Mail Archives: opendos/2002/05/31/12:39:03
For what it's worth, I teach this stuff, and have put up simple howto
stuff for linux on my website http://wordwonder.com for my students to
download and use. You might look at "slamdunk linux" on the "linux
pages" link. MOSIX cluster computing is pretty cool, too.
/dev/rob0 wrote:
>
> On Thu, May 30, 2002 at 07:01:46PM +1000, da Silva, Joe wrote:
> > Loadlin.exe sounds like a great idea - I'll certainly look into this option.
>
> I've never understood why it gets so little attention, even among former
> DOS users. I did eventually switch to LILO myself, but only because I
> wanted one esoteric LILO feature. Most users wouldn't care about that
> feature, and they could happily use DOS to manage their booting.
>
> > It will be nice not to lose the safety provided by good ol' DDO (sure, it
> > uses up a wee bit of conventional memory but, as I commented on
>
> Hmmm, if it's a DOS TSR, loadlin will eliminate it. I'm not sure about
> how it will work.
>
> > This Linux stuff is sure confusing!
>
> Yes, it seemed that way at first.
>
> > It's hard to determine all the stuff that goes on during boot-up.
>
> Depending on what distribution you have, the messages shouldn't be
> hidden from you. I don't know, I guess; maybe I'm just spoilt by
> Slackware (which I think would tend to appeal to those coming to Linux
> from a DOS, as opposed to a Windows, heritage.)
>
> > The documentation for everything is
> > chaotic - sometimes there's a "help xxxxx" (if it's an internal command
> > [snip]
> > probably some other possibilities that I can't recall at the moment.
>
> Yes yes yes. But almost ALL of it is documented at least somewhat. :)
> That is a refreshing change from Windows. MS's FUD notwithstanding, the
> fact is that GNU/Linux operating systems are the best supported in
> existence.
>
> Again, how the documentation is given varies by distribution. Look in
> /usr/doc and/or /usr/share/doc for the documentation that each package
> provides. There is usually much documentation accompanying source code,
> so if you got the source for your distribution you can look there too.
> The Linux kernel itself has a "Documentation" directory in the source
> package, and there is a wealth of information there.
>
> > Much of this documentation assumes the reader is already familiar
> > with all this Linux stuff. And you have to realize that all the
> > documentation for the internal commands is within the 'bash' man
> > pages (which are many thousand lines long!) I still haven't figured
>
> :) "man bash" is indeed very evil. There are some shell tutorials you
> might find online which help get you started with bash. Then there's the
> _Advanced Bash Scripting Guide_, an online book at http://ldp.org/ ,
> which although "advanced" is much more approachable than "man bash".
>
> Speaking of LDP, that's a great place for finding information, although
> caution is sometimes warranted. You really should consult documentation
> for your distribution first, because they often make tools to help you
> with various tasks. Sounds like you're using Red Hat, so poke around a
> bit at http://www.redhat.com/ . They may have Web forums for helping
> beginners. And of course there's Usenet: the excellent search engine at
> http://groups.google.com/ has all the questions and most of the answers
> thereto. Don't forget to do a Web search there as well.
>
> There are also various distro-neutral newbie resources other than LDP.
> I've heard many speak well of linuxnewbie.org. There's a pretty good
> general Linux sysadmin book at http://rute.sourceforge.net.
>
> > out where the documentation for 'linuxconf' is hiding! Arghh!!!
> > (I'd better shut up now!;-)
>
> I don't care for linuxconf. I prefer to manage my own configuration by
> directly editing files. You can do that with any distro. (Slackware
> doesn't even have anything like linuxconf; just a few scripts which may
> automate some configurations. I don't always use those, either. :)
>
> > Speaking of 'dosemu', I downloaded the "DR-DOS emulator" image
> > file from "www.drdos.com" ... does anybody know what I'm supposed
> > to do with it? There are certainly no instructions at "www.drdos.com"
>
> An "image file" is usually mountable via the loop driver. If you're
> talking about the "DOSEMU HDIMAGE" on the download page, that's exactly
> what it is. You can mount it, probably with commands like this:
> mkdir /mnt/drdos
> mount -o loop [/path-to/]hdimage.drdos703.eval /mnt/drdos
> The filesystem can be found under your /mnt/drdos directory, but you
> won't find anything new in there. It's just an installation of DR-DOS,
> the same as you probably already have on your hard drive.
>
> Your answer is in the dosemu documentation. You edit /etc/dosemu.conf
> (IIRC) to tell dosemu to boot that image as "drive C:". There are
> examples in that file which show you how to do it.
>
> Do you have dosemu installed? Try "which dos" to find out. Many distros
> provide a binary dosemu package; if yours didn't you can get the source
> from http://www.dosemu.org/ and compile it yourself.
>
> Some distros don't always install everything you need to compile. I'm
> glad I started with Slackware in that regard, because such errors, while
> being very simple to fix, are very difficult for beginners to diagnose.
> Slackware defaults to install a broad selection of development packages.
>
> BTW, I think I've included enough of value in these two posts to also
> toss in a bit of spam. :) I do consulting on a rather low-cost basis,
> even barter. If it's worth it for you to spend a little money or mail me
> some goodies (I'm in the USA so that might be a problem) I'd be glad to
> give you whatever personal assistance and tutelage you might need. Make
> an offer, I'd probably take it.
>
> Rob - /dev/rob0
--
Tom Webb http://wordwonder.com
---
The Law, in its majestic equality, forbids the rich, as well as the
poor, to sleep under the bridges, to beg in the streets, and to steal
bread. --> Anatole France
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