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Here is my problem.

I have a Fedora 30 telnet-server and a Windows telnet client. I installed DosBox on Fedora30, and it works running my app (Foxpro 2.6). There is no GUI.

I would like to run DosBox through a telnet service, from my Windows Computer connecting to the Fedora 30 Telnet Server.

When I tried, it opened me DosBox on Fedora 30 and not on my cmd.exe of Windows.

Am I wrong somewhere? I think I'm doing something impossible but I have no explanations.

If I try to do dosemu -t FOXPRO.EXE , here is what I have : http://image.noelshack.com/fichiers/2019/30/1/1563796436-dosemufail.jpg

On dosemu.conf, I saw this : 

Video adapter style used: one of: vga, ega, mda, mga, cga, none
Default: "vga"; none=dumb terminal mode.
$_video = "vga"

But I don't know if it is related to my problem.

For those who want to test : Link of FoxPro2.6 (Run Install.exe to setup it, it will create a FPD26 folder on C:) :

https://mega.nz/#!rtVEhYqS!Umbr8H6xciJEKXa5Z8MICRnruIWjySh3nKWXtX3kRcY

If you want to run directly the FOXPRO.EXE, here the FPD26 folder : https://mega.nz/#!7odE3YDb!oyZ6o0zwRszyCdzPb-zRKr-1vogE5c0_g-W3_NLeea4

Kenichi-san
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  • So let me get this straight: you installed a telnet client on the Windows machine. You connected to the telnet server on the Fedora 30 machine. You got a remote shell. You launched Dosbox in that remote shell and the _output_ of the Dosbox session goes to the _local_ Fedora 30 machine instead of the stdout in the telnet session? – Edward Jul 22 '19 at 07:48
  • Is it a 16-bit text/CLI application or does it have some sort of GUI for which you might require an X server? (In the last case, you would be better of with SSH and X-forwarding.) Can I test or is it a proprietary application? – Edward Jul 22 '19 at 07:51
  • Yes, it is exactly what happened. And indeed, it is FoxPro 2.6 for DOS, it has no GUI, it's full command line application. – Kenichi-san Jul 22 '19 at 07:51
  • In the past, Dosemu (http://www.dosemu.org/) was often used for CLI DOS applications because of better support for text mode. Dosbox didn't have text mode support and always emulated a video card (hence the output on the local computer). If I have time, I'll install FoxPro this week on my Fedora 30 machine and I'll report back. – Edward Jul 22 '19 at 07:58
  • I think you will meet problems if you want to install it directly to your Fedora System. Some guy found a solution, but i did not understand. Maybe it will help you : http://www.dennisallen.com/readfpu.htm#_Toc158880267 – Kenichi-san Jul 22 '19 at 08:23

1 Answers1

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DOSBox doesn’t support terminal-based operation, as far as I’m aware; it always opens a new SDL window.

In your circumstances I can see two different approaches you could take:

  • use an SSH connection instead, with an X server on your Windows machine (see PuTTY and Xming); this will allow you to forward an X connection from your Fedora system to your Windows system, and DOSBox running on your Fedora system will be able to display its window on your Windows system;
  • use DOSEMU instead of DOSBox (it’s available in RPM Fusion for Fedora); DOSEMU does support running in a terminal, with the -t option, and can run FoxPro in this way.
Stephen Kitt
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  • I'm trying the second option first. I tried to do `dosemu -t` but it did not work. [Here's the screen.](http://image.noelshack.com/fichiers/2019/30/1/1563796436-dosemufail.jpg) It is the same scenario as running Dosbox from windows cmd. – Kenichi-san Jul 22 '19 at 11:54
  • Here’s [a screenshot](https://i.stack.imgur.com/OIb2t.png) of your FoxPro setup running inside DOSEMU in a terminal. FoxPro is even capable of using terminals (much) bigger than 80×25 ;-). Looking at my DOSEMU settings, I don’t see any terminal-related settings, it’s using the defaults... – Stephen Kitt Jul 22 '19 at 12:35
  • Which command did you send on terminal to realize this? I did something like : `dosemu -t d:\Downloads\FPD26 FOXPRO.EXE` , did not work... Can you tell me which version of DOSEMU did you install? – Kenichi-san Jul 22 '19 at 13:02
  • I started DOSEMU, then `cd fpd26`, then `foxpro`. I set DOSEMU up nearly twenty years ago, so there might be stuff I’ve forgotten... I’ve set up a new DOSEMU environment on Fedora, I’ll give it a shot there too. – Stephen Kitt Jul 22 '19 at 13:06
  • Ok, so it might be a problem with the last version of Dosemu? On `Dosemu.conf`, I saw this line (please see on my edited post) – Kenichi-san Jul 22 '19 at 13:09
  • I don’t think it’s related to the version of DOSEMU; I’m using the current version (well, a 2013 snapshot, it hasn’t had any releases in a very long time). My setup is old, not the version of DOSEMU I’m using ;-). In my configuration, the `$_video` line is commented out. – Stephen Kitt Jul 22 '19 at 13:20
  • Are you doing this on VirtualBox? That would be great if you could export your Virtual Machine, and upload it – Kenichi-san Jul 22 '19 at 13:49
  • The first method you proposed worked well ! :) Thank you very much for this. I still need to resolve the second method, so I don't close this question now. – Kenichi-san Jul 22 '19 at 14:25
  • Dear Stephen, can you tell me on which system you arrived to run your dosemu through terminal? Because it doesn't work for Fedora 30... – Kenichi-san Jul 23 '19 at 14:15
  • The screenshot is from DOSEMU running on Debian 10. I suspect the significant difference between the RPM Fusion version and the Debian version is that the latter is built with the GPM libraries, but I haven’t figured out *why* that results in an unconditional SDL initialisation. – Stephen Kitt Jul 23 '19 at 14:18