Submitted 03-Aug-00 by Seak, Teng-Fong:
> Win-printer? Win-modem does exist, but I'm not sure if any
> win-printer exists. Hard to believe anyway. Can you give me any example
> so as to avoid them?
Most of the "all-in-one" office machines and most of the Lexmark inkjets use
proprietary printer controls that are handled by the windows drivers. There
is rudimentary support for _some_ of these, but it is frequently
significantly slower than using its native drivers, and eats your cpu cycles.
>
> Do you mean iBCS (or something like that)? If yes, there's nothing to
I mean setting CONFIG_BINFMT_MISC:
If you say Y here, it will be possible to plug wrapper-driven binary
formats into the kernel. You will like this especially when you use
programs that need an interpreter to run like Java, Python or
Emacs-Lisp. It's also useful if you often run DOS executables under
the Linux DOS emulator DOSEMU (read the DOSEMU-HOWTO, available in
ftp://metalab.unc.edu/pub/Linux/docs/HOWTO). Once you have
registered such a binary class with the kernel, you can start one of
those programs simply by typing in its name at a shell prompt; Linux
will automatically feed it to the correct interpreter.
> do with Dos/Win executables. In order to run Dos/Win executable, I don't
> think support from kernel is sufficient. To run Dos programs, the kernel
> has to emulate Dos system functions and external commands. This is too
> much for the kernel. For Win programs, that's even worse: the kernel has
> to handle Windows protocols, widget stuffs, etc which are the task of X
> server. No, that couldn't be a support for Dos/Win executables.
>
It isn't kernel level support. It's essentially telling the kernel what
wrapper to use for binaries based on a magic cookie. This cookie could be
the DOS file's .com extension, or the MZ that occupies the first two bytes
of a .exe file. It was designed as an extension to and eventual replacement
for the support for Java binaries.
> The last time when I tried DosEmu, I just know it runs in a virtual
> image disk and I haven't got enough time to see if it runs in a real
> partition.
It can be configured to do so.
> As to Wine,
Agreed . . .
> On the other hand, we _can't_ set up anything to automatically launch
> Dosemu or whatever. Even if the old Dos programme Edit.com is set as
> executable, but when we type "edit.com", it still doesn't run and Dosemu
> isn't launched either. Even if winword.exe is set as executable, typing
> "winword.exe" wouldn't launch Wine either.
See above. It can be made to work.
> In either case, what I would isto make shell script to launch the
> emulator/wrapper and run the programme within it. But in this case,
> whether edit.com and winword.exe are marked as executable doesn't matter.
True. If you are using wrapper scripts, the execute permission is irrelevant.
> Well, sure, this is an example, but this isn't an usual case. Primo,
> you're talking about shell script; secundo, you put linux binaries in a
> vfat partition.
Granted, it is unusual. But I do know people who have placed /home in a
vfat partition in order to have easy access to its contents from both
operating systems. Of course this does essentially nullify any security
that existed as a result of permissions, but it makes them happy :/
--
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( ) * Anton Graham
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