7. The old way of generating a bootable DOSEmu

Since dosemu-0.66.4 and once again since dosemu-0.99.6 you will not need the complicated method of generating a bootable dosemu suite (see Quickstart). However, who knows, maybe you need the old information too and in case you are using the DosC (FreeDos) kernel, you will need the below info, because at the time of writing DosC can't cope with drive redirection.

7.1 Boot ( tool generated `hdimage' method )

Short reminder: a hdimage is a virtual disk the contents of which are put into a nomal Linux file. There is a tool to help you generating a bootable hdimage It doesn't require to boot native DOS (as decsribed below), nor do you need to fiddle with a floppy:

• You need to have mtools-3.8 for this to work
• You need an already installed (native) bootable DOS in one of your partitions (maybe a floppy). If this is the case, you just need to type

    ./setup-hdimage
  

  in the dosemu directory. It will prompt for needed information and generate a bootable /var/lib/dosemu/hdimage.first
• Make _CERTAIN_ that your first disk statement in /etc/dosemu.conf is pointing to /var/lib/dosemu/hdimage.first!
• Run 'dos -C', and dosemu should boot your DOS. If not make certain that the /etc/dosemu.conf is setup correctly. You can't do much DOS stuff at this moment, though you may use the tiny ezedit.com editor to change the config.sys / autoexec.bat to your needs.
• Exit dos by running "c:\exitemu". If you have problems, hold down the <ctrl> and <alt> buttons simultaneously while pressing <pgdn>. (<ctrl><alt><pgdn> will automatically exit dosemu.)

If you don't know how to copy files from/to the hdimage, have a look at the recent mtools package (version 3.6 at time of writeing). If you have the following line in /etc/mtools.conf

drive g: file="/var/lib/dosemu/hdimage.first" partition=1 offset=128

    Copying autoexec.bat
    @echo off
    echo "Welcome to dosemu 0.98!"

7.2 Boot ( `traditional' method )

If you are new to DOSEMU

• Make CERTAIN that your first disk statement in /etc/dosemu.conf IS pointing to your hdimage!
• Reboot DOS (the real version, not DOSEMU.) Put a newly formatted diskette in your a: drive. Run "sys a:" to transfer the system files to the diskette. Copy SYS.COM from your DOS directory (usually C:\\DOS) to the diskette.
• Reboot Linux. Run 'dos -A'. After a short pause, the system should come up. Try "dir c:" which should list the files on the harddrive distribution image. If that works, run: "sys c:". Exit dos by running "c:\exitemu". If you have problems, hold down the <ctrl> and <alt> buttons simultaneously while pressing <pgdn>. (<ctrl><alt><pgdn> will automatically exit dosemu.)

If you already have a HDIMAGE file

• If you have a previous version of DOSEMU running, you should copy the *.SYS, *.COM, & *.EXE files in the ./commands directory over to the hdimage drive that you boot from. Some of these files have changed.

If you don't know how to copy files from/to the hdimage

• Have a look at the recent mtools package (version 3.6 at time of writeing). If you have the following line in /etc/mtools.conf

       drive g: file="/var/lib/dosemu/hdimage" partition=1 offset=128
  

  then you can use all the mtool commands to access it, such as

      Copying autoexec.bat
      @echo off
      echo "Welcome to dosemu 0.66!"
  

all clear ? ;-)