UMSDOS HOW-TO: Umsdos as your root partition

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## 3. Umsdos as your root partition

## 3.1 The pseudo-root concept.

With Umsdos, Linux can be installed in a standard DOS partition. Linux is then installed as a second (or third) OS in the partition. To avoid name collision (there is maybe a bin or tmp directory in the drive C: already), Umsdos use a smart trick: The pseudo-root.

All Linux files are installed in a DOS subdirectory called `linux`, generally `C: LINUX`. The normal Linux/Unix directory structure goes there. So you get

-     C:\LINUX\BIN

-     C:\LINUX\ETC

-     C:\LINUX\LIB

-     C:\LINUX\ROOT

-     C:\LINUX\SBIN

-     C:\LINUX\TMP

-     C:\LINUX\USR

-     C:\LINUX\VAR

When the Umsdos boot, it probes for the directory `linux` and then `/linux/etc`. If it exist, it activates the pseudo-root mode.

Mostly, the pseudo-root mode switch the root of the partition to `C:\\LINUX` giving the conventional Unix directory layout

-     /bin

-     /etc

-     /lib

-     /root

-     /sbin

-     /tmp

-     /usr

-     /var

To this list, it adds a new one called `DOS`. This one is a virtual directory.

## 3.2 Things to know about the pseudo-root

- This mode can only be triggered at boot time. There is no way to activate this by a mount command.
- This mechanism is purely a different view of a normal Umsdos file-system. This means that a partition normally used as a root partition can be normally mounted. There won't be any pseudo-root effect. For example, if you boot linux with a maintenance floppy and mount your normal root partition in `/mnt`, you will find all your linux directory in `/mnt/linux/bin, /mnt/linux/etc` and so on.

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