Note! I created this fork to simplify access to a patched, updated version of disktype. The current version of the fork applies the unattended-to Atari and BSD patches from the official respository, adds ext4 support adapted from the patch at
and exfat support from the patch at
Additional support for Expert Witness Format files based on existing (but non-functional) patch is in progress in the dtewf branch.
You can find Christoph Pfisterer's official repository and documentation at http://disktype.sourceforge.net/
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.
The program is written in C and is designed to compile on any modern Unix flavour. It is self-contained and in general works without special libraries or headers. Some system-dependent features can be used to gather additional information.
GNU make is required to build disktype. The Makefile is set up to use GCC, but disktype should compile with any C compiler. To change the compiler, you can edit the Makefile or set the standard variables CC, CPPFLAGS, CFLAGS, LDFLAGS, and LIBS from the make command line.
The Makefile uses uname to determine the system type and enables certain system-dependent features based on that. If you run into problems, you can disable all system-dependent features by setting the variable NOSYS, as in 'make NOSYS=1'.
Running make in the src/ directory results in the binary 'disktype'. Copy it to a 'bin' directory of your choice, optionally stripping it on the way. It does not require any additional files.
The manual page 'disktype.1' can be copied to /usr/local/share/man/man1 or a similar directory that is suitable for your system and policy. If you package disktype for binary distribution, please also include the README, HISTORY, TODO, and LICENSE files in a place like /usr/share/doc/disktype.
The 'disktype' program 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 version. 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 (or view the same pages offline in the doc/ directory in this repository).
The following formats are recognized by this version of disktype.
File systems: FAT12/FAT16/FAT32, ExFAT, NTFS, HPFS, MFS, HFS, HFS Plus, ISO9660, ext2/ext3/ext4, Minix, ReiserFS, Reiser4, Linux romfs, Linux cramfs, Linux squashfs, UFS (some variations), SysV FS (some variations), JFS, XFS, Amiga FS/FFS, Amiga SFS, Amiga PFS, BeOS BFS, QNX4 FS, UDF, 3DO CD-ROM file system, Veritas VxFS, Xbox DVD file system.
Partitioning: DOS/PC style, EFI GPT, 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), Linux cloop (limited).
Boot loaders: LILO, GRUB, SYSLINUX, ISOLINUX, Linux kernel, FreeBSD loader, Windows/MS-DOS loader, BeOS loader, Haiku 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 compression program must be installed on the system, i.e. 'gzip' for the gzip and compress formats, 'bzip2' for the bzip2 format.
Disk images in general will also have their contents analyzed using the proper mapping, with the exception of the Apple UDIF format.
See the online documentation at http://disktype.sourceforge.net/doc/ for more details on the supported formats and their quirks (or view the same pages offline in the doc/ directory in this repository).
This fork of disktype is intended to address ongoing community needs. If you find a file system or disk image that it doesn't currently cover, please add a comment as an "Issue" in this repository.