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From: "Rod Pemberton" <do_not_have AT nohavenot DOT cmm>
Newsgroups: comp.os.msdos.djgpp,comp.os.msdos.programmer
Subject: Re: TRYING TO MAKE EXE RUN ON FRIENDS MACHINE
Date: Wed, 14 Jan 2009 02:21:16 -0500
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To: djgpp AT delorie DOT com
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Reply-To: djgpp AT delorie DOT com

"Rugxulo" <rugxulo AT gmail DOT com> wrote in message
news:fed9d4c7-d6a7-4780-bc31-7bdd66aed79b AT r40g2000yqj DOT googlegroups DOT com...
>
> Well, as mentioned, QEMU + QEMU-IMG + FreeDOS + BasicLinux + FAT12
> floppy .IMG to save to (which you can extract files from for DOS)
> might work with the pre-compiled i386-moss-gcc. Okay, so that's a
> long, roundabout method, but it works.

Well, I was thinking of a few things along those lines.  In addition to
"mounting" .iso and FAT images, QEMU should be able to "mount" a DOS
directory with the "fat:<DOS path>" option to hda/hdb, i.e., the
mysteriously not well documented if at all vvfat option (see QCOW on
Wikipedia...).  I also thought about using .iso images such as FreeDOS and
Linux.  The problem is that under Linux it's easy to add to and extract from
images, just use "mount" with the appropraite options and standard copy
utilities.  But, with Windows there is no default way to add to or extract
from images.  The ability to *both* add to or extract from is usually only a
feature of compression programs for the specific compression format.
However, the ability to extract from many image types is widely available
with many programs such as WinZip/PkZip, 7-Zip, IsoBuster, DJGPP
cpio/rpm/tar/gzip, etc.  So, while it's easy to extract from such images,
it's not so easy to insert files.  E.g., how do you add to a FAT12.img or
Linux.iso?  If QEMU-IMG allows one to add to images, instead of just
creating blank images, I missed that.  It seems QEMU is where the "mounting"
options are and it only supports a handful of filesystem types (no ext2).
Maybe I need to research the Linux "cloop" option to see what it does.  Or,
perhaps, the "raw" option is sufficient...  So, anyway, I don't currently
know of any utilities or QEMU options that will do so.  As I understand it,
the MOSS files have to be decompressed and inserted into a directory in
BasicLinux's FS.IMG, which is probably ext2 gzipped.  I can handle the gzip.
I'm not sure what to do with the ext2 under Windows and without Linux
available...  So, while the compression method is standard, the filesystem
isn't for Windows.  I.e., I could uncompress it, but not add files to it.
Now, if I had a floppy disk drive in this machine, I could use a FAT12 image
with QEMU and then copy to and from a floppy or ramdisk using that image to
add to and extract from it, perhaps using say partcopy.exe to move the image
back and forth.  This assumes that BasicLinux supports FAT12 and can mount
it.  But, without a floppy, I'm forced to find some other utilities to write
to needed images, or I'm forced to setup the flash drive as a floppy, which
is tedious but doable, I guess.  This is really really round-about, and I'm
not sure yet that Windows QEMU supports USB drives with floppy images...
So, I'm going to sleep on it.  Maybe I'll locate what I think I need or
would prefer, later.

> Okay, so that might be a bit much, but they say it works. I've never
> tried either, so maybe I shouldn't suggest that.    ;-)   But even
> Ubuntu brags about having a Win32 installer now.

I saw that too.  I didn't try it suspecting the same partition issues.  Due
to the size of modern Linux, I suspect that few of them setup as DOS
loopback filesystems.  I was thinking about looking at MetroPipe's Portable
Privacy Machine to see what they are using.  It supposedly runs from a USB
drive, so it'd be odd for them to use ext2 with Windows instead of using
FAT12/16 since one would want to copy files to/from the image.  Given it's
purpose, it's likely though that the compiler toolchain isn't there...


Rod Pemberton