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The dosemu HOWTO by Mike Deisher. Updated by Uwe Bonnes, bon@elektron.ikp.physik.th- darmstadt.de v0.64.4, 15 March 1997 for dosemu-0.64.4 (in progress) This is the `Frequently Asked Questions' (FAQ) / HOWTO document for dosemu. The most up-to-date version of the dosemu-HOWTO may be found in ftp.mathematik.th-darmstadt.de:/pub/linux/bonnes/. 1. The preliminaries 1.1. What is dosemu, anyway? To quote the manual, "dosemu" is a user-level program which uses certain special features of the Linux kernel and the 80386 processor to run MS-DOS in what we in the biz call a `DOS box.' The DOS box, a combination of hardware and software trickery, has these capabilities: o the ability to virtualize all input/output and processor control instructions o the ability to support the word size and addressing modes of the iAPX86 processor family's "real mode," while still running within the full protected mode environment o the ability to trap all DOS and BIOS system calls and emulate such calls as are necessary for proper operation and good performance o the ability to simulate a hardware environment over which DOS programs are accustomed to having control. o the ability to provide MS-DOS services through native Linux services; for example, dosemu can provide a virtual hard disk drive which is actually a Linux directory hierarchy." 1.2. Names and numbers (xx/yy/zz) means day zz in month yy in year xx(97/2/9). winemu mean WinOS/2 running in dosemu(97/2/10). 1.3. What version of Dosemu should I use? Dosemu uses the same numbering scheme as the kernel. Uneven second numbers are for possible unstable developper releases, even second numbers are for releases considered stable. At the time of writing, 0.64.4 is the latest stable release, while 0.65.0.6 ist the latest developper's release. So if you want to use dosemu, get the latest stable release (97/02/28). (xx/yy/zz) means day zz in month yy in year xx(97/2/9). winemu mean WinOS/2 running in dosemu(97/2/10). 1.4. What's the newest version of dosemu and where can I get it? The newest version of dosemu as of (97/2/9) is dosemu0.64.4 and can be ftp'ed from: tsx-11.mit.edu:/pub/linux/ALPHA/dosemu/ ftp.suse.com:/pub/dosemu/ However, pre-release versions are also available for developers and ALPHA testers. They can be retrieved from: http://www.ednet.ns.ca/auto/rddc Remember that this is ALPHA code, however: there may be serious bugs and very little documentation for new features. At present, the devel¡ opment version is known to have bugs. Please use it only if you like to do active development. Don't report bugs in the development ver¡ sion, fix them instead. 1.5. Where can I ask questions? If you have problems regarding installing and running dosemu after reading the documentation, first try to help yourself: Your question has probably been asked and perhaps answered before. Try some search engine on the internet to retrieve that information. E.g. you can ask http://www.dejanews.com to find all newsnet articles containing the keywords of your question. Helping yourself will probably be faster than asking a well known question. It too frees up the time of developpers from answering trivial question and so helps the further development of dosemu(97/2/9) . 1.6. Where can I report bugs and ask questions? If you want to ask questions and report bugs regarding dosemu, you should consider subscribing to the linux-msdos-digest mailing list. To subscribe, send mail to Majordomo@vger.rutgers.edu with the following command in the body of your email message: subscribe linux-msdos-digest your_username@your.email.address If you ever want to remove yourself from the mailing list, you can send mail to Majordomo@vger.rutgers.edu with the following command in the body of your email message: unsubscribe linux-msdos-digest your_username@your.email.address (95/8/11). When you are subscribed to linux-msdos, you can send your report as mail to linux-msdos@vger.rutgers.edu. There is a gate that send mails to linux-msdos@vger.rutgers.edu as postings to the news¡ group named linux.dev.msdos. If your News provider doesn't carry that group, ask her(him) to add that group(97/2/10). 1.7. Where can I follow the development? If you want to follow the development of dosemu, there is a mailing list for developpers. To subscribe, send mail to Majordomo@ednet.ns.ca with the following command in the body of your email message: subscribe msdos-devel your_username@your.email.address If you ever want to remove yourself from the mailing list, you can send mail to Majordomo@ednet.ns.ca with the following command in the body of your email message: unsubscribe dosemu-devel your_username@your.email.address Please, don't use this list for the things linux-dosemu-digest is thought for. Contributions to msdos-devel should concern the further development of dosemu. Normal installation problems shouldn't be reported here, and are normally ignored by those reading that list(97/2/9). 1.8. What documentation is available for dosemu? The dosemu manual (dosemu.texinfo) written by Robert Sanders has not been updated in some time but is still a good source of information. It is distributed with dosemu. The "dosemu Novice's Altering Guide" or DANG is a road map to the inner workings of dosemu. It is designed for the adventurous, those who wish to modify the source code themselves. The DANG is maintained by Alistair MacDonald (alistair@slitesys.demon.co.uk) and is found in the doc-directory of the dosemu source tree. The EMU failure list (EMUfailure.txt) is a list of all programs known not to work under dosemu. And then, of course, there is the dosemu FAQ/HOWTO. But you already know about that, don't you. It is also posted once in a while to the mailing list and found in the doc-directory. The most recent version can be found in ftp.mathematik.th- darmstadt.de:/pub/linux/bonnes/(97/2/9). 1.9. I have a program that fails, not listed in EMUfailure First check, if the failure of your program is not caused by some of the fundamental incapabilities of dosemu, listed in EMUfailure. If you think you have something new, please report to linux- msdos@vger.rutgers.edu. Perhaps it can be made going with the help others. Give detailed information about your setup, tell the version of kernel, dosemu etc and name the observed errors. You can use xdos to cut and paste the error message into your report. But keep your report in a readable form. We know the content of ../etc/config.dist. So only send the active lines from your dosemu.conf. And scan through your debug output and at first only send those parts you think are relevant. Few people are willing to decode some long attachment to a mail, to do debugging for others. But keeps your logs at hand, if others ask detailed(97/2/10). 1.10. How do I submit changes or additions to the HOWTO? The preferred method is to edit the file dosemu-HOWTO-xx.x.sgml to incorporate the changes, create a diff file by typing something like diff -uw original-file new-file and send it to bon@elektron.ikp.physik.th-darmstadt.de. If you do not know SGML, that's ok. Changes or new information in any form will be accepted. Creating the diff file just makes it easier on the HOWTO maintainer. :-)(97/2/9) 1.11. Message from Greg... Unless otherwise stated, Linux HOWTO documents are copyrighted by their respective authors. Linux HOWTO documents may be reproduced and distributed in whole or in part, in any medium physical or electronic, as long as this copyright notice is retained on all copies. Commercial redistribution is allowed and encouraged; however, the author would like to be notified of any such distributions. All translations, derivative works, or aggregate works incorporating any Linux HOWTO documents must be covered under this copyright notice. That is, you may not produce a derivative work from a HOWTO and impose additional restrictions on its distribution. Exceptions to these rules may be granted under certain conditions; please contact the Linux HOWTO coordinator at the address given below. In short, we wish to promote dissemination of this information through as many channels as possible. However, we do wish to retain copyright on the HOWTO documents, and would like to be notified of any plans to redistribute the HOWTOs. If you have questions, please contact Greg Hankins, the Linux HOWTO coordinator, at gregh@cc.gatech.edu(95/8/11). 2. Compiling and installing dosemu 2.1. Where are the installation instructions? The installation instructions are in the file, "QuickStart", included in the distribution. 2.2. Top ten problems while compiling and installing dosemu. 1. Forgetting to read the QuickStart Guide. 2. Try to compile some old version of dosemu. 3. Try to compile with a kernel older than 2.0.28 or 2.1.15. 4. Having the wrong linux kernel source sitting in /usr/src/linux or missing /usr/src/linux/include/version.h 5. Use dosemu with a kernel that does not have IPC compiled in. 6. Compile with gcc older than 2.7.2 or libc older than x.x.x. 7. Forget to edit your /etc/dosemu.conf file. 8. Run DOSEMU with partition access while they are already mounted. 9. Don't install dosemu with sufficient privileges (i.e., root). (97/04/08) 2.3. How can I use dosemu on an older version of the Linux Kernel. If you still use 1.2.13 and can't upgarde for some reasons, use dosemu-0.60.4. If you use some version of dosemu below 2.0.28 and 2.1.15, Hans Lermen (lermen@elserv.ffm.fgan.de) reported (97/1/25 and 97/2/11) > Is the dosemu-0.64.3.tgz version of dosemulator for the 2.xx.yy ver¡ sions > of the linux kernel ?? Yes, but ... if ( ((xx == 0) && (yy >= 28)) || ((xx >= 1) && (yy >= 15)) ) take_dosemu_0_64_4(); else { if (xx == 1) exit(1); take_dosemu_0_64_2_x(); } ;-) 2.4. How do I make aout binaries? Starting with version 0.64.4 there is no a.out support any more. If you absolutely need it, you must use version 0.64.3.1. The configure script then should take care for this, if you setup is a standard setup(97/2/11). 2.5. How do I compile dosemu on a machine with low memory? Marty Leisner (leisner@sdsp.mc.xerox.com) reported (95/4/8) that If you have problems with running out of swap space you may want to add CFLAGS+=-fno-inline after CFLAGS is defined in dpmi/Makefile. Be careful before you do this and check for the existence of swap space. I found Linux crashes a times when it has no swap space. 2.6. Compilation fails with some strange error regarding "slang" You probably have installed your own version of the Slang library. Hans Lermen <lermen@elserv.ffm.fgan.de> writes(97/2/11): configure --enable-force-slang 2.7. What configurabe options are available Try configure --help to get the list of configurable options listed (97/2/12) 2.8. How can I speed up compilation? Marty Leisner (leisner@sdsp.mc.xerox.com) reported (95/4/8) that The default optimization is -O2. You may want edit the makefile to use -O (compiled somewhat faster/smaller). 2.9. More compilation tips from Marty... Marty Leisner (leisner@sdsp.mc.xerox.com) reported (95/4/8) that You need to have build the kernel on your system to get the current version. If not, you may want to hand modify KERNEL_VERSION in the top level Makefile. The number is of the form, "nmmmppp", where "n" is the version, "mmm" is the minor version, and "ppp" is the patchlevel. For example, kernel 1.1.88 corresponds to "1001088" and kernel 1.2.1 to "1002001". Addition from (lermen@elserv.ffm.fgan.de): For versions greater 0.64.3 this no longer is true. You need to have a valid <linux/version.h>, which has to be part off your standard /usr/include. If you don't have it, you either did a 'make clean' on your kernel source or your distributor failed to support you with this. 2.10. Do I need to compile dosemu as root? (95/4/8) No. You must install it as root, though. Marty Leisner (leisner@sdsp.mc.xerox.com) adds In order to access I/O ports (including the console) dosemu needs to run as root. Running dosemu on an xterm or in X windows and requiring now direct hardware access allows you to run dosemu as a user. The security/setuid implications will be worked on in development releases(95/8/11). Have a look at ..;/doc/SECURITY.readme too(97/2/9). 2.11. How to I patch dosemu. If you do patch dosemu from one version to another, do "make pristine;./configure; make". If you don't make pristine, at least the version of the new executable will be wrong, if the whole thing compiles at all(97/2/9). 2.12. What versions of DOS are known to run with dosemu. Caldera's OpenDos (formerly known as DrDOS) is reported to work with dosemu (Nicolas St-Pierre <draggy@kosmic.org>. As OpenDos can be used free of charge for non-commercial use, it is preferred. However as of now, redistribution is not allowed. You must get OpenDos youself from Caldera's site http://www.caldera.com/dos Hopefully this will change soon, so dosemu can distribute a bootable hdimage. MsDos-6.22 is known to work with dosemu. MsDos-7 aka Win95 works with dosemu to, supposed you have the boot logo switched off and you don't start the graphic shell at bootup. If you make the hdimage bootable with the so called "Rescue Disk" you are offered to make during the Windows installation, you get the right settings. If you use your normal Win95 installation to transfer the system files, have a look at the msdos.sys written on the hdimage and change the settings under the section Options to have entries like Options Logo=0 BootGUI=0 (97/3/7) 2.13. Versions known not to run DOS 4.01 had problems by itself, do it won't work with dosemu either (Mattias Hembruch <mghembru@ece.uwaterloo.ca> 97/04/03) 3. Hard disk setup 3.1. How do I use my hard disk with dosemu? First, mount your dos hard disk partition as a Linux subdirectory. For example, you could create a directory in Linux such as /dos (mkdir -m 755 /dos) and add a line like /dev/hda1 /dos msdos umask=022 to your /etc/fstab. (In this example, the hard disk is mounted read- only. You may want to mount it read/write by replacing "022" with "000" and using the -m 777 option with mkdir). Now mount /dos. Now you can add a line like lredir d: linux\fs/dos to the AUTOEXEC.BAT file in your hdimage (see the comments on LREDIR below). On a multi-user system you may want to use lredir d: linux\fs\${home} where "home" is the name of an environmental variable that contains the location of the dos directory (/dos in this example)(95/8/11). --------------------- Tim Bird (Tim_R_Bird@Novell.COM) states that LREDIR users should be careful when they use LREDIR in the autoexec, because COMMAND.COM will continue parsing the autoexec.bat from the redirected drive as the same file offset where it left off in the autoexec.bat on the physical drive. For this reason, it is safest to have the autoexec.bat on the redirected drive and the physical drive (diskimage) be the same(95/8/11). --------------------- Robert D. Warren (rw11258@xx.acs.appstate.edu) reported (94/4/28) that I boot off a small hdimage file (less than 1 MB - and twice as large as needs be at that), and the next to last line in my config.sys file on the hdimage boot image is: install=c:\lredir.exe c: LINUX\FS\home/dos This will execute lredir just before the command interpreter runs. And I have successfully run it with both command.com and 4DOS. This elim¡ inates the offset problem using lredir in autoexec.bat. Uwe Bonnes (bon@elektron.ikp.physik.th-darmstadt.de) adds (95/8/11) that It is usefull to do: install=C:\subst.exe g: c: before that, so you have still access to your hdimage as drive g: Another useful tip in that circumstance is to configure dosemu to use "autoexec.emu" to keep dos and dosemu apart. 3.2. How can I access the hdimage from Linux? Use the recent mtools, version 3.0 at the time of writing. With a line in /etc/mtools.conf like drive g: file="/var/lib/dosemu/hdimage" Offset=8832 you can use the mtools on the hdimage, like "mdir g:". "mcopy g:/config.emu /tmp" copies the config.emu file from the hdimage to /tmp/config.emu. You can edit it there and copy it back. Use a drive letter you find sensible. "G:" is only an example(07/2/9). 3.3. Can I use my stacked/double-spaced/super-stored disk? At this time, compressed drives cannot be accessed via the redirector (lredir or emufs) on a standard kernel. There is a patch for the kernel to mount compressed files under the name "dmsdosfs". Find it on sunsite.unc.edu and its mirrors http://sunsite.unc.edu:/pub/Linux/system/Filesystems/dosfs/ A good idea is also to look in http://sunsite.unc.edu:/pub/Linux/Incoming for a newer version. How¡ ever, many people have had success by simply uncommenting the disk { wholedisk "/dev/hda" } # 1st partition on 1st disk line in their dosemu config file. Others have had success using disk { partition "/dev/hda1" } Do that on the risk to loose data on a dosemu crash(97/2/9)! If your dos partition is already mounted with write access and you try to run dosemu with partition or whole disk access, dosemu will print a warning message and abort. This prevents DOS and Linux from making independent writes to your disk and trashing the data on your dos partition(95/8/11). --------------------- If LILO is installed, the above will not work. However... Thomas Mockridge (thomas@aztec.co.za) reported (94/8/5) that To boot dosemu with LILO and Stacker 4.0 I did a little work around... 1. dd the MBR to a file. (or norton utility, etc., first 512 bytes) 2. Boot dos (from full boot not emu), do a fdisk /mbr, make your dos partition active with (dos) fdisk. 3. Copy the new MBR to a file. 4. Replace the original MBR 5. Copy the second MBR to /var/lib/dosemu/partition.hda? (Whichever is your dos partition) 6. Set dosemu.conf disk {partition "/dev/hda? ?"} 7. Start dosemu and and voila! No LILO. --------------------- Holger Schemel (q99492@pbhrzx.uni-paderborn.de) reported (94/2/10) that Works even fine under dosemu with MS-DOS 6.0. If you have problems, then you have to edit the file 'DBLSPACE.INI' manually and change the disk letter to the letter your drive gets under dosemu. --------------------- Darren J Moffat (moffatd@dcs.gla.ac.uk) also reported (94/3/27) "...use 6.2 if you can get it!! Just make sure you have a LILO boot disk on hand since dos 6{.2} will change the MBR of the boot HZ." 4. Parallel ports, serial ports and mice 4.1. Port access worked with older version, but doesn't work now! Read ../doc/README.port-io and the port-section in ../etc/config.dist 4.2. Port access was faster with older versions! To have a chance to log port access, by default every port access produces an exception out of vm86-mode. This takes some time. If you don't want to log port access, use the keyword "fast" in the appropriate port statement. 4.3. Where are the (microsoft compatible) mouse drivers? Tom Kimball (tk@pssparc2.oc.com) reported (93/11/24) that Several people said to use a different mouse driver and suggested some. I found a couple that seem to work fine. oak.oakland.edu:/pub/msdos/mouse/mouse701.zip (mscmouse) oak.oakland.edu:/pub/msdos/mouse/gmous102.zip (gmouse) Normally you can use dosemu's internaldriver, so you don't need any additional mousedriver in dosemu outside winemu(97/2/10). 4.4. Why doesn't the mouse driver work? Mark Rejhon (mdrejhon@magi.com) reported (95/4/7) that If you start the mouse driver and it just hangs (it might actually take 30-60s), but if you are waiting longer than a minute for the mouse driver to start, try specifying the COM port that the mouse is on, at the mouse driver command line. 4.5. Why does dosemu clobber COM4? Rob Janssen (rob@pe1chl.ampr.org) reported (94/3/24) that According to jmorriso@bogomips.ee.ubc.ca, "dosemu still clobbers COM4 (0x2e8, IRQ 5). 0x2e8 isn't in ports{} in config. I have to run setserial /dev/cua3 irq 5 on it after dosemu exits." This is caused by your VGA BIOS. I have found that by enabling the IO port trace and seeing where it was clobbered. Disable the "allowvideoportaccess on" line in config and it will work fine. When you then have problems with the video, try to enable more selective ranges of IO addresses (e.g., 40-43). 4.6. How do I use dosemu over the serial ports? 4.7. How can I switch between dosemu and a shell over the serial line? John Taylor (taylor@pollux.cs.uga.edu) reported (94/5/25) that I am running Linux 1.1.13 and want to point out a great feature that should be protected and not taken out (IMHO). With the 52 version, I can run the program, "screen." From screen, i can invoke dos -D-a. What is really great (IMHO) is the screen commands (the CTRL-A cmds) still work. This means I can do a CTRL-A C and add another unix shell, and switch between the two (DOS / UNIX). This allows me to use dosemu over the serial line really well, because switching is made easy. 4.8. How can I get the parallel ports to work? The dosemu.conf has lines at the end to redirect printers to either lpr or a file. If you want direct access to the bare metal, comment out these emulation lines, and add the line ports { device /dev/lp0 fast range 0x3bc 0x3bf } # lpt0 for the "monitor card" printer port (corresponds to /dev/lp0), or ports { device /dev/lp1 fast range 0x378 0x37f } # lpt1 ports { device /dev/lp1 fast range 0x278 0x27f } # lpt2 for LPT1 (/dev/lp1) and LPT2 (/dev/lp2) respectively(97/2/9). 5. Multiple users and Non-interactive sessions 5.1. Can I use dosemu on a multi-user system? Corey Sweeney (corey@amiganet.xnet.com) reported (93/12/8) that If you are running dosemu on a system in which more then one person may want to run dosemu, then you may want to change the directory of your hard drive image. Currently in the /etc/dosemu.conf file there exists the line saying that the hard drive image is "hdimage". If you change this to /var/lib/dosemu/hdimage then people do not have to worry about what directory they are in when they run dosemu, and hdimage does not have to be moved each time you upgrade to the next patch level. If you do do this for multi-user dosemu, then you will want to make the hdimage in /var/lib/dosemu read-only for everyone but the dosemu administrator. Note that you can use the new emufs.sys thing to mount a "public" directory and/or a "private" directory (a sub-directory in each person's home directory). [Note: Users may also create a personal configuration file named /.dosrc (same format as /etc/dosemu.conf) to run their own copy of dos.] 5.2. How can I run dos commands non-interactively? I have been meaning to write an article on this for quite some time but have not gotten around to it. Here are some hints from others: Dan Newcombe (newcombe@aa.csc.peachnet.edu) reported (94/1/27) that Here is an idea (untested) to be able to run a DOS command from the command line (or menu choice, etc...) without modifying the actual emulator. [Your dos partition is assumed to be mounted under Linux, already.] Suppose you wanted to run wp60.exe with the parameter "wp60 d:\doc\paper.txt". You would do something like "dosrun wp60 d:\doc\paper.txt". "dosrun" would be a linux shell program that would a) edit/modify/recreate the dos autoexec.bat from your dos partition and b) simply run dosemu (e.g., "dos -C >/dev/null". Step a) would somehow keep all the stuff you'd normally want in autoexec.bat (e.g., mouse.com) and the last line would be "wp60 d:\doc\paper.txt". On the dosemu side, beforehand, you would have to modify the config.sys file (located in hdimage) so that it 1) uses emufs to access the dos partition as D:, 2) sets "COMPSEC=D:\ (I think. I don't have a DOS manual around.), and 3) sets "shell=c:\command.com /p". The idea is that for each time that you load the DOS emulator, you will recreate an autoexec.bat that is specific to that session. What makes it specific is that the last line will execute the program you want. The modifications on the hdimage are to tell the emulator/DOS that you want to use (and effectively) boot off of D:, which will be the actual DOS partition. If you do not use hdimage and access the DOS filesystem directly upon boot-up of dosemu, then this will work, and you don't have to go through the hdimage part of this all. --------------------- Daniel T. Schwager (danny@dragon.s.bawue.de) reported (94/7/2) that You can use different dosemu.conf files (and different hd-boot-images with different autoexec.bat's) and call dosemu like $ dos -F my_quicken_q_exe_dosemu.conf --------------------- Dietmar Braun (braun@math20.mathematik.uni-bielefeld.de) reported (94/7/4) that This is no problem at all when you use the redirector of dosemu. It is possible to redirect a drive letter to a linux path given by an environment variable. So I have a shell script named "DOS" which does something like mkdir /tmp/dos.$$ DOSTMP=/tmp/dos.$$; export DOSTMP and then a little trick to get "echo $* > $DOSTMP/startup.bat" really working (actually a small C Program which turns '/' in '\' and termi¡ nates lines correctly for messy dos with cr/lf pairs and adds ^Z at the end of the file), creates startup files, links and so on in this directory, and then starts dosemu. Within "autoexec.bat" drive c: is redirected from hdimage to this tmp-directory, which has links for $HOME and $PWD. So if I want to see my filenames shortened to 8.3 I can type "DOS dir" and I get my current directory listing. So I have full DOS multi user (I don't have any DOS partition and redirecting to Linux preserves user permissions) and multi tasking. (dosemu sessions are completely independent). I did this once to be able to use a dos driver for my printer. My printcap df is actually a DOS program. So you can even make DOS executables act as lpr filters. 6. dosemu and Netware 6.1. How do I get Netware access from dosemu? As always, access through the Linux filesystem is preferred. Mount your Netware drives with Caldera's Netware utilities or Volker Lendecke's free ncpfs utility (ftp://ftp.gwdg.de:/pub/linux/misc/ncpfs). If you need real IPX access, e.g. to run Novell's "syscon", read ../doc/NOVELL-HOWTO.txt. 7. dosemu and X-windows(97/2/9). 7.1. Can I run dosemu in console mode while running X? Ronald Schalk (R.Schalk@uci.kun.nl) reported (94/1/17) that Yes, no problem. Just remember to use ctrl-alt-<Fn> to go to a Virtual Console (VC), and you can run any Linux application (dosemu is a linux-application). I've got almost always WP5.1 in a dos session. [Note: Use ctrl-alt-F7 to switch back to X from dosemu, if X runs on VC7.] 7.2. Is it possible to run dosemu in a window in X-windows? If you have X installed and you have successfully compiled dosemu and run it successfully outside X-windows, you should be able to run "xdos" or "dos -X" right away to bring up a dosemu window. If this does not work, make sure: 1. Dosemu has X support compiled in. This is default, however if you you have configured dosemu with "./configured --without-x", you don't have X support. So make "make pristine; ./configure; make; make install" should build you a dosemu-executable with X support, if you have the X-libraries installed in /usr/X11R6. 2. Set up your X key-mappings. In an xterm, type xmodmap -e "keycode 22 = 0xff08" xmodmap -e "keycode 107 = 0xffff" These lines fixes the backspace and delete keys respectively. 3. Configured the X-related configuration options in your /etc/dosemu.conf file. Alternatively, you can run dosemu inside a color xterm, which is not recommended because many color xterms have buggy support for the complex text display capabilities of dosemu. This does not require X_SUPPORT to be compiled into dosemu. However, if you really want to do this, do the following steps: 1. Install ansi_xterm. The recommended package is available as: tsx-11.mit.edu:/pub/linux/ALPHA/dosemu/Development/ansi-xterm-R6.tar.gz 2. Set up your X key-mappings. In an xterm, type xmodmap -e "keycode 22 = 0xff08" xmodmap -e "keycode 107 = 0xffff" These lines fixes the backspace and delete keys, respectively. 3. Configured the terminal-related (not X-related) settings in /etc/dosemu.conf (972/9). Marty Leisner (leisner@sdsp.mc.xerox.com) reported (95/3/31) that I have xrdb log the following resources dosxterm*Font: vga dosxterm*geometry: 80x25 dosxterm*saveLines: 25 or I alias "dosxterm" to "term -fn vga -title dosxterm -geometry 80x25 -sl 25" If you use the xrdb method, all you have to do is run "xterm -name dosxterm" 7.3. Xdos dosen't work on a remote X-display! At present, dosemu is set up to use the MIT shared memory extensions. This extension only works on a local display. If you want to run xdos on a remote display, configure dosemu with "./configure --enable- nomitshm" after a "make pristine" or on the clean source tree(97/2/9). 7.4. Xdos dosen't find the VGA font Check that the vga fonts you installed are listed in the font.dir of the directory you installed the fonts in: hertz:~> grep misc /usr/X11R6/lib/X11/XF86Config FontPath "/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/misc/" hertz:~> grep vga /usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/misc/fonts.dir vga.pcf vga vga11x19.pcf vga11x19 hertz:~> ls /usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/misc/vga* /usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/misc/vga.pcf /usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/misc/vga11x19.bdf /usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/misc/vga11x19.pcf If you installed some X-fonts, like you did when you installed dosemu with X-Support for the first time, "mkfontdir" and then "xset fp rehash" needs to be run. The dosemu install should take care for "mkfontdir" and tells you about "xset fp rehash". Tell us if it dosen't work for you. (97/2/13) 7.5. The vga font is very smal on my high resolution Display Look for the vga11x19 font. (97/2/13) 7.6. Dosemu compilation fails with some strange error regarding X! As stated above, dosemu uses the MIT shared memory extensions by default. Under XFree86 they are only available with Version 3.1.2 and above. If you have an older version, consider to upgrade, or configure dosemu to not use this extension (see last section)(97/2/9). 7.7. Does ansi emulation work properly? Marty Leisner (leisner@sdsp.mc.xerox.com) reported (95/3/31) that Yes. I use nnansi.com under X windows. I find 25, 43 and 50 line mode work properly, however 50 line mode is difficult to use on a 1024x768 screen (unless smaller fonts are used are you use a bigger screen. 43 line mode will resize the xterm window to use 43 lines. 8. dosemu and MS-Windows 3.1 8.1. Is it possible to run MS-Windows 3.1 under dosemu? The ../doc/README.Windows file says: *************************************************************** * WARNING!!! WARNING!!! WARNING!!! WARNING!!! WARNING!!! * * * * Danger Will Robinson!!! This is not yet fully supported * * and there are many known bugs! Large programs will almost * * certainly NOT WORK!!! BE PREPARED FOR SYSTEM CRASHES IF * * YOU TRY THIS!!! * * * * WARNING!!! WARNING!!! WARNING!!! WARNING!!! WARNING!!! * *************************************************************** Okay, it is possible to boot WINOS2 (the modified version of Windows 3.1 that OS/2 uses) under DOSEMU. Many kudos to Lutz & Dong! However, YOU NEED BOTH LICENSES, for WINDOWS-3.1 as well OS/2 !!! There are many known problems. Windows is prone to crash, could take data with it, large programs will not load, etc. etc. etc. In other words, it is NOT ready for daily use. Many video cards are known to have problems (you may see a nice white screen, however, look below for win31-in-xdos). Your program groups are all likely to disappear. On the other hand, if you're dying to see the little Windows screen running under Linux and you have read this CAREFULLY and PROMISE NOT TO BOMBARD THE DOSEMU DEVELOPERS WITH "MS Word 6.0 doesn't run!!!" MESSAGES... 1. Get DOSEMU & the Linux source distributions. 2. Unpack DOSEMU. 3. Configure DOSEMU typing './configure' and do _not_ disable vm86plus. 4. Compile DOSEMU typing 'make'. 5. Get the OS2WIN31.ZIP distribution from ... ???? ... oh well, and now you have the first problem. It _was_ on ibm.com sometime ago, but has vanished from that site, and as long as it was there, we could mirror it. ... you see the problem? However, use 'archie' to find it, it will be around somewhere on the net ... for some time ;-) 5. Unpack the OS2WIN31 files into your WINDOWS\SYSTEM directory. (Infact you only need WINDOWS/SYSTEM/os2k386.exe and the mouse driver) 7. Startup dosemu (make certain that DPMI is set to a value such as 4096) 8. Copy the file winemu.bat to your c: drive. 9. Cross your fingers. Good luck! REMEMBER: THIS IS NOT AT ALL RECOMMENDED!!! THIS IS NOT RECOMMENDED!!! WE DO NOT RECOMMEND YOU TRY THIS!!! --------- 8.2. Windows 3.x in xdos: As of version 0.64.3 DOSEMU is able to run Windows in xdos. Of course, this is not recommended at all, but if you really want to try, it is safer then starting windows-31 on the console, because _when_ it crashes, it doesn't block your keyboard or freeze your screen. Hints: 1. Get Dosemu & Linux source. 2. Unpack dosemu. 3. Run "./configure" to configure Dosemu (it will enable vm86plus as a default). 4. Type "make" to compile. 5. Get a Trident SVGA drivers for Windows. The files are tvgaw31a.zip and/or tvgaw31b.zip. They are available at garbo.uwasa.fi in /windows/drivers (any mirrors?). 6. Unpack the Trident drivers. 7. In Windows setup, install the Trident "800x600 256 color for 512K boards" driver. 8. Do the things described above to get and install OS2WIN31. 10. Start xdos. 11. In Dosemu, go to windows directory and start winemu. 12. Cross your fingers. 8.3. Can I install windows from within dosemu? No you cant't. Dos will tell you something like The XMS driver you have on your system is not compatible with Win¡ dows... You need to install windows from Dos. You can copy the windows tree to somewhere on your Linux Filesystem and use lredir to mount it on the same place as it is in dos. Example: You have windows in d:\windows You have d:\ mounted as /dosc in Linux You copy the windows tree to Linux, e.g. "cp -a /dosd/windows /usr/share Inside dosemu you redirect the copied tree like lredir d: linux\fs\dosd Now dosemu can't mess around in you windows directory, but changes in the windows directory aren't seen by dosemu too. If you want to do the same with windows on drive c:> look in this FAQ how to redirect c:. But you can use "setup" from inside the windows directory to install drivers and change some settings. (97/2/1497) 8.4. Notes for the mouse under win31-in-xdos: 1. Use the mouse driver "mouse.drv" from WinOS2 2. In order to let the mouse properly work you need the following in your win.ini file: [windows] MouseThreshold1=0 MouseThreshold2=0 MouseSpeed=0 3. The mouse cursor gets not painted by X, but by windows itself, so it depends on the refresh rate how often it gets updated, though the mouse coordinates movement itself will not get delayed. ( In fact you have 2 cursors, but the X-cursor is given an 'invisible' cursor shape while within the DOS-Box. ) 4. Because the coordinates passed to windows are interpreted relatively, we need to calibrate the cursor. This is done automatically whenever you enter the DOS-Box window: The cursor gets forced to 0,0 and then back to its right coordinates. Hence, if you want to re-calibrate the cursor, just move the cursor outside and then inside the DOS-Box again. (97/2/10) 8.5. Why did my Icon dissapear from the Programmanager? MS-Windows and WinOS2 handle the program manager group different. While MS-Win store the setup in progman.ini, WinOS2 what's the conted of progman.ini in system.ini. Her a tip from (friest@acm.org (Todd T. Fries)): cat progman.ini >> system.ini Be sure to use >> :-) 9. Video and sound 9.1. Can I run 32-bit video games under dosemu? Mark Rejhon (mdrejhon@magi.com) reported (95/4/8) that With the recent DPMI improvements that has gone into 0.60, you can now run some 32-bit video games in dosemu. If the game is compatible in an OS/2 DOS box, there are chances that it will work in dosemu. (Example 32-bit games include Descent, Dark Forces, Mortal Kombat 2, Rise of The Triad, which have all successfully been tested in recent dosemu releases). Before you attempt to run a video game, you must have the keyboard configured in raw keyboard mode and enabled VGA graphics modes, in the /etc/dosemu.conf file. If you have successfully run graphics programs in dosemu, and are prepared to take the risk of a possible system crash (this is because you are letting dosemu run with root access to the video card, and leaves the possibility of putting the video card in a bad state that is difficult to recover from) then you can go ahead and try running the video game. Note, however, you will have to turn off the sound in the game. (Someone will have to program in sound board emulation before we can avoid this). Note that game timers can be a little bit slow, due to Linux multitasking and lack of high-frequency timer support. So the games may run from anywhere from 5 to 100 percent speed. Typically, the speed is approximately 50 percent in recent dosemu releases and is expected to improve eventually. Who knows, it might even work. If you can't get it to work, check EMUfailure if the program is listed there, or falls in a category of programs that at present don't or probably never work with dosemu. If you think, it should be listed in EMUfailure, report to linux- msdos@vger.rutgers.edu Addition from (lermen@elserv.ffm.fgan.de(97/2/11)): There is a security hole when having enabled DPMI and having dosemu suid root (especially when using dos4gw-based games), the client is able to access the whole user space, hence also can modify the dosemu code itself. Use of the 'secure on' option in /etc/dosemu.conf disables this, but then you can't run those games. 9.2. Exiting from dosemu gives me a screen full of garbage. (95/4/8) The problem is that the font information for the VGA text screen is not being saved. Get a copy of the svgalib package. The current source is in sunsite.unc.edu:/pub/Linux/libs/graphics/svgalib125.tar.gz It may also be available as a pre-compiled package in your favorite Linux distribution (e.g., Slackware, etc.). Use savetextmode to save the current text mode and font to a file in /tmp before running dosemu. Then run textmode upon exiting dosemu to restore it. Addition from (lermen@elserv.ffm.fgan.de(97/2/11)): Have a look also at src/arch/linux/debugger/README.recover and README.dosdebug, dosdebug can aid you recovering. 9.3. How do I get dosemu to work with my Trident/Actix/other video card? [The screen flickers violently, displays the video BIOS startup message, and hangs.] Andrew Tridgell (tridge@nimbus.anu.edu.au) reported (94/1/29) that I found with early versions it would work if I used: ports { 0x42 } but that sometimes my machine would crash when it was cycling the video BIOS in dosemu. This is because you're allowing the VGA BIOS to re-program your clock, which severely stuffs with Linux. This prompted me to write the read-only and masking patches for dosemu, which I believe are still in the latest version. I now use: ports { readonly 0x42 } and it boots dosemu more slowly, but more reliably. --------------------- Tim Shnaider (tims@kcbbs.gen.nz) also reported (94/1/18) that One way of fixing this is to use the GETROM program to dump your video BIOS to a file and edit the config file in the /etc/dosemu directory There will be a few video lines. Here is my video line video { vga console graphics chipset trident memsize 1024 vbios_file /etc/dosemu/vbios } where vbios is the file generated by typing getrom > vbios --------------------- Douglas Gleichman (p86884@tcville.edsg.hac.com) reported (94/9/1) that (with the ATI Graphics Ultra) For dosemu 0.52 you need to add this line to your dosemu.conf file: ports { 0x1ce 0x1cf 0x238 0x23b 0x23c 0x23f 0x9ae8 0x9ae9 0x9aee 0x9aef } The board self test will list a failure but graphics programs will run fine. 9.4. Why doesn't my soundcard software work with dosemu? Hannu Savolainen (hsavolai@cs.Helsinki.FI) reported (94/3/21) that The dosemu and any DOS program with it run under control of a protected mode operating system. This means that the memory is not mapped as the program expects. If it somehow manages to start DMA based recording with SB, the recorded sound doesn't find it's way to the application. It just destroys some data in the memory. James B. MacLean (macleajb@ednet.ns.ca) reported (94/6/19) that Sorry to disappoint, but at this time dosemu does not support directly the necessary interception of interrupts or DMA generally required for sound card access via dosemu :-(. It's bound to happen at some future date though :-), And Corey Sweeney (orey@d94.nnb.interaccess.com) reports (97/2/15) Sound code is being currectly being worked on 10. Games 10.1. Duke3d dosen't work Hans Lermen <lermen@elserv.ffm.fgan.de> said (97/2/16): duke3d must be 'configured' via a setup, within this setup you have to choose 'keyboard + mouse', else it won't work. 11. Other Hardware 11.1. How do I get my xxxxx device working under dosemu? Corey Sweeney (corey@bbs.xnet.com) reported (94/5/30) that Here is a log of my adventures trying to get devices working under dosemu. So far I've gotten my voice mail system working and my scanner half working. Here's how: 1. Look in your manual and find if your card uses any ports. If your manual gives you some, put them in your config file at the "ports" line. Remember that sometimes you need to have several ports in a row, and the first one might be the only one documented. 2. Try it out. If it doesn't work, or you don't have a manual (or your manual is as crappy as my AT&T manual:) then run dosemu with "dos -D+T 2> /tmp/io.debug". Run your device software, then exit dosemu. Look through /tmp/io.debug and find any port numbers it might give you. Try adding those to the port lines and try running dosemu again. Ports below 0x400 with the keyword fast don't get logged(97/2/9)! 3. If you still fail then you may need interrupts. Find out what interrupt the card uses and verify, that the kernel isn't using the IRQ in question (cat /proc/interrupts). Hans Lermen wrote (97/2/17): 1. Make sure Linux doesn't use this network card 2. Set 'sillyint { use_sigio 5 }' in /etc/dosemu.conf (some addittions (97/2/11)) and that's about it... Question: What if my card uses DMA? Answer: Your screwed. 12. Problems and fixes 12.1. Security issues A full featured Dosemu needs to be suid root, e.g to access ports. Dosemu runs as suid "root" only where it is needed, and releases this right thereafter. But with DPMI, the Dos client programm can access the whole user space, hence also can modify the dosemu code itself. Use of the 'secure on' option in /etc/dosemu.conf disables this, but then you can't run any more some applications like 32-bit video games (lermen@elserv.ffm.fgan.de(97/2/11)). E.g. running a well known compiler with full access might have smaller security implications then some game, obtained by some obscure source. 12.2. Dosemu dies when booting. I have Win95 installed. Dosemu relies that the Dos-Version on the hdimage and the Drive you map to contain command.com are the same. If not, dosemu will crash sooner or later. With the dual boot option Win95 offers when pressing the F4,F5 and F8 Keys with the "Starting Win95" text, versions on the Win95 drive may swap. Take special care for command.com. Let your shell variable in config.emu point to the correct static version of command.com, e.g.: shell=c:\win95\command.com c:\ /P /E:1024 (97/02/28) Learn about dosdebug and use it to control a dosemu session(97/2/9) 12.3. Dosemu hangs! How can I kill it? Learn about dosdebug and use it to control a dosemu session(97/2/9) 12.4. Dosemu crashed and now I can't type anything. Daniel Barlow(jo95004@sable.ox.ac.uk) reported (95/4/8) that If you have no terminal or network access that you can use to log in, you may have to press the reset button. If you can still get a usable shell somehow, run "kbd_mode -a" to switch the keyboard out of raw mode, and/or "stty sane" on the console so that you can see what you're typing. A useful thing to do is to use a script to run dosemu, and run "kbd_mode -a" automatically right after dosemu. When dosemu crashes, the script usually will resume running, and execute the "kbd_mode -a" command. 12.5. I've enabled EMS memory in dosemu.conf but it does not help. Rob Janssen (rob@pe1chl.ampr.org) reported (94/7/11) Don't forget to load the provided ems.sys from the config.sys file. 12.6. How do I get rid of all those annoying "disk change" messages? (94/8/11) Grab and install klogd. Try sunsite.unc.edu:/pub/Linux/system/Daemons/sysklogd1.2.tgz 12.7. Why won't dosemu run a second time after exiting in console mode? Aldy Hernandez (aldy@sauron.cc.andrews.edu) reported (94/7/8) that You should disable your video and/or BIOS caching. 12.8. Why will dosemu run in a term but not in the console? JyiJiin Luo (jjluo@casbah.acns.nwu.edu) reported (94/4/19) that I experienced exactly the same problem before. I figured out all the video shadow in my AMI BIOS must be disabled. Now dosemu runs fine on my system. 12.9. How can I speed up dosemu? In some cases it is useful to play with the value of the HogThreshold variable in your dosemu.conf file. Daniel Barlow(jo95004@sable.ox.ac.uk) reported (95/4/8) that HogThreshold should now be set to approximately half of the BogoMips value that the system reports on boot. 12.10. My CDROM drive has problems reading some files under dosemu. Vinod G Kulkarni (vinod@cse.iitb.ernet.in) reported (94/4/7) that When a CDROM is mounted from linux and used from within dosemu (mapped drive), there could be some problems. The CD-ROM driver (iso9660) in the kernel tries to find out the type of the file (i.e. binary or text). If it can't find, it tries to guess the type of the file using a heuristic. This heuristic fails under some circumstances when a (almost) text file is to be treated as binary. (I do not know if it is a bug or feature.) The result of this is that if you copy such a file from CD-ROM (from linux itself, and not necessarily dosemu), the resulting file will be usually bigger than original file. (Blanks get added before ^J,^M.) So a program running in dosemu gives an error or hangs, which may be mistaken as problem of dosemu. Rob Janssen (pe1chl@rabo.nl) reported (94/8/10) that The way to solve this is to turn off conversion altogether. Pass the option "-o conv=binary" to the mount command mounting the CD-ROM, or use the following in /etc/fstab: /dev/cdrom /cdrom iso9660 conv=binary,ro No patches to the kernel are necessary. 12.11. How do I see debugging output? Daniel Barlow(jo95004@sable.ox.ac.uk) reported (95/4/8) that As of dosemu 0.60, debugging output is redirected to a file specified on the command line. Use "dos -D+a -o /tmp/debug" to log all debug output to /tmp/debug. There should no longer be any need to redirect stderr. 12.12. Why are my keystrokes echoed ttwwiiccee?? Nick Holloway (alfie@dcs.warwick.ac.uk) reported (94/2/22) that After running dos after playing with some stty settings, I was getting doubled key presses. I can now reveal what the reason is! It only happens when dos is run on the console with 'istrip' set. This is (I think) because the raw scancodes are mutilated by the 'istrip', so that key release events look like key press events. So, the input processing needs to be turned off when using the scan codes on a console (it wouldn't be a good idea to do it for tty lines). 12.13. Dosemu scrambles my screen? For those graphics cards not fully supported in dosemu, with allowed console graphics a dosemu crash may leave your console in a scrambles and nearly unusable way. To prepare for that situation, Spudgun <spudgun@earthlight.co.nz> posted following solution. First save your registers when running on the console ~> cat /usr/bin/savetextmode ~> restoretextmode -w /etc/textregs ~> restorefont -w /etc/fontdata Then, when a crash happened, run following script: restoretextmode -r /etc/textregs restorefont -r /etc/fontdata restorepalette If it doesn't fix it nothing will I also found having an X server running sometimes put my Vid card's registers into a strange state where this script made things worse I think since changing X servers and/or running savetextmode on a vt while X was running helped. (97/04/08) 12.14. MS FoxPro 2.6 won't run FoxPro 2.6 doesn't run on network drives. Alexey Naidyonov <growler@growler.tsu.tula.ru> states on that problem: And I guess your FoxPro files are on lredir'ed disk, yeah? The matter is that FoxPro doesn't run on such disk, but when I said disk { partition ... } in /etc/dosemu/conf, it runs. 13. Contributing to the dosemu project 13.1. Who is responsible for dosemu? (97/2/9) Dosemu is built upon the work of Matthias Lautner and Robert Sanders. James B. MacLean (jmaclean@ednet.ns.ca) is responsible for organizing the latest releases of dosemu. History of dosemu Version Date Person ------------------------------------------------- 0.1 September 3, 1992 Matthias Lautner 0.2 September 13, 1992 Matthias Lautner 0.3 ??? Matthias Lautner 0.4 November 26, 1992 Matthias Lautner 0.47 January 27, 1993 Robert Sanders 0.47.7 February 5, 1993 Robert Sanders 0.48 February 16, 1993 Robert Sanders 0.48pl1 February 18, 1993 Robert Sanders 0.49 May 20, 1993 Robert Sanders 0.49pl2 November 18, 1993 James MacLean 0.49pl3 November 30, 1993 James MacLean 0.49pl3.3 December 3, 1993 James MacLean 0.50 March 4, 1994 James MacLean 0.50pl1 March 18, 1994 James MacLean 0.52 June 16, 1994 James MacLean 0.60 April 9, 1995 James MacLean 0.64.4 February 9,1997 Hans Lermen 13.2. I want to help. Who should I contact? The dosemu project is a team effort. If you wish to contribute, see the DPR (dosemu Project Registry). A current copy may be found in ../doc/DANG (97/2/9).