Message-ID: <01FD6EC775C6D4119CDF0090273F74A4FD674A@emwatent02.meters.com.au> From: "da Silva, Joe" To: "'opendos AT delorie DOT com'" Subject: RE: DOS/Linux coexistence (was: [Club Dr-DOS]) #2 Date: Fri, 31 May 2002 18:57:00 +1000 MIME-Version: 1.0 X-Mailer: Internet Mail Service (5.5.2653.19) Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Reply-To: opendos AT delorie DOT com Please see below ... Joe. > -----Original Message----- > From: /dev/rob0 [SMTP:i812 AT softhome DOT net] > Sent: Thursday, May 30, 2002 11:19 PM > To: 'opendos AT delorie DOT com' > Subject: Re: DOS/Linux coexistence (was: [Club Dr-DOS]) #2 > > 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. > [Joe da Silva] Well, it's a BIOS extension - it loads before _any_ DOS stuff. > > 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. > [Joe da Silva] Thanks for the great tips, I'm sure some day I'll be more familiar with all this stuff. I guess I take for granted the knowledge and familiarity with DOS, that I've accumulated over many years. BTW, my Linux distribution is Mandrake 8.0, although I understand this is based on Red Hat anyway. > > 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. > [Joe da Silva] OK, I'll try what you've suggested. I'm not sure why you say this is "the same as you probably already have", though. Isn't this stuff supposed to be Linux code that emulates DR-DOS? What I already have is real DR-DOS (6.0:-), which I'm sure won't run under Linux, right? > 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. > [Joe da Silva] IIRC, I did install 'dosemu', but "haven't been game" to try it. I remember starting to read the documentation for this and deciding to postpone this experiment until I became more familiar with Linux. > 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. > [Joe da Silva] Interesting idea (especially barter) ... although as you say, probably not so practical across the Pacific Ocean. This Linux stuff is just for personal use, partly (only partly!) motivated by the fact the my Windoze 3.11's stability has deteriorated to the point of being unusable. I need this to read Acrobat PDF files, occasionally access web sites requiring Javascript, and very rarely, viewing Word documents - all of which Linux can do! :-). > Rob - /dev/rob0