DFSee screenshot and introduction
Click on any part of the screenshot to get an explanation ...
This is the title-bar of the OS/2 window, here with a demo title.
It includes the operating system level controls for the window like
the system-menu, maximize, minimize and close and the rollup-button
created by the Object-Desktop add-on product.
The title-bar and the rest of the window-frame are the only OS-specific
parts in this display. The window interior is the same on the OS/2, DOS
and Windows-NT versions.
Of course DFSee can be run in full-screen sessions as well, this will usualy
speed-up the display too.
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This is the standard DFSee logo shown at startup with:
- Short description
- Version and date information
- The copyright statement
- A reference to the DFSee homepage on the WEB
- A line indicating the current display mode:
- Classic mode, using a simple command-line and scrolling output
- Windowed mode, using a large scroll-buffer and an entryfield with
command-recall for input.
(you can switch modes using the WIN command)
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Before executing any command, DFSee will display a single line with:
- DFSee version number
- DFSee type (OS/2, DOS, Win-NT; in version 3.06 and newer)
- The command to be executed including all parameters
The purpose of this line is mainly to aid interpretation of possibly
complex log-files.
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The command executed in this screenshot is part of the MAP#PART multiple
command, as issued automatically at startup when no
parameters are given.
It results in the pseudo-graphic display of all physical disks with
the partition on each of those disks.
All commands are covered in the documentation files
wich are plain ASCII and rather large. Use the search
capabilities of your text-editor/browser to search for specific topics.
You can checkout the on-line version of the documentation right here:
DFSee introduction and history
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DFSee general command reference
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DFSee FDISK related command reference
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DFSee HPFS related command reference
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DFSee NTFS related command reference
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DFSee FAT related command reference
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DFSee scenarios and HOWTO's
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An good HTML version is still on the to-do list ...
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This is the number of physical disks reported by the operating system.
Usualy this will match the number of real disks present in your system,
but there are several of other possibilities like:
- A RAID disk-subsystem will cause the operating system to see each
of its defined logical volumes as a separate physical disk
- Some special device-drivers on OS/2 or Windows-NT will present another
device or a partition on a physical disk as a separate physical disk,
probably with some added functionality or normally unsuported filesystems.
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This is the geometry of the disk, as reported to DFSee by the standard
interfaces. For DFSDOS this might not always reflect the actual situation
when very large disks are used (INT-13 limitation at 1024 cylinders)
Reported are the number of:
- Cylinders, this is the number of seperate tracks on each surface used
- Heads, the number of used surfaces, range 0 .. 255
- Sectors, the number of sectors in each track, range 1 .. 63
Partition Warnings
The geometry/size lines can be followed by several lines with WARNING messages
about specific partitions. They deal with INT-13 limits, boundary errors
and other possible inconsitenties in the partition tables.
Note that using a wrong geometry will usualy result in a lot of warnings
being issued, checking the geometry is therefore one of the first things
to do when a partition-scheme doesn't seem to be healthy.
Extended Int-13
When extended INT-13 support is available, this line will be preceded
by a similar line showing the physical geometry as reported
by that interface. This is usualy on modern PC-systems that implement this
support in their on-board BIOS for large EIDE disks.
It could be implemented by SCSI BIOS's too, but sofar I have only seen
a single system (RAID-5 controller) that actualy used it.
When running DFSDOS inside a Windows-9x dosbox, INT-13 support is also
reported, but this is a virtual implementation inside the dosbox and might
not reflect the actual geometry of the physical disk.
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The size of the disk, as calculated from the geometry on the same line,
is presented as:
- a hexa-decimal value representing the number of sectors
- a decimal value being the number of megabytes
If the used geometry is not correct, limitted by BIOS INT-13 or
changed by a manual diskgeo command, the size
corresponds to this geometry, not the actual size of the disk.
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This is the start of the pseudo-graphical display for physical disks.
Each disk starts with a Master Boot Record (MBR) at sector 0.
It contains:
- A very small boot-program that is called by the BIOS when the system
is started or re-booted. This will read the partition table and transfer
control to the Boot Sector for the active partition.
- The base partition table, containing up to 4 partition entries, with
16 bytes of information containing either:
- A definition for a primary partition
- A definition for an extended partition
The extended partition functions as a container for logical volumes wich
form a linked list of Extended Boot Records (EBR) each with
its own partition table defining this particular logical volume and a
link to the next one.
- Empty, usualy the entry contains all zeroes in this case
The table can hold upto 4 entries, of wich only one can be an extended
partition.
- A unique Boot Sector Signature with hexadecimal value 0x55aa
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This is the map display for a primary partition that needs to be defined
to allow Hybernation or Save to disk capabilities on this laptop.
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This is the main primary partition, driveletter C: with the
Windows-95 operating system installed.
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This area is the extended-partition that functions as a container
for logical volumes. For most operating systems all logical volumes
must be in one contigious area.
Inside the container, each logical volume is preceded by its
own Extended Boot Record.
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This is the first logical volume, driveletter D:, formatted with
the FAT filesystem. Because it is very small, the formatting uses 12-bit
FAT entries, exactly like it would have for diskettes.
The partition is mainly used for testing DFSee functions :-)
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This is the home partition for OS/2 version 4, driveletter E:, formatted
with the HPFS filesystem.
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This contains IBM's OS/2 Boot Manager wich is used to select between
the Windows-95 and OS/2 environments on this laptop.
It is located at the end of the disk to have minimal impact
on the original Windows environment on this machine.
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This is the default display for all partition information for all disks
using a table layout with one line for each partition or freespace area.
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This colums indicates the identification number for a partition
and/or a freespace area. Freespace areas share the same Id with the
partition that follows, except for the last one on every physical disk
wich have there own unique Id.
The Id's are used to identify any particular partition or freespace area
in the commands that operate on them.
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This is the disk-number for the physical disk containing this partition
or freespace area. Because the table is sorted in ascending order on
disk-number and start-sector on the disk, all partitions on the same disk
will be on subsequent lines.
When there is more than one physical disk, there is a separation line between
each one to make the different disks stand out.
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This column contains a status-indicator and the drive-letter for the
volume, when one is assigned.
There are three methods by wich the drive-letters shown in DFSee are
determined:
- By a matching algorithm that compares the boot-sectors for each
drive-letter reported by the operating system with the boot-sectors
found in each defined partition. This usualy yields the same drive-letters
as used by the currently active operating system.
Note that this might give different results under different operating
systems because the different types of partitions are not regognized
by each. Good old DOS will only recognize FAT12 en FAT16 when no special
utilities are used.
This is the default method when not in de FDISK mode.
- By a DFSee implementation of the Industry standard method
of drive-letter assignment, wich roughly means the following steps:
- Start with the first available drive-letter, being C
- Assign the next available drive-letter to the active primary
partition on each physical non-removable disk.
- Assign the next available drive-letter to each of the logical partitions
on each disk. (wich usualy means more than one drive-letter per disk)
- Repeat the previous two steps for each removable disk (JAZ, ZIP, Syquest...)
This method is the default in FDISK mode, unless LVM-info is available.
using this method can be forced by specifying a double exclamation-sign as
a parameter to the part command as in: part !!
- By interpreting the Logical Volume Manager (LVM) information
stored close to each boot-sector on an OS/2 Warp-server
for e-business system (Codenamed Aurora)
This method is used whenever valid LVM-info is detected on the disk(s)
The status indicator is an optional character in an highlighted color that
precedes the drive letter, the following characters are used:
| > | for the active partition (BIOS bootable) |
| } | active partition, but not on first disk |
| ! | active partition, but with a bad bootsector (not formatted) |
| * | for partitions bootable by the installed Boot Manager |
| - | bootable by Boot Manager, but with a bad bootsector |
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This column actualy has three parts for regular partition lines:
- An indicator for the sort of partition:
| Prim | for a primary and visible partition
|
| Log | for a logical volume
|
| Hide | for a primary but hidden partition
|
| LHid | for a hidden logical volume
|
- A two-digit hexa-decimal value representing the partition type
- A short text string describing the partition type
An overview of all recognized partition types can be obtained
using the type command in FDISK mode.
For freespace areas the column can be one of:
| Wasted FreeSpace | when it cannot be assigned to a partition
|
| Primary FreeSpace | when only primary partitions can be created
|
| Logical FreeSpace | when only logical partitions can be created
|
| H-Logic FreeSpace | logical at HEAD of existing chain
|
| T-Logic FreeSpace | logical at TAIL of existing chain
|
| N-P/Log FreeSpace | primary, or first logical in a new chain
|
| H-P/Log FreeSpace | primary, or logical at HEAD of chain
|
| T-P/Log FreeSpace | primary, or logical at TAIL of chain
|
| Track-0 Area +Mbr | First track, holding MBR and some wasted space
|
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This usualy is the name of the filesystem used to format this partition,
some often used formats are:
| HPFS | OS/2 High Performance Filesystem
|
| FAT12 | 12-bit FAT filesystem, diskettes & small disks
|
| FAT16 | 16-bit FAT filesystem, DOS, OS/2 Windows ...
|
| FAT32 | 32-bit FAT filesystem (Win9x, Windows-2000)
|
| NTFS | NT Filesystem
|
| EXT2 | Linux extended filesystem 2
|
| JFS | OS/2 Journalled Filesystem
|
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This is an identification for the Original Equipment Manufacturer (OEM) as
recorded in the boot-record. It usualy identifies the used operating system
and sometimes its version as well.
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This is the Label as displayed by a DIR command in
most operating systems. It is usualy stored in the boot-record, or (FAT) as
a special entry in the Root-directory of the filesystem.
For BootManager partitions the label is the BootManager name for the
partition that was booted last.
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This is the name registred with OS/2 BootManager for this partition.
This name will be used on the BootManager menu to select a partition to start.
When valid LVM information is found, this column will contain both the name
for the physical partition and the name of the volume
that this partition is assigned to (max 20 characters each).
The column will be expanded in width when the current screen/window width
allows it.
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This is the size of the partition or freespace area in megabytes, calculated
from the number of sectors an sector-size.
A megabyte here is 1024*1024 bytes, not one million :-)
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The partition line for the hybernation partition of the
HP Omnibook. It is used to save the memory-contents to disk
when suspending operation.
It contains a small header part, followed by a memory-dump.
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The primary, C partition with Windows-95
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A small test partition, here formatted as FAT, resulting in the FAT12 filesystem
being used.
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A big logical partition formatted HPFS and containing a
bootable OS/2 version 4 (Merlin).
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A small (1 cylinder) primary partition containing the code for OS/2
BootManager.
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The returncode for the last executed command is displayed here to signal
success or failure. In case of failure, some explanation is usualy
displayed preceeding the prompt line.
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This is the number of the currently opened physical disk
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The drive-letter for the selected partition if any, or -- when
no partition is currently selected, or when the selected partition
has no drive-letter assigned.
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The name of the filesystem associated with the current partition, it
corresponds to the FORMAT column in the table.
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A reminder that various combinations of the ? character
will display some help-informations
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This the hexadecimal representation of the sectornumber that will be
displayed or interpreted when using the <Enter> key.
This is the default sector-number, set by most commands as
the most likely sector to be visited next
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This the hexadecimal representation of the sectornumber that will be
displayed or interpreted when the command u is given.
This value will be set by commands where appropriate, usualy pointing
to entities higher up in the filesystem hierarchy.
As an example, this can be the directory for an HPFS Fnode, or the
parent-MFT for an NTFS MFT record.
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This the hexadecimal representation of the sectornumber that will be
displayed or interpreted when the command x is given.
This value will be set by commands where appropriate, pointing
to entities related to the currently displayed one.
As an example, this can be the LVM info for a boot-sector, or the
base-MFT for an NTFS MFT continuation record.
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This the hexadecimal representation of the sectornumber that was
displayed last
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This is the hexadecimal representation of the physical-sectornumber (PSN) that
corresponds to logical sectornumber (LSN) 0. This represents the
location of the currently selected partition on the physical disk.
The complete range of valid LSN values can be displayed
using the base command.
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The total DFSee window has 4 major parts:
- The scroll buffer, the largest part at the top
- A scroll-buffer status line, with:
- Current line (or #lines when at end)
- Number of lines, or percentage of buffer used
- Area for additional status information (yellow)
- Navigation info on PgUp/PgDown keys
- The command-line entryfield with a history-buffer for command recall
- A fixed helpline with usage information on key-bindings
The focus is normally on the entryfield, but can be transferred to the
scrollwindow using the tab-key.
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Return to:
-- DFSee page --
Fsys, DFSee and JvW home page
Created:
JvW 05-sep-1999, last update: JvW 12-dec-2002