Sender: root AT delorie DOT com Message-ID: <3CF79847.6CFF0325@earthlink.net> Date: Fri, 31 May 2002 09:35:35 -0600 From: Thomas A Webb Organization: Wordwonder.com - an E-zine X-Mailer: Mozilla 4.77 [en] (X11; U; Linux 2.4.17-mosix i586) X-Accept-Language: en MIME-Version: 1.0 To: opendos AT delorie DOT com Subject: Re: DOS/Linux coexistence (was: [Club Dr-DOS]) #2 References: <01FD6EC775C6D4119CDF0090273F74A4FD6747 AT emwatent02 DOT meters DOT com DOT au> <20020530131917 DOT GX27335 AT hal> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-15 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Reply-To: opendos AT delorie DOT com 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