From: "Matthias Paul" Organization: IBH, RWTH-Aachen To: opendos AT delorie DOT com Date: Tue, 1 Apr 1997 19:12:00 GMT+0100 Subject: Re: wish list 2.0 Reply-to: Matthias DOT Paul AT post DOT rwth-aachen DOT de Message-ID: On Fri, 28 Mar 1997, Colin W. Glenn wrote: > OpenDOS should also support single-stepping the boot as well. ??? It *does* already (since Novell DOS 7)! (Though, I think it's not pretty documented, at least not in the Novell docs.) Press or while the kernel shows the startup message "Booting DOS...". These keys work very similar as under MS-DOS (alternatively, under NWDOS and OpenDOS you can press just the -key, avoiding annoying beeps caused by a keyboard buffer overrun), but: - Currently, you cannot enter / mode, while showing boot menus (you can do that under MS-DOS/PC-DOS). - In single-stepping, you will than be asked (Y/N) (assuming an English localized kernel as it is with OpenDOS) for (almost) any CONFIG.SYS directive (similar to ? before a line). In foreign countries (and with no keyboard driver loaded at this stage), this might be very annoying to some people, e.g. here in Germany you will be asked for 'es' instead of 'a', but actually have to press the -key, which on our German QWERTZ keyboard layout is in-place of the on US QWERTY keyboards. Fortunately, Novell had already implemented a cure for this, but failed to document it: Using the undocumented YESCHAR= directive, you can select the character you want to be asked for instead of , e.g. YESCHAR=J would fix these problems for Germany. Note, that as with all other directives (except for SWITCHES=), the YESCHAR= directive takes effect *after* it is parsed by IBMBIO.COM, and that's in exactly the order, the CONFIG.SYS file is interpreted (which is completely different under MS-DOS/PC-DOS, where the CONFIG.SYS will be compiled in some respect). However, it is much more flexible. - If you use the SWITCHES= directive (which is also undocumented under Novell DOS and OpenDOS), the behaviour may change, depending on the switches you use and the location of the SWITCHES= directive in the CONFIG.SYS file. (I would call this a bug, but as with all those things, it's also a feature. If we change it - and we should, since it's a remaining security loophole - we should make it selectable by, of course, one more option.) For equally results as under MS-DOS, always place SWITCHES= in the very first line of CONFIG.SYS! - Using a 3rd party command processor like 4DOS, you cannot single step through batch files like AUTOEXEC.BAT, since single-stepping is passed through to COMMAND.COM by some undocumented function, which is not supported by 3rd party replacements. This was changed with one of the latest Novell DOS 7 updates (I think it was silently introduced with Update 14 or Update 15/1), and currently cannot be found in Caldera OpenDOS 7.01: A new MS- DOS a-like COMMAND.COM option /Y was added and now single- stepping is passed to the command processor by giving this option. (Of course, we should add on this by giving the YESCHAR to the command processor, e.g. /Y:J...) Hey, this once more was a heavy ride on undocumented Novell DOS and OpenDOS... ;-) For more details on these switches and features, have a look at my NWDOSTIP.TXT file (from MPDOSTIP.ZIP). Bye, Matthias Paul ------------------------------------------------------------------ Matthias Paul ! My eMail address has changed. For some time ! Ubierstrasse 28 ! mails to former ! D-50321 BRUEHL ! will be forwarded to the new address. ! eMail: WWW : URL: http://www.rhrz.uni-bonn.de/~uzs180/mpdokeng.html ------------------------------------------------------------------