Chapter 3 covers how NeTraverse Merge automatically manages access to the most important hardware resources. Chapter 4 covers how you must explicitly request (attach) all other devices via named "device definitions" to use them under DOS or Windows, and that several commonly used resources have preconfigured definitions and can be attached to your DOS and Windows sessions. (These resources include physical and virtual DOS drives, default printer, COM ports, parallel ports, and a game port.) So this chapter covers setting up and changing device definitions to make them available for attachment to individual NeTraverse Merge sessions.

Most of the system wide resource administration is done via the System-Wide Administration part of the WinSetup GUI. To start the WinSetup graphical utility, use the command: "winsetup &". You can also use the WinSetup icon or button to start up the utility. Then select "System-Wide Administration" and click "OK" to bring up the "System-Wide Administration" window.

The actual detailed instructions for using WinSetup is available via the Help button on each WinSetup window. Thus this chapter does not go into the details of using the GUI.

(Note, if you really want to you can use UNIX command line utilities to accomplish exactly the same things that you can use the WinSetup GUI to do. The GUI is a lot easier to use. For information on the command-line interface, see Chapter 6, `` Using NeTraverse Merge from the command line ''.)

The top button in the System-Wide administration window brings up the "Device Definition" window, which is the first topic in this chapter. This is the most used system-wide administration tool. Besides "device definitions", there are other system-wide NeTraverse Merge settings that can be adjusted via the System-Wide administration GUI:

• Edit system-wide DOS startup files (autoexec.bat and config.sys) used by all users. There is normally little need to change these files, but this is provided just in case you need to.
• Change the NLS "Locale" for DOS/Windows sessions. NLS issues are covered in appendix B.

• Load Windows CD. This is covered in chapter 2.
• Create DOS Images. Refer to Making new DOS images later in this chapter.

• Change the default floppy drives. Refer to Diskette drives later in this chapter.
• Change the default CD-ROM drive

Device definition window

A device definition provides the information that NeTraverse Merge needs to access a device. Once a device definition has been created, you can use the device by selecting it to be part of a personal DOS or Windows session configuration. This action is called attaching the device for use in a DOS or Windows session. You use the Personal Session Configuration option of the WinSetup utility to attach devices. Device attachment is described in detail in Chapter 4, ``Configuring DOS and Windows sessions''.

Device definition categories

The Device Definition window of the System-Wide administration has five category (or view) buttons:

Printer

Definitions for printing via the UNIX printing system.

COM1

Definitions for devices that can be attached to the COM1 serial port.

COM2

Definitions for devices that can be attached to the COM2 serial port.

DOS Drive

Definitions for volumes that can be attached to a NeTraverse Merge drive letter.

Custom

Definitions for "custom" devices. (Definitions for parallel ports and the game port are defined here by default.)

You use these category views to inspect, modify or delete existing definitions and to create new ones. Click on the Help buttons to get more info about how to do this.

Left panel controls

The following controls appear on the left side of all views of the Device Definition window:

Description

Contains a short description of the device definition. The description text can contain any characters including spaces. This text is displayed in the device selection lists in the Personal Session Configuration window and for Printer definitions in the Windows Printer selection menu. Therefore, it should be descriptive enough to identify the device, but short enough to fit in the selection lists, which have limited width.

Usable By

Identifies the users who can use the device definition. Usable by can be set to one of the following:

Root

Only users with root authorization can use the definition.

All

All users can use the definition.

If a user is not allowed to use the definition, the entry for the definition the selection lists in the Personal Session Configuration window for that user has "(unavail)" appended to the description to indicate that device is not currently available for that user.

NOTE: All the default custom device definitions (parallel port and game port definitions) have "Usable by" set to "Root". You must use the Custom view of the Device Definition windows to change the setting to "All" for those devices you want to be usable from DOS and Windows sessions. (And if there are a custom device definition that you will never make available to normal users, then you should delete the definition.)

Failure Action

Tells NeTraverse Merge what to do when a user starts a session that uses this device definition and the device is not available (because it is in use by another session, does not exist, or is otherwise not accessible). Failure Action can be set to one of the following:

Abort

Display a pop-up message warning that the device is unavailable when the user attempts to start a DOS or Windows session. When the user clicks OK to dismiss the message, the DOS or Windows session is NOT started.

Warn

Display a pop-up message warning that the device is unavailable when the user attempts to start a DOS or Windows session. When the user clicks OK to dismiss the message, the DOS or Windows session is started.

Ignore

The DOS or Windows session is started. No message is displayed to inform the user that the device is not currently available.

Note that the specified Failure Action does not apply to printer definitions because those definitions are used at print time and not as the NeTraverse Merge session is starting.

Printer view --
  Printer device definition

If printing via this printer definition is not working properly (or you want it to work differently) then you can either change this definition to use different printer command and/or options or you can create a new printer definition. It only matters that you get a printer definition set up so that printing comes out properly. The following section covers how to do this.

Configuring a printer definition

Before you can start to set up a printer definition you must first be able to print from UNIX. Get this working first, then you can continue on and try to print from a NeTraverse Merge session.

To determine the exact printer command:

1. Print to a file.

   From your DOS or Windows application in a NeTraverse Merge session, print your document to a file.

   With Windows, you set up for printing just as you would do on a normal Windows system using the "Add Printer" utility. Using this, select your printer type to match your printer as your would expect. The only difference is when you select one of the "available ports" to use. What you select here is "FILE: Creates a file on disk" (or similar wording). Then continue on and finish "adding" this printer. Hint: No need to "print a test page". Then from a Windows application, print a document to a file using this "printer".

2. From UNIX print this file.

   This is the hardest step. You must determine how to print this "print file" using the UNIX printing system commands. One tricky part is that the command needs to be formed to print when the print file is fed to it via "standard in". E.g. if the print file is named "printout.prn", and the UNIX print command is "lp -dprinter1" the command must be of this form must work:

       cat printout.prn | lp -dprinter1

   The printer command can also be any other UNIX command that operates on standard input. Some examples: You can run your printer output through a filter before spooling by using the following command:

       cat printout.prn | filtername | lp -dprinter1

   Something like this could be used to print plain DOS text using the NeTraverse Merge filter "dos2unix" that converts DOS text to UNIX text so that printing comes out properly on the UNIX printer:

       cat printout.prn | dos2unix | lp -dprinter1

   If you want you don't even need to use a UNIX printer command if you don't want to. For example you could have a command that saves the printout in a file for later processing (perhaps for another UNIX program to automatically fax later), or a command that copies the printout to a web page. The point is that all you need is a UNIX program that takes it's input from "standard in".

So now that you have determined the UNIX command to print (or whatever) from the "print file", you have all the information you need for the printer definition. Go into WinSetup System-Wide administration to the "Printer" device definition window to either update an existing definition or create a new one. (Click on the Help button if you need to for how to do these things.) In the "Printer Command" entry type in the printer command (sans the leading "cat printout.prn | " you used to test the command). Using some of the above examples, this would be:
    lp -dprinter1
or
    dos2unix | lp -dprinter1

Make sure to click the "Save" button.

Now all you have to do is go back into your Windows session and update your Windows icon for the printer to change the setting from "printing to a file" to print to the "port" that you defined or updated in WinSetup. (All the printer definitions that are defined via WinSetup automatically appear in the Windows properties for the printer icon as selections in the "Print to the following port:" control in the "Details" tab.)

COM1 & COM2 view --
  Serial Port device definition

The Device Definition window has a COM1 and a COM2 button. These bring up the COM1 or COM2 device definition view window where you can view, update or delete the current definitions or create new ones. (Click on the Help button in the COM1 or COM2 view if you need help on how to do these things.)

To enable a COM port device for use under NeTraverse Merge, you can use the virtual attachment and on OpenServer systems also the direct attachment method. A COM port device configured through virtual attachment is a UNIX serial port that a DOS or Windows process refers to as COM1 or COM2 and accesses through NeTraverse Merge drivers. A COM port device configured through direct attachment is a serial port that DOS or Windows drivers control directly without interfacing with NeTraverse Merge or UNIX.

By default, NeTraverse Merge provides definitions for virtual attachment of COM1 and COM2 to UNIX serial ports. These are UNIX serial port devices are named /dev/tty1a and /dev/tty2a on OpenServer systems, and /dev/tty00t and /dev/tty01t on UnixWare/OpenUNIX systems. The tokens that represent these definitions are named com1 and com2 respectively.

NeTraverse Merge on OpenServer systems also provides definitions for direct attachment of COM1 and COM2. The tokens that represent these definitions are named dcom1 and dcom2 respectively.

To attach serial ports to your DOS or Windows you use the Devices view of the Personal Session Configuration option of the WinSetup utility.

DOS Drive view --
  Physical and virtual DOS drives

NeTraverse Merge can access any physical DOS drive on your fixed disk. During installation, and each time you reboot your system, NeTraverse Merge checks for the existence of physical DOS drives and updates its internal database for the drives it finds.

NeTraverse Merge also allows you to create virtual DOS drives. A virtual DOS drive (sometimes called a virtual DOS volume) is actually a UNIX file that has been formatted as a DOS file system and is used to store DOS files. One default virtual DOS volume is provided in each user's home directory.

A DOS volume may be useful with NeTraverse Merge for the following reasons:

• Some copy-protected DOS applications that cannot be installed in the file system shared by DOS and the UNIX operating system can be successfully installed on a drive that has a real DOS filesystem.

• Some applications do low-level disk IO rather than use the proper file system interface to access files. Such applications may fail to access files stored on a shared UNIX file system, but work successfully with files stored on physical or virtual DOS volumes.

• You can use files (and in some situations, applications) contained in physical DOS volume under native DOS and Windows That is, you can use them even if you shut down the UNIX system and boot your computer with DOS or Windows alone.

You use the DOS Drive view of the Device Definition window to view, create and update device definitions for real and virtual DOS volume. In the upper left of the window is the Token Name selection list. You use this to select which existing definition to view or update. To the right of that is the New button, which is used to create new definitions. For instructions on how to use this view, click on the Help button.

The tokens for physical DOS partitions that are automatically create are named dosc, dosd, and so on, while the default virtual DOS volume token is named homevdrv.

To attach an available physical or virtual DOS volume to your DOS or Windows session, use the Personal Session Configuration option of the WinSetup utility as described in ``Configuring drives'' in Chapter 4.

Note: Typically, by default, the device definitions for physical DOS volumes have the Usable by setting set to "Root", which means only the root user has permission to use the device definition. In order to make the volume available for normal users, you (when logged in as root) must change this setting to "All".

When the "Usable by" setting is set to "Root", the entry for the definition the selection lists in the Personal Session Configuration window for normal users have "(unavail)" appended to the description to indicate that device is not currently available.

When you change it from "Root" to "All", you also need to make sure the device's UNIX access permissions allow the device to be readable and writeable by everyone that you want to be able to use the drive. You use the normal UNIX chmod command to change the access permissions of the device.

To restrict access to only certain groups, see the later topic Limit DOS volume access to a group.

Note: On UnixWare/OpenUNIX systems any access permission changes you make to device names with the commands chmod, chown and chgrp are not permanent. To make them permanent you have to use the "installf" system utility.

Creating and formatting physical DOS drives

You can also add a second hard disk to your computer and put one or more physical DOS drives on it.

NeTraverse Merge automatically senses these new physical drives the next time you reboot and makes them available by creating device definitions for them as was described above.

Virtual DOS drives

Virtual DOS drives are different from physical DOS drives in the following ways:

• You can create a virtual DOS drive easily at any time after you install NeTraverse Merge.

• You can create your own personal virtual drives. By using personal virtual drives, you can avoid ownership and permission mode conflicts that may arise from sharing physical DOS drives.

• Virtual DOS drives are actually UNIX files and therefore part of the UNIX file system (unlike physical DOS drives):

  • You can back up and restore virtual drives using standard UNIX backup utilities, in contrast to physical DOS drives, which you must back up with DOS utilities.

  • You cannot access a virtual drive when you have shut down NeTraverse Merge and booted standard DOS.

  • Virtual drives take up space in the UNIX file system.

  • Virtual drives are limited to the size of the UNIX ulimit.

NeTraverse Merge automatically makes the definition for $HOME/vdrive.dsk (token name homevdrv) available. This is the default virtual DOS drive that is located in each user's home directory.

You use the DOS Drive view of the Device Definition window to create new definitions. For instructions for completing this task, use the Help button on that window.

You can create two types of virtual volumes: One type is for use by all users where the actual volume is shared; the other type is for use by individual users, where each user can have his or her own copy of the defined volume.

Shared volumes are created when you specify the file name using the full UNIX path name. In this case, the actual file should be created at device definition time. Personal volumes are created when you specify the file name relative to the user's home directory. Each user creates actual files for personal volumes at the time of attachment.

Once the new virtual volume has been defined, you can attach it to a drive letter using the Personal Session Configuration option of WinSetup utility.

Default protection of DOS drives

However, a DOS drive as a whole is accessed as a UNIX file or device and can be protected like any other UNIX file or device.

Here are the considerations that affect access to and administration of DOS drives:

• Although multiple users can simultaneously read from a DOS drive, writing to a DOS drive requires exclusive access. That is, a process that wants to write to a DOS drive must wait until no other process is accessing that drive either for reading or writing. Once a process has obtained access to a DOS drive for writing, that drive becomes unavailable to everyone else for any kind of access until the process completes.

• DOS drives are accessed as UNIX files. Each drive appears to the UNIX system as a single UNIX file but can contain any number of DOS files and directories.

Virtual DOS drives created in public directories have the same permissions as physical DOS drives, i.e., all users have read and write permissions. However, by default, only the owner can access personal virtual DOS drives created in a user's home directory. The user can relax these permissions at the time the virtual drive is created.

Changing the protection of DOS drives

• Use the Read Only and Exclusive options in the device definition for that DOS drive.

• Use the DOS attrib command to make specific files in the DOS drive read-only (that is, remove DOS write permission).

• Use the UNIX chmod command to change the UNIX system permission mode of the UNIX file associated with the DOS drive.

When a DOS drive is attached to a DOS or Windows session, NeTraverse Merge does not immediately claim the specified device, but waits until DOS or Windows actually attempts to read or write to the device. Meanwhile, the requested device may become unavailable if another session gets control of it.

To avoid this problem, you can request that the device be attached to DOS and Windows sessions immediately and exclusively. Exclusive access to the specified device means that no other session can attach it at the same time.

Specifying read-only access prevents DOS and Windows sessions from making any changes to the DOS drive.

Using the DOS attrib command to make a DOS file read-only can protect individual files on a DOS volume. The protection offered by the DOS attrib command is limited, however, because anyone who can access a DOS file can also use this command to make the file writeable.

To make a DOS file read-only, use the attrib command to assign the read-only (R) attribute as follows:

attrib +r filename

When the read-only attribute is assigned, the file cannot be deleted or changed. To make the file writable again, type:

attrib -r filename

Advanced Topic:
--Limit DOS volume access to a group
If for some reason you want to limit access to only some users, then you can use the UNIX permissions to restrict access to a certain group, as you can do for any other file on the filesystem. You do this with the UNIX chgrp command to change the group and the UNIX chown command to change the ownership so that only the owner and group have read and write access. Note: On UnixWare/OpenUNIX systems any access permission changes you make to device names with the commands chmod, chown and chgrp are not permanent. To make them permanent you have to use the installf system utility.

Custom view --
  Custom device administration

All of the "custom" device definitions show up as selections for attachment to your DOS or Windows session in the Personal Session Configuration window Devices view in the Other Devices section. In this "Other Devices" selection list, device definition that have the "Usable by" setting set to "Root" instead of "All", the selections have "(unavail)" appended as a reminder that the definition is not currently available for general use.

Limitations of direct attachment

• The device definition is set so that regular users are not allowed to use the device.

  All the direct attach device tokens are by default set this way. The system administrator (i.e. the "root" user) has to go in and configure the needed device definition to allow it to be used by normal users. This is done with the WinSetup graphical utility (the command winsetup starts it up.) Navigate to "System Wide Administration" -> "View/Create/Modify Device Definitions" -> "Custom". On the left side, choose the desired "Token Name" from the popup list, and set the "Usable by" setting to "All". This makes that device attachable by all users.

• Devices that use certain unsupported DMA modes (such as tape drives) may fail.

• Devices that are highly timing-dependent may fail in the UNIX system's multitasking environment.

• Devices that need to be initialized or reset when the system is rebooted may fail since DOS and Windows are not started immediately after the system boots.

• Shared interrupts for devices are not supported.

• Directly attached devices are sensitive to various configuration changes. Changing the environment by adding more users, changing the load, tuning UNIX parameters, and adding or subtracting memory can have unpredictable effects on the operation of directly attached devices.

• If you have Symmetrical Multi-Processing (SMP) support installed, direct attaching devices that use interrupts (IRQs) may not work.

• Devices that use Plug-and-Play cannot be directly attached, because some device parameters (such as I/O ports) can be automatically changed each time you reboot your computer.

• Windows may not recognize that there is now a parallel port available, or not recognize which mode (normal, EPP, ECP) it is in.

  To work around the problem of Windows not knowing the port exists, follow these steps:

  1. Make sure you have the physical parallel port in the mode you want for the type of device you have plugged into it. (The ECP mode has the most capabilities.) You typically have to use the computer's BIOS setup to configure this.
  2. Make sure your Personal configuration is set to attach the parallel port, using a definition that matches the actual parallel port mode. (Using the winsetup command, navigate to the appropriate Personal session configuration (typically named "win"), and click the "Devices" button.)
     (Also make sure the device definition token for the parallel port is configured to be usable by all users. If in the personal configuration it says "(unavail)" then that device is not configured to be available. Refer to the first item in the previous section for info about making the device definition available for all users.)
  3. Start your Windows session now, and go to the Windows "Add New Hardware Wizard" control panel. (Start -> Settings -> Control Panel -> Add New Hardware)
     Use the wizard to "install" the parallel port for Windows, selecting these in the series of windows:
     1. Select "No" for "Do you want Windows to search for your new hardware?"
     2. Select "Ports (COM & LPT)"
     3. Select "ECP Printer Port" or "Printer Port" depending on how you configured the actual parallel port.
     4. If Windows shows a window with the port settings, you can check to see if the settings are correct. (Often they are not). Check to see if the settings are correct. The correct values for parallel port 1 are "0378 - 037A" and the correct values for parallel port 2 are "0278 - 027A". You cannot change them in this window, so continue on.
     5. Windows loads the driver and asks if you want to shut down the computer. If in the previous step the correct port values where shown then click "Yes" to shutdown the session, otherwise click "No" and do the following to fix the setting:
        1. Go to the System Properties Device Manager panel: (Start -> Settings -> Control Panel -> System -> Device Manager)
        2. Under "Ports (COM & LPT)" select the newly added port, and click the Properites button to bring up the Port Properties window.
        3. Click the "Resources" tab to show the Input/Output range setting. Click the "Change Settings" button and then change the setting to the correct values. (The correct values for parallel port 1 are "0378 - 037A" and the for parallel port 2 are "0278 - 027A")
        4. Click Ok enough times to get out of the control panel, and then restart your Windows session.
  4. Restart your Windows session, and using the System Properties Device Manager panel, verify that the parallel port setting is correct. Now you can try installing the driver for the device you have plugged into the parallel port, such as a printer.

• The use of an ECP mode parallel port might also require DMA support, because your Windows driver might assume that if the parallel port is in ECP mode, then DMA must also be available. So if all else fails, and setting up DMA attachment also does not help, then you can try configuring the physical parallel port to not use the ECP mode, so the driver does not try to use DMA. (You have to use your computers's BIOS setup to configure the physical parallel port.)

Predefined device definitions

There are several custom device definitions that are predefined when you install NeTraverse Merge. These are for the parallel ports and the game port. These are defined regardless of whether those devices actually exist. By default the definitions have the "Usable by" setting set to "Root", so if you want a normal user to be able to use the device you must change that setting to "All". If one or more of these devices do not exist or you never want a normal user to access the device directly then you should remove the device definition, so the user will not have to see in the list the devices that cannot be used.

The parallel ports

The two standard parallel ports are some of the custom devices that are predefined by NeTraverse Merge. A parallel port can be in several modes: standard, ECP and EPP. These modes are typically set in your computer system's BIOS setup utility. NeTraverse Merge supplies two device definitions for each parallel port mode for a total of four definitions. Plus two definitions on OpenServer that include IRQs.

• Parallel Port 1     (token name "lpx1")
• Parallel Port 2     (token name "lpx2")
• ECP/EPP Parallel Port 1     (token name "ecp1")
• ECP/EPP Parallel Port 2     (token name "ecp2")
• Parallel Port 1 + IRQ 7     (token name "lp0", on OpenServer only)
• Parallel Port 2 + IRQ 5     (token name "lp2", on OpenServer only)

Historically on Personal Computers, the use of interrupts (IRQs) with parallel ports has not worked well, so most application using parallel ports have made do without IRQs. (The standard Windows parallel port driver does not use an IRQ.) Thus there is usually no need to make use of the definition that includes an IRQ, which is only available on OpenServer anyway. Also note that IRQ 5 is normally used for the virtual mouse device in NeTraverse Merge sessions, so if you have to use virtual IRQ 5 for the parallel port, you have to change which virtual IRQ is used for the mouse. It is a pain to do this, but if you really want to, it can be done. Doing this is covered later in this chapter.

Note that choosing to use one of the parallel port definitions for attachment in a DOS or Windows session does NOT change the mode the parallel port. (Changing the mode has to be done in the BIOS setup of your computer before the operating system boots up.) So when directly attaching a parallel port you should use the definition that matches the mode of the parallel port.

The game port

The game port is one of the custom devices that is predefined by NeTraverse Merge. The definition description is "Game/joystick port" (token name "game").

Defining a direct attach custom device

To be able to attach a custom device to a DOS or Windows configuration, you must first create a device definition for it. This is done in the Custom view of the Device Definition window of the System-Wide Setup part of the WinSetup utility.