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 located 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 compatibility. 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 direc-
tory. 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 directory. 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 directory — 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 directory.
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 di-
rectory 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 dosfs-
label updates label in both location.
Since version 4.2, fatlabel reads a FAT label only from the root direc-
tory (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 de-
coding FAT label. In Windows systems DOS codepage is global for all
running applications and cannot be configured explicitly. It is set im-
plicitly by option Language for non-Unicode programs available in Re-
gional and Language Options via Control Panel. Default DOS codepage for
fatlabel 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, Dan-
ish, 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, Indone-
sian, Irish, isiXhosa, isiZulu, Italian, K'iche, Lower Sor-
bian, Luxembourgish, Malay, Mapudungun, Mohawk, Norwegian,
Occitan, Portuguese, Quechua, Romansh, Sami, Scottish Gaelic,
Sesotho sa Leboa, Setswana, Spanish, Swedish, Tamazight, Up-
per Sorbian, Welsh, Wolof
852 Albanian, Bosnian (Latin), Croatian, Czech, Hungarian, Pol-
ish, Romanian, Serbian (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, Mongolian, Russian, Tajik, Tatar, Ukrainian,
Uzbek (Cyrillic), Yakut
874 Thai
932 Japanese
936 Chinese (Simplified)
949 Korean
950 Chinese (Traditional)
1258 Vietnamese
SEE ALSO
fsck.fat(8), mkfs.fat(8)
HOMEPAGE
The home for the dosfstools project is its ]8;;https://github.com/dosfstools/dosfstools\GitHub project page]8;;\.
AUTHORS
dosfstools were written by ]8;;mailto:werner.almesberger@lrc.di.epfl.ch\Werner Almesberger]8;;\, ]8;;mailto:Roman.Hodek@informatik.uni-erlangen.de\Roman Hodek]8;;\, and others.
Current maintainers are ]8;;mailto:aeb@debian.org\Andreas Bombe]8;;\ and ]8;;mailto:pali.rohar@gmail.com\Pali Rohár]8;;\.
dosfstools 4.2 2021-01-31 FATLABEL(8)
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