dosemu problem

Depends on how you installed dosemu. If you did a local install (likely, if you downloaded the binary from dosemu.org), look for

~/.dosemurc

If you did a system install (likely if you let apt-get or synaptic do it), look for

/etc/dosemu/dosemu.conf

In either case, edit this line in the file:

# $_layout = "auto"

Possible values to use instead of "auto" are listed above that line. Don't forget to uncomment the line when done. I have this for that line:

$_layout = "us"

Ok now it runs through it's paces without getting an error message. So now it runs and then exits like it did before except it gives me no error message at all. I'm stumped again. That was a good tip with where to find the conf file. You were right on.

Does anyone else have this same problem or is it just me?

How did you install dosemu? Using apt-get or synatpic? By downloading the binary from dosemu.org?

Did you also install freedos?

When you run dosmeu, do you run it by typing xdosemu in a terminal session under X? Or do you click on an icon on your KDE Desktop?

I installed DOSEMU through the Synaptic Package Manager. Although I'm going to try to get the binary and convert the rpm with alien.
When I run DOSEMU I go into the Konsole and type
user@1[~]$ dosemu

I just tried the command xdosemu when I saw your post and here is the error it gave me.
sam@2[~]$ xdosemu

sam@2[~]$

I'm currently browsing Synaptic to see if I can find and X supported DOSEMU or something like it.

The way I always install dosemu, in any distro, is to download the binaries from dosemu.org and install them in my user home direcory (i.e., a local install). At dosemu.org, you'll find these files to download in the Stable Download screen:

dosemu-1.2.2-bin.tgz
dosemu-freedos-b9r5-bin.tgz

Download both.

Extract the second file (freedos) to your your home directory. It will end up extracted to ~/dosemu.

Then extract first file (dosemu) to your home directory. This will also extract into ~/dosemu.

Then copy ~/dosemu/conf/dosemurc to your home director and hide it:

cp ~/dosemu/conf/dosemurc ~
mv ~/dosemurc ~/.dosemurc

Now edit ~/.dosemurc so that it looks for your correct keyboard, printer, etc.

Installing dosemu this way lets you uninstall it completely by deleting ~/dosemu and ~/.dosemu, as it's only installed locally. This is the recommended way to install dosemu (locally) if you read the docs.

By the way, the last line in that error message is very telling. The binary you're running has no X support compiled into it, so it cannot run in KDE, Gnome, etc. I can't imagine why such a binary would be included in the dosemu package supplied by Ubuntu or Mepis, but apparently that's what your problem is. I can tell you for sure that the binaries I recommended you download have X support compiled into them.

I'll do it your way b/c I understand what the X support meant but I didn't know how in the hell I could compile it into dosemu.
Thanks again,
sag47

How do I hide the .dosemu directory. In windows I would normally use the command attrib +h +s +r to flag the system, hidden, and readonly attributes. What is the similar command in Linux. I've been generally browsing the help keeping an eye for something like that but I've yet to be successful.

sag47, in the Unix/Linux world a "hidden" directory or file is made so simply by beginning the name with a period ".". So /home/me/nothiddenfile can be "seen", but /home/me/.hiddenfile cannot be "seen" (unless you set viewing options in konqueror or issue the command "ls -la |less" from a konsole.

Do not confuse "hidden" with "inaccessible by others". The "hidden" is a viewing "convenience; whereas "inaccessible by others" is controlled by permissions. But that is another post

Jon

I'm not suggesting you hide the dosemu directory. Rather, the ~/dosemurc file. That is done by putting a period before the file, like this:

mv ~/dosemurc ~/.dosemurc

which amounts to renaming the file ("moving" it to a different file, sort of). When you do that, xdosemu will see it as your personal preferences and load them appropriately. It only looks for .dosemurc, not dosemurc. And it looks in your home directory first, and /etc/dosemu second if it's not in your home directory.

As Jon explained, when a file is "hidden" this way, it's just "hidden" from general view when doing simple things like the ls command without special swithches (like using the DOS DIR command). I would have explained this in more detail had I realized you weren't all that linux familiar.

Also, the tilde ('~') is shorthand in linux shells for the user's home directory, like /home/sag47. In such a case,

~/.dosemurc

would be shorthand for

/home/sag47/.dosemurc

The cd command will recognize this shorthand, for instance.

Correction to my most recent post ...

Traditionally, dosemu (and xdosemu) will look for

~/.dosemurc

first. If it doesn't find it, it will next for

/etc/dosemu/dosemurc

Note the second file isn't hidden (no prepended dot). That is how it was done in the past, and I'm pretty sure it's still true. I use the hidden dosemurc in my home directory and haven't tested out the second method in years.

I think you also didn't know what a previous post meant by X. X is the graphical environment destkop users of linux run in. It's the environment in which you run KDE, for instance. X is where xdosemu runs. On the other hand, if you switch to a different console (hit Ctrl-Alt-F2, for instance), you'll see a non-graphical console. You can login there and do file maintenance stuff (or run dosemu instead of xdosemu), but when you want to return to your graphical environment, hit Ctrl-Alt-F7. So when I mentioned that an error message you received said that X support was not compiled into your version of xdosemu, I was saying that the way that binary was created (compiled), it didn't include support for being able to run in an X environment (KDE, for instance).