The dosemu HOWTO
Mike Deisher. Updated by Uwe Bonnes for dosemu-0.64.4, 15 March 1997.
Updated by David Hodges, davidhodges@altavista.iname.com
For dosemu-1.2, 27 September 2003
This is the `Frequently Asked Questions' (FAQ) / HOWTO document for
dosemu. The most up-to-date version of the dosemu-HOWTO may be found
at http://www.dosemu.org.
_________________________________________________________________
Table of Contents
1. The preliminaries
1.1. What is dosemu, anyway?
1.2. What operating systems does dosemu work under?
1.3. What processors does dosemu work on?
1.4. What if I have an Alpha/Sparc/Motorola/other non-Intel CPU?
1.5. Do I need MS-DOS to use dosemu?
1.6. Can I run Microsoft Windows programs under dosemu?
1.7. I want to run something that won't run under DOSemu or Wine
1.8. Names and numbers
1.9. What version of Dosemu should I use?
1.10. What's the newest version of dosemu and where can I get it?
1.11. Where can I ask questions?
1.12. Where can I report bugs and ask questions?
1.13. What documentation is available for dosemu?
1.14. I have a program that fails, not listed in EMUfailure.txt
1.15. How do I submit changes or additions to the HOWTO?
1.16. Message from Greg...
2. Compiling and installing dosemu
2.1. Where are the installation instructions?
2.2. Top problems while compiling and installing dosemu.
2.3. How do I make a.out binaries?
2.4. How do I compile dosemu on a machine with low memory?
2.5. Compilation fails with some strange error regarding "slang"
2.6. What configurable options are available?
2.7. Do I need to run dosemu as root?
2.8. How do I patch dosemu?
2.9. What versions of DOS are known to run with dosemu?
3. Hard disk setup
3.1. How do I use my hard disk with dosemu?
3.2. How can I access the hdimage from Linux?
3.3. Can I use my stacked/double-spaced/super-stored disk?
3.4. Creating your own hdimage file.
4. Parallel ports, serial ports and mice
4.1. Port access worked with older version, but doesn't work now!
4.2. Port access was faster with older versions!
4.3. Where are the (microsoft compatible) mouse drivers?
4.4. Why doesn't the mouse driver work?
4.5. Why does dosemu clobber COM4?
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?
4.8. How can I get the parallel ports to work?
5. Multiple users and Non-interactive sessions
5.1. Can I use dosemu on a multi-user system?
5.2. How can I run dos commands non-interactively?
6. dosemu and Netware
6.1. How do I get Netware access from dosemu?
7. dosemu and X-windows(97/2/9).
7.1. How do I obtain fullscreen mode in xdosemu?
7.2. Can I run dosemu in console mode while running X?
7.3. Is it possible to run dosemu in a window in X-windows?
7.4. Xdosemu does not work on a remote X-display!
7.5. Xdosemu does not find the VGA font
7.6. The vga font is very small on my high resolution display
7.7. Dosemu compilation fails with some strange error regarding
X!
7.8. Does ansi emulation work properly?
8. dosemu and MS-Windows 3.x
8.1. Is it possible to run MS-Windows 3.x under dosemu?
8.2. Can I run 32bit stuff in Windows?
8.3. Can I run Windows 3.x in xdosemu
8.4. Can I install windows from within dosemu?
8.5. Notes for the mouse under win3.x-in-xdosemu:
9. Video and sound
9.1. Can I run 32-bit video games under dosemu?
9.2. Exiting from dosemu on the console gives me a screen full of
garbage.
9.3. Why doesn't my soundcard software work with dosemu?
10. Problems and fixes
10.1. Security issues
10.2. dosemu says "ERROR: general protection" and terminates when
I run some program
10.3. Dosemu dies when booting. I have Win95 installed.
10.4. Dosemu hangs! How can I kill it?
10.5. Dosemu crashed and now I can't type anything.
10.6. I've enabled EMS memory in dosemu.conf but it does not
help.
10.7. How do I get rid of all those annoying "disk change"
messages?
10.8. Why won't dosemu run a second time after exiting in console
mode?
10.9. Why will dosemu run in a term but not in the console?
10.10. How can I speed up dosemu?
10.11. How do I see debugging output?
10.12. Why are my keystrokes echoed ttwwiiccee??
10.13. Dosemu scrambles my screen?
10.14. MS FoxPro 2.6 won't run
11. Contributing to the dosemu project
11.1. Who is responsible for dosemu?
11.2. I want to help. Who should I contact?
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/FreeDOS/DR-DOS in what we in the biz call a `DOS box.'
The DOS box, a combination of hardware and software trickery, has
these capabilities:
* the ability to virtualize all input/output and processor control
instructions
* 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
* the ability to trap all DOS and BIOS system calls and emulate such
calls as are necessary for proper operation and good performance
* the ability to simulate a hardware environment over which DOS
programs are accustomed to having control.
* the ability to provide 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. What operating systems does dosemu work under?
Dosemu is primarily written for Linux. At one time it also worked on
NetBSD and possibly FreeBSD, however the graphics emulation was
unlikely to work on NetBSD, which means that all DOS programs that use
graphics mode (most DOS programs) did not work under NetBSD.
_________________________________________________________________
1.3. What processors does dosemu work on?
Dosemu only works on Intel 80x86 processors, e.g. 80386, 80486,
Pentium etc.
_________________________________________________________________
1.4. What if I have an Alpha/Sparc/Motorola/other non-Intel CPU?
Dosemu only works on Intel 80x86 processors but there are
alternatives: Bochs (http://bochs.sourceforge.net) is an open source
PC emulator that runs on most Unixes (as well as MS-Windows). DOSBox
(http://dosbox.sourceforge.net) also emulates the CPU but specializes
in DOS games. QEMU
(http://fabrice.bellard.free.fr/qemu/index.org.html) can launch Linux
processes compiled for one CPU on another CPU. Wine and DOSEMU are the
main targets for QEMU. There are other (non-free) alternatives - see
the comp.emulators.misc FAQ, available via usenet or
http://www.faqs.org/faqs/emulators-faq/
_________________________________________________________________
1.5. Do I need MS-DOS to use dosemu?
No. You need some version of DOS but not necessarily MS-DOS. The
supplied FreeDOS will do for almost all DOS programs. One notable
exception is Windows 3.x. See also Section 2.9.
_________________________________________________________________
1.6. Can I run Microsoft Windows programs under dosemu?
Yes, but it would be better to use the Windows emulator Wine
(http://www.winehq.com). If you insist on running Windows under
dosemu, see section 8 - dosemu and MS-Windows 3.1.
_________________________________________________________________
1.7. I want to run something that won't run under DOSemu or Wine
See Section 1.4, or try VMWARE at http://www.vmware.com or Plex86 at
http://www.plex86.org
_________________________________________________________________
1.8. Names and numbers
(xx/yy/zz)
means day zz in month yy in year xx.
winemu
winemu mean WinOS/2 running in dosemu.
_________________________________________________________________
1.9. What version of Dosemu should I use?
Dosemu uses the same numbering scheme as the kernel used. Uneven
second numbers are for possible unstable developer releases, even
second numbers are for releases considered stable. At the time of
writing, 1.4.0 is the latest stable release, while 1.3.5 is the latest
developer's release. So if you just want to use dosemu, get the latest
stable release.
_________________________________________________________________
1.10. What's the newest version of dosemu and where can I get it?
The newest stable version of dosemu as of 2007/05/05 is dosemu-1.4.0
and can be obtained at http://www.dosemu.org/.
We just decided to leave BETA stage, however: there may be serious
bugs and very little documentation for new features. The development
version is particularly likely to have bugs. Please use it only if you
like to do active development. Preferably fix bugs in the development
version instead of reporting them.
_________________________________________________________________
1.11. 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://groups.google.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 also frees up the time of
developers from answering trivial questions and so helps the further
development of dosemu.
_________________________________________________________________
1.12. 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 mailing list. To
subscribe, send mail to Majordomo@vger.kernel.org with the following
command in the body of your email message:
subscribe linux-msdos your_username@your.email.address
If you ever want to remove yourself from the mailing list, you can
send mail to Majordomo@vger.kernel.org with the following command in
the body of your email message:
unsubscribe linux-msdos 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.kernel.org. There is a gate that
send mails to linux-msdos@vger.kernel.org as postings to the newsgroup
named linux.dev.msdos. If your News provider doesn't carry that group,
ask her(him) to add that group. Before you ask a question, you should
carefully read all of the documentation, including this HOWTO and
check one of the mailing list archives listed at
http://www.dosemu.org/mailinglist.html to see whether your question
has already been asked and answered.
Alternatively, use the SourceForge Bug Tracking System for DOSEMU at
http://sourceforge.net/tracker/?atid=457447&group_id=49784&func=browse
. The advantage of this system is that your bug is less likely
forgotten.
_________________________________________________________________
1.13. What documentation is available for dosemu?
Dosemu comes with documentation. The main documentation files
README.txt and README-tech.txt cover virtually all aspects of dosemu
and may be more up-to-date than this HOWTO.
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 partial list of 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 at http://www.dosemu.org.
_________________________________________________________________
1.14. I have a program that fails, not listed in EMUfailure.txt
First check, if the failure of your program is not caused by some of
the fundamental incapabilities of dosemu, listed in EMUfailure.txt. If
you think you have something new, please report to
linux-msdos@vger.kernel.org. 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 xdosemu to cut and paste the error message into your report. But
keep your report in a readable form. We know the content of the
commented out options. So only send the active lines from your
dosemu.conf and ~/.dosemurc. Try running dosemu with some or all debug
output turned on 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
keep your logs at hand, in case others ask detailed questions.
_________________________________________________________________
1.15. 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 linux-msdos@vger.kernel.org. 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.
:-)
_________________________________________________________________
1.16. 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 INSTALL, included in the
distribution.
_________________________________________________________________
2.2. Top problems while compiling and installing dosemu.
1. Forgetting to read the README and INSTALL.
2. Try to compile some old version of dosemu.
3. Use dosemu with a kernel that does not have IPC compiled in.
4. Compile with gcc older than 2.95.2, egcs older than 2.91.66
(1.1.2) or glibc older than 2.1.3.
5. Forgetting to use a dosemu-freedos-bin tarball when no other DOS
is available on the system.
6. Run DOSEMU with partition access while they are already mounted.
_________________________________________________________________
2.3. How do I make a.out 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 your setup is a standard
setup.
_________________________________________________________________
2.4. 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
src/dosext/dpmi/Makefile. Be careful before you do this and check for
the existence of swap space. I found Linux crashes at times when it
has no swap space.
_________________________________________________________________
2.5. Compilation fails with some strange error regarding "slang"
You probably have plugin_slang off in your compiletime-settings file.
You need to change it to plugin_slang on and recompile.
_________________________________________________________________
2.6. What configurable options are available?
The compiletime-settings.help file describes the options you can
change at compile time. README.txt describes the options you can
change at run time.
_________________________________________________________________
2.7. Do I need to run dosemu as root?
No. Although most of dosemu drops root privilege after initialization,
it is still safer to not run dosemu as root. Most normal DOS
applications don't need dosemu to run as root, especially if you run
dosemu under X. Thus you should not allow users to run a suid root
copy of dosemu, wherever possible, but only a non-suid copy. You can
configure this on a per-user basis using the dosemu.users file, or
setup a configuration using sudo and use dosemu -s (see INSTALL).
Programs that require direct access to hardware ports (e.g. if the
program needs to talk to some unusual hardware that is not supported
by Linux and dosemu) require dosemu to run as root but printers,
serial ports, mice, video cards and sound are emulated by dosemu so
you won't usually need direct hardware access and won't need to run as
root to use these. Some programs are just too sneaky for dosemu's
hardware emulation to work properly though ...
You will need to edit dosemu.users (see dosemu.users.example) for any
suid-root/sudo access beyond console graphics or run dosemu as root
for hardware access.
_________________________________________________________________
2.8. How do 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).
_________________________________________________________________
2.9. What versions of DOS are known to run with dosemu?
All versions of DOS should work with dosemu, with the following
caveats:
DOS 4.01 had problems by itself, so it won't work reliably with dosemu
either.
With MsDos-7 aka Win95 you must not 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
_________________________________________________________________
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 partition 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 run (for instance) lredir f: linux\fs/dos at the DOS
prompt to map drive F to /dos. Re-redirecting C using lredir c:
linux\fs/dos works too but then you need to copy all your dosemu
utilities (in c:\dosemu) to a place where they can still be found. If
you want to boot via /dos, read on.
The README.txt says:
you just can have a Linux directory containing all what you want to
have under your DOS C:. Copy your IO.SYS, MSDOS.SYS or what ever to
that directory (e.g. $HOME/.dosemu/bootdir), put $_hdimage = "bootdir"
into your $HOME/.dosemurc, and up it goes. Alternatively you can
specify an absolute path such as "/dos" or
"/home/username/dosemu/freedos". DOSEMU makes a lredir'ed drive out of
it and can boot from it. You can edit config.sys and autoexec.bat
within this directory before you start dosemu. Further more, you may
have a more sohisticated setup. Given you want to run the same DOS
drive as you normal have when booting into native DOS, then you just
mount you DOS partition under Linux (say to /dos) and put links to its
subdirectories into the boot dir. This way you can decide which
files/directories have to be visible under DOSEMU and which have to be
different. Here's a small and incomplete example bootdir setup:
config.sys
autoexec.bat
command.com -> /dos/command.com
io.sys -> /dos/io.sys
msdos.sys -> /dos/msdos.sys
dos -> /dos/dos
bc -> /dos/bc
windows -> /dos/windows
_________________________________________________________________
3.2. How can I access the hdimage from Linux?
Use mtools. With a line in /etc/mtools.conf like:
drive n: file="/path/to/hdimage" MTOOLS_SKIP_CHECK=1 \
MTOOLS_LOWER_CASE=1 MTOOLS_NO_VFAT=1 partition=1 offset=128
you can use the mtools on the hdimage, like "mdir n:". "mcopy
n:/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. "N:" is only an example.
_________________________________________________________________
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
ibiblio.org and its mirrors
http://ibiblio.org:/pub/Linux/system/filesystems/dosfs/. A good idea
is also to look in http://ibiblio.org:/pub/Linux/Incoming for a newer
version. The "wholedisk" option in older versions of dosemu is no
longer allowed in recent versions, however, a line like
$_hdimage = "/dev/hda1"
may work, if you have read and write access to this device and at the
risk that you could lose all data in that partition on a dosemu crash.
Also it is extremely dangerous to let two dosemu sessions access the
partition at the same time.
If your dos partition is already mounted with write access and you try
to run dosemu with partition 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).
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.
_________________________________________________________________
3.4. Creating your own hdimage file.
There is an extra util program called mkfatimage16 which allows for
creating a hdimage file headers. The full information is in the
manpage (man/mkfatimage16.1) included in your distribution.
To create a hard disk image file with a geometry corresponding to that
of a real hard disk of 32 megabytes run:
mkfatimage16 -k 32768 > hdimage
This is probably too large for most needs; if you need this much
space, consider using the disk redirector.
Usually it is a good idea to format the drive after it.
_________________________________________________________________
4. Parallel ports, serial ports and mice
4.1. Port access worked with older version, but doesn't work now!
Read README.txt and the port-section in dosemu.conf. Also, you must
now you the -s dosemu command line switch.
_________________________________________________________________
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/ttyS3 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 some ports 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 dosemu -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.
You may also consider using dosemu -dumb. In this case the escape
sequences from the DOS applications go directly to the terminal.
_________________________________________________________________
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
or:
$_ports = "device /dev/lp1 fast range 0x278 0x27f" # lpt2
for LPT1 (/dev/lp1) or LPT2 (/dev/lp2) respectively(97/2/9).
Hans Lermen <lermen@dosemu.org> writes:
But NOTE: these lines should not be _added_ simply, the string should
be concatenated such as:
$_ports = "...."
$_ports = $_ports, " device /dev/lp0 fast range 0x3bc 0x3bf"
=
This blank is important
Note: newer kernels don't have hardcoded dependencies between /dev/lp*
and ioports. Check /proc/ioports for lines such as 0378-037a :
parport0.
_________________________________________________________________
5. Multiple users and Non-interactive sessions
5.1. Can I use dosemu on a multi-user system?
Yes, you can configure dosemu on a per-user basis. See README.txt for
details.
_________________________________________________________________
5.2. How can I run dos commands non-interactively?
You can do any of the following:
1. use the keystroke configuration option and the -input command line
option as described in the manual page to specify keystrokes on
the command line that will act exactly as if you had typed them
within dosemu.
2. Use the dosemu [-E] dos-command and unix -e as your last line in
autoexec.bat. The specified dos command is executed. If '-E' is
not given, then DOSEMU exits after running the command.
Here are some additional alternatives:
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:
$ dosemu -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
terminates 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. You probably can not currently access Netware
from FreeDOS.
_________________________________________________________________
7. dosemu and X-windows(97/2/9).
7.1. How do I obtain fullscreen mode in xdosemu?
Toggle between windowed and fullscreen mode using Ctrl-Alt-F.
_________________________________________________________________
7.2. 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.]
_________________________________________________________________
7.3. 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
xdosemu or dosemu -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 compiled dosemu with "x off" in the compiletime-settings
file you don't have X support. So changing "x off" to "x on" in
the compiletime-settings file, followed by "make pristine; make;
make install" should build you a dosemu-executable with X support,
if you have the X-libraries installed in /usr/X11R6.
2. You might need to fix backspace and delete; but nowadays this is
rarely necessary. In that case, set up your X key-mappings. In an
xterm, type xmodmap -e "keycode 22 = 0xff08", and then xmodmap -e
"keycode 107 = 0xffff".
3. Configure the X-related configuration options in ~/.dosemurc.
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. If necessary set up your X key-mappings as explained above.
2. Configure the terminal-related (not X-related) settings in
~/.dosemurc.
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.
_________________________________________________________________
7.4. Xdosemu does not 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
xdosemu on a remote display, you might need to set $_X_mitshm=(off) in
your dosemu.conf or .dosemurc.
_________________________________________________________________
7.5. Xdosemu does not 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
doesn't work for you. (97/2/13)
_________________________________________________________________
7.6. The vga font is very small on my high resolution display
Set $_X_font="vga11x19".
_________________________________________________________________
7.7. 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 by setting mitshm off in
compiletime-settings (97/2/9).
_________________________________________________________________
7.8. 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 or you use a bigger screen. 43
line mode will resize the xterm window to use 43 lines.
DEVICE=c:\bin\nansi.sys in FreeDOS' config.sys works too, except in
"dumb" mode.
_________________________________________________________________
8. dosemu and MS-Windows 3.x
8.1. Is it possible to run MS-Windows 3.x under dosemu?
Yes, versions up to and including Windows for Workgroups 3.11 are
currently working, but only under DOSEMU+MSDOS (not FreeDOS).
_________________________________________________________________
8.2. Can I run 32bit stuff in Windows?
Sorry, no you can't. Win32s is not supported yet, Win9x is neither.
_________________________________________________________________
8.3. Can I run Windows 3.x in xdosemu
Yes, this is similar to using it in DOSEMU on the console; the only
extra thing to consider here is that the emulated graphics card in
xdosemu is a Trident, which is most likely different from your real
graphics card. The mouse also needs some special attention.
Hints:
1. For faster graphics (256 colors instead of 16 is faster in
xdosemu), get the 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?).
2. Unpack the Trident drivers.
3. In Windows setup, install the Trident "800x600 256 color for 512K
boards" driver.
4. Start xdosemu.
5. In Dosemu, start windows.
_________________________________________________________________
8.4. Can I install windows from within dosemu?
Yes, up to and including Windows For Workgroups 3.11.
_________________________________________________________________
8.5. Notes for the mouse under win3.x-in-xdosemu:
1. In order to let the mouse properly work you need the following in
your win.ini file:
[windows]
MouseThreshold1=0
MouseThreshold2=0
MouseSpeed=0
2. 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.
3. 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)
_________________________________________________________________
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:
You can run many 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 on the console, you must have
the keyboard configured in raw keyboard mode, and enabled VGA graphics
modes, in dosemu.conf or run dosemu -s. Moreover you must run DOSEMU
as root, execute it via sudo or make dosemu.bin suid root.
Alternatively try running the game in xdosemu; press Ctrl-Alt-F to
toggle fullscreen mode. Root permissions are unneeded and in almost
all cases no configuration is necessary, but the speed may be slower
than on the console, and a few games still exhibit glitches. Use speed
0 or some high value instead of 0 at the DOS prompt to temporarily set
your HogThreshold to run DOSEMU at full tilt. After exiting the game
use speed 1 or exit DOSEMU to give the CPU some rest.
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.txt 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.txt, report to
<linux-msdos@vger.kernel.org>.
_________________________________________________________________
9.2. Exiting from dosemu on the console 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:
ibiblio.org:/pub/Linux/libs/graphics/svgalib-1.4.3.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 README-tech.txt, where it is explained how
dosdebug can aid you recovering.
If you use a graphical framebuffer console (but not vesafb) then
/usr/sbin/fbset "1400x1050-60" or whatever your normal resolution and
frequency are may help.
_________________________________________________________________
9.3. Why doesn't my soundcard software work with dosemu?
Dosemu includes a Sound Blaster 16 emulator called SBemu. See
sound-usage.txt for information on setting this up. It may not work
for everything. Programs that are known to work are Impulse Tracker
and most games. One that is known not to work well is FastTracker II.
If you have trouble getting sound to work at all, make sure you have a
working OSS driver and have configured everything properly as
described in sound-usage.txt. If most of your sound software works but
some programs don't detect sound, make sure your BLASTER environment
variable is set properly. Finally, make sure you are aware of the
difference between digital sound, FM, and MIDI; it may be, for
example, that you have digital sound working but MIDI isn't set up
properly.
If you believe DOSEMU really is having trouble with a specific
program, and it isn't a configuration error on your part, then please,
submit a bug report! Have a look at sound-usage.txt for information on
getting debugging output.
_________________________________________________________________
10. Problems and fixes
10.1. Security issues
A full featured Dosemu needs to be suid root, e.g to access ports.
Most dos programs don't need this however so when running under X you
usually do not need to run dosemu as root. Dosemu runs as suid "root"
only at the initialization stage, and drops this right thereafter,
except in a forked "port server" (where necessary). But with DPMI, the
Dos client program can access the whole user space, hence also can
modify the dosemu code itself. This cannot lead to privilege elevation
but may crash DOSEMU. There are several other important security
considerations discussed in the Security section of README.txt.
_________________________________________________________________
10.2. dosemu says "ERROR: general protection" and terminates when I run some
program
This will happen if your program uses DPMI and you do not have DPMI
enabled. Try changing the line:
$_dpmi = (off)
in dosemu.conf to:
$_dpmi = (nnnn)
where nnnn is the number of kilobytes of memory you wish to give to
the DOS program (e.g. Doom requires about 4000 kilobytes).
Another likely cause is that your program uses VCPI (see
EMUfailure.txt for more details) or some other means of switching to
protected mode (other than DPMI), in which case it will never work
under dosemu.
If none of these is the case, see Section 1.14.
_________________________________________________________________
10.3. 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)
_________________________________________________________________
10.4. Dosemu hangs! How can I kill it?
Switch to another console and type dosdebug, then type kill (it may
take a while but will work eventually).
_________________________________________________________________
10.5. 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 kbd_mode -a.
Alternatively, if the magic SysRq key is enabled in the Linux kernel,
you can use Alt-SysRq-r to switch to xlate mode, and use Alt-Fn to
switch to any other console (including X, if your screen display is
thoroughly broken).
_________________________________________________________________
10.6. 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 config.sys.
_________________________________________________________________
10.7. How do I get rid of all those annoying "disk change" messages?
(94/8/11) Grab and install klogd. Try:
ibiblio.org:/pub/Linux/system/Daemons/sysklogd1.2.tgz
_________________________________________________________________
10.8. Why won't dosemu run a second time after exiting in console mode?
Aldy Hernandez <aldy@sauron.cc.andrews.edu> reported (94/7/8): You
should disable your video and/or BIOS caching.
_________________________________________________________________
10.9. Why will dosemu run in a term but not in the console?
JyiJiin Luo <jjluo@casbah.acns.nwu.edu> reported (94/4/19): 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.
_________________________________________________________________
10.10. 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): HogThreshold
should now be set to approximately half of the BogoMips value that the
system reports on boot.
_________________________________________________________________
10.11. How do I see debugging output?
Daniel Barlow <jo95004@sable.ox.ac.uk> reported (95/4/8): As of dosemu
0.60, debugging output is redirected to a file specified on the
command line. Use dosemu -D+a -o /tmp/debug to log all debug output to
/tmp/debug. There should no longer be any need to redirect stderr.
_________________________________________________________________
10.12. 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).
_________________________________________________________________
10.13. 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 the 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)
_________________________________________________________________
10.14. 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 $_hdimage="/dev/hda? ..." in
dosemu.conf, it runs.
_________________________________________________________________
11. Contributing to the dosemu project
11.1. Who is responsible for dosemu?
Dosemu is built upon the work of Matthias Lautner and Robert Sanders.
Bart Oldeman <bart@dosemu.org> 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
0.66.3 April 20, 1997 Hans Lermen
0.98.1 December 9, 1998 Hans Lermen
0.98.6 March 21, 1999 Hans Lermen
1.0.0 March 6, 2000 Hans Lermen
1.2.0 January 18, 2004 Bart Oldeman
1.4.0 May 5, 2007 Bart Oldeman
_________________________________________________________________
11.2. I want to help. Who should I contact?
Please join the linux-msdos and dosemu-devel lists; see
http://www.dosemu.org/mailinglist.html for more information.
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