Baslinux mailing list

[Sindi Keesan <keesan AT iamjlamb.com>]

On Fri, 23 Apr 2004, Matrix Mole wrote:

> On Fri, 23 Apr 2004, Sindi Keesan wrote:
> 
> > win c:\progra~1\wordview
> >
> > this goes right into wordview but first loads the desktop.  On my fastest
> > computer it is only about 40 sec.
> >
> 
> Does windows remain in memory after you're done with the program that you
> had loaded up windows for, or does it shut back down to the dos prompt
> when you are done?

When I exit Wordview (Alt-F4) the Windows desktop is still there.  

> 
> > So Win95 has logo.sys but Win98 does not?  How do I replace something that
> > is no longer there?
> 
> If you place a properly built bmp in c:\ as logo.syswindows should display
> it instead of the default logo.sys. I had to place logo=0 into my
> msdos.sys file even when I had created the boot partition manually (it
> would show the Windows splash screen for a brief second before dropping to
> command line). So I think the default win98 logo.sys file is buried inside
> of one of the core system files (io.sys, command.com) somehow.
> 
> > I did not find any logo=1 line (maybe we had deleted it in an attempt to
> > get rid of the logo?), but I added the line logo=0 to msdos.sys and got a
> > lovely black screen again telling me it was loading a CD-ROM driver.
> > THANKS
> 
> I should have mentioned that if the line isn't there, then it is
> considered to be in it's default state (in this case logo=1), that's one
> of those "hidden" features of win9x actually. If you do a google search on
> msdos.sys you'll find out there's all kinds of nifty things that can be
> done in that small file.

For some reason there was a line 'bootgui=1' even tho this is also 
default.  I found bootgui=0 in a book written about Win95 for people who 
would rather still be using just DOS, along with 'boot from floppy disk' 
and 'hit F8' and a few other suggestions for avoiding Windows.


> > This still leaves me the annoyance of needing to use Windows itself to
> > defragment my DOS partition on the one computer with Windows on it,
> > because the defrag program that comes with Win98 DOS 'requires Windows to
> > run' and it is excruciatingly slow compared to normal DOS defrag.  (Why?)
> > So I boot with a DOS 6.22 boot disk to defrag.  Any better ideas?

> Have you used win98 gui successfully since you used the dos6.22 defrag? I
> tried that on my win95 machine way back in the day due to the slow useage
> of the slow wingui defrag, and it screwed my system royally as it
> destroyed the long file names (unless you use the long file name backup
> utility hidden on the windows CD-Rom). I don't know of any defrag utility
> that works from command line on the win9x platform successfully. There is
> a registry setting you can use that will load the windows defrag utility
> as the first thing when windows starts (before even the logon box I
> believe), this way it's a little faster as nothing is in memory yet.

I have used Windows defrag to defrag Windows, but booted with an MS DOS 
6.22 boot disk to defrag the DOS partition, which is FAT16 (so that we can 
defrag without Windows).  It helps to get everything including scheduler 
out of the system tray.  I would not want to run defrag every time Windows 
starts.

> 
> > > > Do executables always go in the main linux partition?
> >
> > Can anyone answer this one?  Is it possible to put /usr on a separate
> > partition?

> You can have a seperate partition in your system that is mounted under
> /usr that way everything in the /usr directory is on that partition
> instead. For example, let's say you have a 1G drive as hdb1, 50MB for
> hda1, and 500MB for hda2. You have hda1 as your boot partition (Dos/Win
> whatever), and hda2 as your root partition (primary system partition).
> Then in /etc/fstab you could have the following:
> 
> -----
> /dev/hda2   /       ext2   defaults  1  1
> none        /proc   proc   defaults  0  0
> /dev/hdb1   /usr    ext2   defaults  1  2
> -----
> 
> If you've added the hdb1 after installing the system, you'll have to
> manually move everything from hda2 onto hdb1. I've never actually added a
> new partition in this method myself, so I don't know how to get the files
> from hda2 onto hdb1 if the moutnt points are named seperately. Maybe the
> send/receive capability (boot BL-Ram version, mount hda2 under /hd and
> hdb1 under /tmp and transfer everything from /hd/usr to /tmp perhaps).

This sounds like it could cause problems since the libraries are in /usr 
and if you move them to /tmp then you cannot access them.  I had better 
stick with either a single partition, or use the second partition for 
something other than /usr or /bin.

We are looking at partition manager and it can be used to shrink (don't 
know about enlarging) a partition but you have to defragment first and you 
can't do that in DOS.  I had better no plan on resizing partitions.  But 
we might give this one try with a test linux drive and report what 
happens, if anything.  Or maybe use partition magic instead.

> 
> > I have not programmed anything longer than an alias yet.  What I compiled
> > was mostly done with a lot of help, also trial and error (as when I tried
> > to unzip a source code package with DOS pkzip and truncated all the file
> > names).
> 
> You know, a lot of this stuff that I'm learning is being done at the
> moment as I'm researching my answers to emails here on the list :)  I
> believe I did the pkzip truncation of long filenames under win9x, so I
> know what you're talking about there.
> 
> > Back to the screwy motherboard.  Thanks again,
> > Sindi
> 
> Good luck.
> 

Thanks.