DESCRIPTION

     The purpose of disktype is to detect the content format of a disk or disk
     image. It knows about common file systems, partition tables, and boot
     codes.

USAGE

     disktype can be run with any number of regular files or device special
     files as arguments. They will be analyzed in the order given, and the
     results printed to standard output. There are no switches in this ver-
     sion. Note that running disktype on device files like your hard disk will
     likely require root rights.

     See the online documentation at <http://disktype.sourceforge.net/doc/>
     for some example command lines.

RECOGNIZED FORMATS

     The following formats are recognized by this version of disktype.

     File systems:
           FAT12/FAT16/FAT32, NTFS, HPFS, MFS, HFS, HFS Plus, ISO9660,
           ext2/ext3, Minix, ReiserFS, Reiser4, Linux romfs, Linux cramfs,
           Linux squashfs, UFS (some variations), SysV FS (some variations),
           JFS, XFS, Amiga FS/FFS, BeOS BFS, QNX4 FS, UDF, 3DO CD-ROM file
           system, Veritas VxFS, Xbox DVD file system.

     Partitioning:
           DOS/PC style, Apple, Amiga "Rigid Disk", ATARI ST (AHDI3), BSD
           disklabel, Linux RAID physical disks, Linux LVM1 physical volumes,
           Linux LVM2 physical volumes, Solaris x86 disklabel (vtoc), Solaris
           SPARC disklabel.

     Other structures:
           Debian split floppy header, Linux swap.

     Disk images:
           Raw CD image (.bin), Virtual PC hard disk image, Apple UDIF disk
           image (limited).

     Boot codes:
           LILO, GRUB, SYSLINUX, ISOLINUX, Linux kernel, FreeBSD loader, Sega
           Dreamcast (?).

     Compression formats:
           gzip, compress, bzip2.

     Archive formats:
           tar, cpio, bar, dump/restore.

     Compressed files (gzip, compress, bzip2 formats) will also have their
     contents analyzed using transparent decompression. The appropriate com-
     pression program must be installed on the system, i.e.  gzip(1) for the

SEE ALSO

     file(1), gpart(8)

                                 Feb 21, 2005