Jack:
The procedure that follows may not be the only way to do what you want to do
but it works. I do a lot of this because Netscape installed by Mandrake does
such a pathetic and inconsistent job, and until I find out why, it's less
frustating to boot Windows95 and do the copies.
Before you access these files in Linux, however, you have some spadework to
do.
The package that allows access to ms-dos files is 'mtools'.
type 'man mtools' for a complete read of the document.
Here's the essence of it, however, and I'll use my disk as an example.
There are 2 physical disks in my system
DOS partitions (all FAT) are C: thru F: and are spread across both drives.
How they are used is not important. Downloading a file thru Windows will use
one of these drives to store the download. The download will store the file
in its' original long name. You knew this already.
In Linux these drives are not mount points, so you must make them available.
For my drive
'fdisk -l' reports (in part)
Disk /dev/hda:
Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/hda3 * 1 254 1024096+ 6 FAT16
Disk /dev/hdc:
Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/hdc5 2 345 1386976+ 6 FAT16
/dev/hdc6 346 408 258016+ 6 FAT16
/dev/hdc7 410 523 459616+ 6 FAT16
Now edit /etc/mtools.conf to include the following lines:
# First IDE hard disk partition (this is already there)
#drive c: file="/dev/hda1" (this, too, so un-comment it and
add lines
for the other drives so
it reads:)
drive c: file = "/dev/hda1"
drive d: file = "/dev/hdc5" (observe the disk change)
drive e: file = "/dev/hdc6"
drive f: file = "/dev/hdc7"
Now you can use commands such as mdir / mcopy / mdel, etc. Again the mtools
document will list all of these commands.
You most likely will be downloading RPM files. Here's what I do.
My download is in (dos) D:\DOWNLOAD in the shortened format. I want to store
it in a native Linux directory in the original long name, so --
mcopy d:/download/postgr~1.rpm /usr/local/rpm/postgresql-6.5.3-1.i386.rpm
Now substitute your drive specifics and names.
No offense intended in assuming limited acquaintance with the system, but it
takes hours to dig out this stuff when you start from scratch.
Good luck
Bill Barnes
>===== Original Message From [EMAIL PROTECTED] =====
>is it possible to download applications for linux using windows98? I need to
download extra support software, but I haven't been able to make linux dial
out yet.
>
>thanx
>jack
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