CD-ROM access via Linux (fwd)

[Erick Dietz]

You mentioned trying OS/2 and I am wondering if you tried the software 
from Supro called EA/2.  Are you familiar with it?  Do you have any 
comments about it?

Also, you stated that the cd drives are actually connected to Novell 
servers.  What about having the cd drives connected directly to the 
computer running Linux?

Thank you for you input.

Rick Dietz
Systems Assistant, Library
CSU, Stanislaus
(209) 667-3605
rickd at ceti.csustan.edu

On Thu, 21 Sep 1995, Web4Lib Moderator wrote:

> 
> ---------- Forwarded message ----------
> Date: Thu, 21 Sep 1995 10:36:18 +0100 (BST)
> From: Jon Knight <J.P.Knight at lut.ac.uk>
> To: lis-elib at mailbase.ac.uk, web4lib at library.berkeley.edu
> Subject: CD-ROM access via Linux
> 
> [This message is long; if you're not interested in networking CD-ROMs, 
> kill the article now.  However I had sufficient interest from both 
> mailing lists the last time this was talked about to make me think its 
> worthwhile sending it to them.  YMMV.]
> 
> You might remember from the beginning of August lots of us Library systems
> bods were having a rant about CDROMs on both the lis-elib and web4lib
> mailing lists.  I mentioned to several people that one of the biggest
> problems at LUT (aside from actually mounting the !$#%^%$ things) is that
> all of our networked CD-ROMs are DOS based, running from Novell servers. 
> This is a pain as it means that only users with DOS PCs on their desks can
> use them unless they go to the library and use the public workstations
> (which isn't ideal as those machines are already heavily used by the
> students during term time).  People with Macs, UNIX boxes and dumb
> terminals were out in the cold.  Even MS-Windoze users have problems with
> many of the DOS CD-ROMs due to lack of memory or clashes with local CD-ROM
> drives (which are becoming the norm it seems). 
> 
> Well, this is just a quick note to let you know that I've been playing
> with a possible solution to this problem and as I had quite a lot of mail
> on the subject last time, I thought I'd share it with the lists.  Note
> that this _isn't_ a production service at LUT yet; I've just got the first
> prototype going last night but it looks very promising.  It also has the
> big advantage for cash strapped libraries of being free (aside from the
> cost of a PC - no pay-per-play software is needed). 
> 
> The basic idea to overcome the problem is to use an intermediate machine 
> to run the CD-ROM software on that can talk TCP-IP and supports telnet 
> connections.  OS/2 had been tried in the past but it wasn't too successful 
> (it didn't like the PC hardware we had apparently).  I plumped for using 
> Linux, a free UNIX like operating system that runs on ordinary 386/486/586 PC
> platforms.  Linux is nice because there is an application called DOSEMU 
> that runs as a process on the Linux machine and gives you a DOS shell.  
> You can run multiple copies of DOSEMU simultaneously on the Linux machine 
> and it seems to give a very good DOS virtual machine.
> 
> Once I'd installed Linux (Slackware Release 1.2.8) and DOSEMU (v0.60.3)
> (which in my case took a while as I reconfigured the Linux kernel and
> accidently broke DOSEMU - duh!) it was then a simple matter of using it to
> connect to the Novell servers in the library.  Oh yeah, I forgot to
> mention that Linux includes IPX in its kernel as well as IP... :-)  You 
> can use the normal lsl.com and netx.exe DOS programs that you've already 
> got for your DOS machines.
> 
> Once you can make Novell connections, you're half way there.  You should 
> find it pretty easy to fire up your CD-ROM software _as_long_as_ it isn't 
> overly graphical.  If it is, it might work fine on the Linux console but 
> won't be too hot over telnet.  However lots of DOS CD-ROMs are mainly 
> text based and they work fine over telnet, with one proviso; your 
> client and its telnet application must support function keys as most of 
> the DOS CD-ROMs use them like they're going out of style.
> 
> This last point was nearly a showstopper for us; it meant that the 
> CD-ROMs could be used from the UNIX machines under X (in fact you can 
> even use DOSEMU's xdos to give a nice, coloured output that looks 
> identical to a PC screen) but our MS-Windoze and Mac telnets weren't up 
> to sending function keys.  This was a bummer as the Macs were the main 
> reason for doing this.
> 
> Luckily, that all round wonder package, Expect, came to the rescue.  For
> those of you who haven't met Expect yet, its an extension to the Tool
> Command Language (TCL) that allows you to easily script logins to remote
> services.  I've used Expect for years to do interesting things (the first
> was to add wrappers round queries to our old BLS OPAC to allow it to be 
> access directly from a gopher client) and it gets my vote as a really cool 
> package.  All systems managers should have it in their tool box.
> 
> I wrote a script that would fire up the DOS emulator, do all the
> nitty-gritty Novell logins and drive mappings, launch the CD-ROM software
> and get through all the tedious banner pages for the user before putting
> the session into interactive mode.  However, this interactive mode made
> use of Expect's ability to remap keystrokes from the user into completely
> different key sequences sent to the application.  As few of our CD-ROMs
> use control keys, I mapped <control>-A to the sequence for <F1>,
> <control>-B to <F2>, etc, etc.  I also mapped <control>-Z as an emergency
> exit button (some of the CD-ROM software makes it less than clear to the
> user how to get out so having a standard quit key is a nice bonus). 
> 
> And that is more or less it.  It works from DOS (obviously), MS-Windoze
> using Lan Workplace, NCSA Telnet 2.4.19 on Macs (even my PowerBook with no
> function keys at all) and from my SS5 UNIX workstation.  I guess it should
> work from dumb terminals and anything that can emulate a VT100.  I've done
> most of the tests on Global Books In Print from Bowker-Saur sitting in a
> SCSI Express Novell server and that works fine.  And best of all we can
> now make hyperlinks to the CD-ROMs from the Library's WWW pages (just
> ordinary telnet URLs). 
> 
> As I say, its still very much a prototype as we've got to get OPTINET
> discs working (it doesn't like the version of DOS I loaded into DOSEMU :-(
> ) and check what kind of load the little 486/33 that is running Linux can 
> handle (its got a 230MB HD and 16MB of RAM by the way so its nothing 
> special.  We're not talking Windows95 levels of resource gobbling here).  
> However for any other systems bods confronting the same problem, I'd say 
> ``give it a go''.  As the software is all free and available from a major 
> archive near you, you've little to lose.
> 
> Feel free to email me for more details (sorry, I can't give a URL that you
> can try as we've naturally had to limit this to on campus use due to the
> licensing requirements of most CD-ROMs).
> 
> Jon
> 
> -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
> Jon Knight, Researcher, Sysop and General Dogsbody, Department of Computer
> Studies, Loughborough University of Technology, Leics., ENGLAND.  LE11 3TU.
> *** If French nuclear weapons aren't harmful, what's the point of them? ***
> 
> 
> 
>