README.bindist

====================================================
The DOSEMU/FreeDos ready-to-use binary distribution.
====================================================


INSTALL
-------

An easy way to get DOSEMU working on your machine is to use
the ready-to-use DOSEMU binary distribution. This one comes in 2 packages
from www.dosemu.org:

  - dosemu-freedos-<version>-bin.tgz

      A tarball containing a collection of suitable FreeDos binaries,
      eventually patched to fit DOSEMU needs, together with some GNU
      tools you may find useful.

  - dosemu-<version>-bin.tgz

      A tarball containing the recent DOSEMU binaries together with a
      user local configuration setup.

This installation fits into any user HOME directory and can be used
and installed without root permissions.
You have to unpack _both_ tarballs (as a normal user, NOT as root) into
the same directory (regardless what ever) within your HOME, such as:

  $ mkdir mydos
  $ cd mydos
  $ tar -zxf dosemu-freedos-bin.tgz
  $ tar -zxf dosemu-<version>-bin.tgz
  $ cd dosemu

now look where you are and what was installed:

  $ pwd
  /home/joeuser/mydos/dosemu
  $ ls
  README.bindist  bin             dosemu          xdosemu
  Xfonts          conf            freedos



RUN
---

After you get the install right, you can execute DOSEMU with

  $ cd ~mydos/dosemu             # (your CWD _must_ be here)
  $ ./dosemu

If you have never used DOSEMU before, DOSEMU will boot, and present
you with a welcome screen and a command prompt.

If for some reason it does not start, look at ~/.dosemu/boot.log for
details.

Remember, that you can't use <Ctrl>-C _within_ DOS to exit _from_ DOS.
For this you need to execute 'exitemu' or, when using the 'DOS in a BOX'
<Ctrl><Alt><PgDn>.

Your DOS drives are set up as follows:
 A: floppy drive (if it exists)
 C: points to the Linux directory ~/.dosemu/drive_c. It contains the
    files config.sys, autoexec.bat and a directory for temporary files.
    It is available for general DOS use.
 D: points to your Linux home directory
 E: points to your CD-ROM drive, if it is mounted at /media/cdrom
 Z: points to the read-only DOSEMU and FreeDOS commands directory
    It actually points to ~/mydos/dosemu/drive_z; it appears read-only
    inside DOSEMU.

Enter HELP for more information on DOS and DOSEMU commands.

Other useful keys are:
<Ctrl><Alt><F>    toggle fullscreen mode in X
<Ctrl><Alt><K>    grab the keyboard in X
<Ctrl><Alt><Home> grab the mouse in X
<Ctrl><Alt><Del>  reboot
<Ctrl><^>         use special keys on terminals (dosemu -t)

For DOS applications which only read/write from/to STDIN/STDOUT,
you may prefer to invoke DOSEMU such as

  $ ./dosemu -dumb

this has the advantage that (A) the output of the DOS application stacks
up in your xterm scroll buffer and (B) you can redirect it to a file such as

  $ ./dosemu -dumb dir > listing

Note that that editing is often restricted to BACKSPACE'ing.

SOURCES
-------

The sources of all the included binaries can be found in the
dosemu-freedos*sources.tgz tarball.

CONFIGURATION
-------------

Optional configuration is possible by editing the file conf/dosemurc
and copying it to ~/.dosemurc. Advanced configuration can be accomplished
using global.conf in combination with the -F option.

Note that, unlike the situation in installations from source, distributors,
and the RPM, /etc/dosemu.conf and /etc/dosemu/dosemu.conf are NOT used in
this setup, unless you make dosemu.bin suid-root, use sudo or replace
IGNORE_DOSEMU_CONF="-n" by IGNORE_DOSEMU_CONF="" in the dosemu script.
The file conf/dosemu.conf (as opposed to DOSEMU 1.0.2.x) is also ignored.

POLICIES
--------

  All software herein can be distributed and used freely,
  most is GPL, other not GPL licenses can be found in the
  doc/* directories.


                                  -- Hans <lermen@fgan.de>
				     2001/06/10
				  -- Bart Oldeman
				     2004/01/11