Running UNIX Applications on DOS/Windows Machines

Setting Up the Environment for Utilities on DOS

Whether you replace COMMAND.COM with the shell or whether you run the shell as a program under COMMAND.COM, you must set up the proper working environment. The choice between these alternatives will determine how you set up the MKS system on your computer. Setting up the environment is tricky because MKS needs some of the environment of both operating systems. It needs to have certain DOS environmental variables set properly, and it sets up a profile.ksh file to correspond to a UNIX System .profile file. You need AUTOEXEC.BAT to set variables like PATH, ROOTDIR, and TMPDIR, which MKS requires in order to run properly If you run under COMMAND.COM, the system will start with AUTOEXEC.BAT to set the other environmental variables. The AUTOEXEC. BAT file can also include the SWITCH command to allow you to specify command options with a minus sign and to use slash as the separator in directory pathnames.

UNIX Kernel Built-in Capabilities

In addition to third-party software tools that let you emulate DOS or UNIX environments, the UNIX kernel itself can be used for simultaneous access to both DOS and UNIX. Although you cannot run DOS executables without some type of software emulation, you can mount DOS file systems directly from the kernel and access DOS devices directly You can then manipulate the contents of the devices directly For example, you can copy move, and delete data on DOS devices directly from the kernel.