
  allowed you to mount a file on your harddisk as a regular floppy disk. You
  could then use this new drive exactly like DF0:. Unforturnately FMS often
  crashed on my machine upon mounting the image, and, even worse, FMS didn't
  allow you to swap these virtual floppies, nor did it support compressed
  images. Especially compressed images are very popular since the Amiga
  emulator UAE existed. The only way to swap a disk with FMS was to prepare
  another disk image and transfer it to FMS with tools like TransADF or
  similar. From my point of view that is neither very convenient, nor very
  intuitive.

  DiskImage goes a slightly different way. Instead of mounting a static file
  you just mount the drive, eg. DI0:, and then you "insert" the disk image of
  your desire with a special tool. This image can be ejected at any time and
  replaced by another image in a way that is completely transparent to AmigaOS.
  DiskImage supports nearly all trackdisk commands and disk change interrupts.
  And even more important: it supports gzip compressed disk images via Achim
  Stegemann's free zlib.library. Additionally you are not limited to images
  from floppy disks, but you can use image files from any device you can
  imagine. It is even possible to dump your whole harddisk to a file and then
  mount this file as a mirror of your harddisk. The only limitation is
  AmigaDOS's limit on the size of a file, which is 2GB minus 2 bytes
  (= 2,147,483,646 bytes). One big advantage is the ability to mount CD-ROM ISO
  image files. That means if your CD writer is not able to write to CD-RW disks
  (ok, all recent writers are able to do that) or you don't have a CD-RW disk
  at hand, then you simply create an ISO image with MakeCD and mount this image
  via diskimage.device.


USAGE
  diskimage.device supports up to 10 different units each of which can have its
  own device layout, that is FileSystem, number of cylinders, etc. All this is
  determined by standard Amiga mount files.

  You must use DiskImageCtrl to swap the images in the different unit. Its
  shell template is:

  DRIVE=DEVICE/K,UNIT/K/N,EJECT/S,READONLY=RO/S,GUI/S,IMAGE=INSERT,CX_POPUP/K

  DRIVE=DEVICE/K: either "diskimage.device" or a DOS device like "DI0:" to
                  obtain the unit number from
  UNIT/K/N: unit of diskimage.device you want to be affected. If no unit number
            is given then unit 0 is assumed.
  EJECT/S: this switch will eject the inserted disk image
  READONLY/S: mount the image in read-only mode, every write attempt will be
              rejected with a "write protected" error
  GUI/S: use the MUI interface instead of the shell interface
  IMAGE=INSERT: name of a new disk image file that you wish to insert. This can
                either be a normal uncompressed file or a file compressed with
                the GNU gzip command
  CX_POPUP/K: open the MUI interface (YES, TRUE, 1), or simply install as a
              commodity (NO, FALSE, 0)


  Without any arguments DiskImageCtrl will show a list of which image file is
  inserted in which unit of diskimage.device.

  After insertion you can use the mounted image like any other drive in your
  system. You can read, write, create and delete files, copy the whole disk via
  DiskCopy, repair the disk with Dave Haynie's DiskSalv, start programs, format
  the disk. To make it short: you can do anything with the image that you can
  imagine for any other device.

  For gzip compressed images there is one important thing to mention:

  gzip compressed images are decompressed on-the-fly when you insert the image
  file and any access will take place on the decompressed image, not on the
  compressed image itself. But that means, that any change done to the disk
  will be dead and gone as soon as you eject the image from diskimage.device.
  The disk will be in the same state upon reinsertion as it was the first time
  when you inserted it. That means you can change anything on the image, but
  all these changes are non-permanent!! If you wish them to be permanent, then
  you have to decompress the image by hand (via gunzip <file>.gz) and then
  insert the decompressed image. On the other hand you can modify anything on
  such an image without any loss of data, because the original compressed image
  is not touched in any way!

  Due to the size of uncompressed images compared to compressed ones there is a
  way to tell diskimage.device where to store the temporary images. The default
  is "T:". To override this path you will have to set the environment variable
  "DiskImageTempPath" via the setenv command. This path will be used furtheron
  for temporary disk images. Make sure that you have enough space left on the
  device that path belongs to!!


  Usage examples:

  To insert the disk image "simpleimage.adf" into unit 0 of diskimage.device:

    DiskImageCtrl unit 0 insert work:images/simpleimage.adf


  To insert the gzip compressed disk image "cooldemo.adz" into drive DI2:,
  which has been mounted on diskimage.device unit 2. The file will be un-
  compressed on-the-fly the the path given by the environment variable
  "DiskImageTempPath":

    DiskImageCtrl drive di2: insert work:images/cooldemo.adz


  To eject an inserted image from unit 3:

    DiskImageCtrl unit 3 eject


  How to use CreateImage:

  CreateImage is a simple tool to create empty image files matching an already
  existing DOS device. CreateImage's template looks as follows:

  DRIVE=DEVICE/K/A,DIUNIT/K/N/A,IMAGE/A

  DRIVE=DEVICE/K/A: name of an already mounted device, such as DF0:, DH0:, etc.
                    This name may be specified with or without trailing colon.
  DIUNIT/K/N/A: unit number of the new diskimage.device
  IMAGE/A: filename of the new and empty image file. The corresponding mount
           file will be named "<image>.mountlist".

  Please note that CreateImage just creates files of a certain size, but with
  random contents. That means that you can insert this newly created image, but
  any filesystem will hardly recognize it as a valid disk. Thus you still have
  to format that image or transfer valid disk data to that image via a suitable
  tool.



INSTALLATION
  Copy diskimage.device to DEVS: and DiskImageCtrl and CreateImage to any place
  you want to. C: would be a very good place. The mount files belong to
  SYS:Storage/DOSDrivers, to be mounted on demand. If you wish to mount a
  certain drive on every boot, then move these files to DEVS:DOSDrivers.


KNOWN BUGS
  - none known yet


RECENT HISTORY
  37.7 (3.2.2006):
    - diskimage.device now gives exact drive geometry data for known disk
      formats, that is AmigaDOS FFS DD and HD disk, MS-DOS DD and HD disks, ISO
      CD images. Hence my other program AutoMounter is able to mount such
      images automatically without the need to create a suitable mount file.
      That makes usage of diskimage.device much easier.
    - Seek()s within the image file now are done relative to the current
      position instead of to the beginning of the file. This should speed up
      seeks on slow base filesystems (FFS, OFS).


COPYRIGHT AND DISCLAIMER
  DiskImage is copyrighted 2001-2003 by Thore Böckelmann.
  All rights reserved. This program is freeware, so no financial donations
  required. Redistribution allowed if the package is left unchanged. The author
  is not responsible for any damage caused by the use or misuse of this
  documentation and/or the program(s) it describes.

  DiskImageCtrl uses the SmartReadArgs package by Thomas Aglassinger, the
  zlib.library by Achim Stegemann, the XAD decompression system by Dirk Stöcker
  (and various other developers) and the XPK decompression system by Urban D.
  Müller, Dirk Stöcker and various other developers.


SEE ALSO


Contents of disk/misc/diskimage.lha
 PERMSSN    UID  GID    PACKED    SIZE  RATIO METHOD CRC     STAMP          NAME
---------- ----------- ------- ------- ------ ---------- ------------ -------------
[unknown]                 4143    6904  60.0% -lh5- 8346 Feb  3 06:50 CreateImage
[unknown]                 4362    7036  62.0% -lh5- ec98 Feb  3 06:50 diskimage.device
[unknown]                 5055   12086  41.8% -lh5- 36f1 Feb  3 06:56 diskimage.readme
[unknown]                 7353   12680  58.0% -lh5- 7026 Feb  3 06:50 DiskImageCtrl
[unknown]                 1070    1391  76.9% -lh5- 8906 Apr 28  2002 DiskImageCtrl.info
[unknown]                  321     614  52.3% -lh5- 75a9 Mar 13  2002 DOSDrivers/di0
[unknown]                 1165    1474  79.0% -lh5- 0dbe Apr 15  2002 DOSDrivers/DI0.info
[unknown]                  318     601  52.9% -lh5- 4460 Mar 13  2002 DOSDrivers/di1
[unknown]                 1167    1474  79.2% -lh5- a8c2 Apr 15  2002 DOSDrivers/DI1.info
[unknown]                  351     616  57.0% -lh5- 33d5 Mar 13  2002 DOSDrivers/di2
[unknown]                 1168    1474  79.2% -lh5- bfba Apr 15  2002 DOSDrivers/DI2.info
[unknown]                  351     616  57.0% -lh5- 33d5 Mar 13  2002 DOSDrivers/di3
[unknown]                 1169    1474  79.3% -lh5- 6982 Apr 15  2002 DOSDrivers/DI3.info
[unknown]                  313     559  56.0% -lh5- 7f14 Apr 28  2002 DOSDrivers/di4
[unknown]                 1165    1474  79.0% -lh5- 75aa Apr 28  2002 DOSDrivers/DI4.info
[unknown]                  206     358  57.5% -lh5- f641 May  6  2003 DOSDrivers/di5
[unknown]                 1170    1474  79.4% -lh5- a077 May  6  2003 DOSDrivers/DI5.info
[unknown]                  898    2155  41.7% -lh5- 8dd6 Feb  3 06:51 DOSDrivers/icd0
[unknown]                 1167    1474  79.2% -lh5- 05a2 Apr 15  2002 DOSDrivers/ICD0.info
[unknown]                  734    2083  35.2% -lh5- 9002 Apr 28  2002 empty_1440K_fat.gz
[unknown]                 2005   15956  12.6% -lh5- c844 Apr 28  2002 empty_1760K_ffs_intl.gz
[unknown]                  722    1369  52.7% -lh5- f639 Apr 28  2002 empty_720K_fat.gz
[unknown]                 1193    8638  13.8% -lh5- c1bd Apr 24  2002 empty_880K_ffs_intl.gz
[unknown]                  688    1240  55.5% -lh5- 8006 Apr  4  2002 zlib-library.readme
[unknown]                42732  109312  39.1% -lh5- fef2 Apr  4  2002 zlib.library
---------- ----------- ------- ------- ------ ---------- ------------ -------------
 Total        25 files   80986  194532  41.6%            Feb  3 14:41

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