I have had this happen before, but just now figured out exactly what's going on.
I still don't know why.
I create a user and run dosemu, then go into ~/.dosemu/drive_c and make a symbolic link to another directory: ln -s /opt/data/test .
Now I have a link in ~/.dosemu/drive_c that goes to /opt/data/test and if I load dosemu and type "cd test" it takes me to /opt/data/test just like it should.
I use that user's home directory to create a /etc/skel directory for creating new users home directories from.
When I create a new user with that /etc/skel in place, I have a link to /opt/data/test in ~/.dosemu/drive_c just like I should.
But:
dosemu doesn't see it.
In the dosemu window, I type "dir" and cant' see TEST listed at all. "cd test" doesn't work.
Removing ~/.dosemu from the new user's directory and running dosemu and adding the link works as expected.
The short form of the story is that I can't have a symbolic link in ~/.dosemu/drive_c as part of an /etc/skel profile and have it actually work.
Everything else in/etc/skel works as expected.
What could be going on here?
Frank Cox wrote:
I have had this happen before, but just now figured out exactly what's going on.
I still don't know why.
I create a user and run dosemu, then go into ~/.dosemu/drive_c and make a symbolic link to another directory: ln -s /opt/data/test .
Now I have a link in ~/.dosemu/drive_c that goes to /opt/data/test and if I load dosemu and type "cd test" it takes me to /opt/data/test just like it should.
I use that user's home directory to create a /etc/skel directory for creating new users home directories from.
When I create a new user with that /etc/skel in place, I have a link to /opt/data/test in ~/.dosemu/drive_c just like I should.
But:
dosemu doesn't see it.
In the dosemu window, I type "dir" and cant' see TEST listed at all. "cd test" doesn't work.
Removing ~/.dosemu from the new user's directory and running dosemu and adding the link works as expected.
The short form of the story is that I can't have a symbolic link in ~/.dosemu/drive_c as part of an /etc/skel profile and have it actually work.
Everything else in/etc/skel works as expected.
What could be going on here?
Dumb question - is the link using an absolute or a relative path to the directory it is pointing to? If it is a relative path, then is it a valid path when in /etc/skel? Maybe the program/script that sets up the new user's home directory does not copy bad symlinks...
Mikkel
On Sun, 30 Sep 2007 10:06:59 -0500 "Mikkel L. Ellertson" mikkel@infinity-ltd.com wrote:
Dumb question - is the link using an absolute or a relative path to the directory it is pointing to? If it is a relative path, then is it a valid path when in /etc/skel? Maybe the program/script that sets up the new user's home directory does not copy bad symlinks...
I actually tried it both ways.
ln -s /opt/data/test .
ln -s ../../../../opt/data/test .
Neither one works.
After further experimentation, I'm starting to think there is something more fundamentally strange going on here.
When I create a new user with the .dosemu directory already in place in/etc/skel, I see this when I load dosemu and do a dir:
command.com autoexec.bat cpi kernel.sys help bin gnu config.emu config.sys autoemu.bat doc dosemu nls tmp appinfo
If I delete ~/.dosemu in my new user's directory and then run dosemu and do a dir I see this:
autoexec.bat config.sys tmp
And that's it.
It seems to be looking in the wrong place for drive C: when the .dosemu directory is in /etc/skel (and hence finding all of those files), and it straightens itself out if it's allowed to create its own ~/.dosemu directory instead.
I wonder what the difference is between a directory created from /etc/skel and a directory created by the dosemu program itself.
The way that I make this /etc/skel is that I set up a desktop just the way I wanted it, then made a tar from that and un-tarred it in /etc/skel and did a "chown -R root.root /etc/skel"
Everything else out of /etc/skel seems to work the way I expected it to when I create a new user, with the exception of dosemu.
It's not a major issue; I just have to remember to run dosemu and create the symbolic link each time I set up a new user. But I would still like to know why it's not working the way that I thought it would.
-
Frank Cox -
Mikkel