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You can mount a DOS filesystem and access its files freely while still operating from your UNIX system.
When you mount a DOS filesystem,
you can edit, examine, or copy DOS data and text files,
without first copying them into the UNIX filesystem.
However, you cannot execute DOS files and applications
from a mounted DOS filesystem.
To do this, you must run a DOS emulator such as SCO® Merge,
or boot DOS from a DOS partition.
The DOS mounting feature is intended for existing
DOS filesystems (on a floppy disk or on an existing DOS partition).
The UNIX operating system handles mounted DOS filesystems, without actually changing the files, by superimposing certain qualities of UNIX system filesystems on the DOS filesystem. UNIX filesystems are highly structured and operate in a multiuser environment. Thus, many UNIX filesystem concepts do not apply to DOS, including:
Because no changes are made to the DOS files, the carriage return character (^M) is visible when you edit a DOS file on a UNIX system. (UNIX systems use only a newline character; DOS uses both a carriage return and a newline.) DOS systems also append an end-of-file character (^Z) to the end of text files.
See also:
Only root and users with Administer Filesystems authorization can mount filesystems, including DOS filesystems.
A user's access to a mounted DOS filesystem is determined by the permissions and ownership that root places on the filesystem.
When DOS files are mounted on a UNIX system:
For example, if root creates a mount point /x with permissions of 0777, all users can read or write the contents of the filesystem. If the mount point is owned by root, all files in the DOS filesystem and any created by other users are owned by root.
For example, if a user's umask is 0022, all files created by that user have permissions of 0644.
The following limitations apply when accessing files on a mounted DOS filesystem:
When mounted from the UNIX system partition, the UNIX DOS filesystem driver records the creation, modification, and access times of files in GMT (Greenwich Mean Time) and then converts them to the appropriate local time. DOS timestamps are recorded in the local time.
Thus, in time zones other than GMT, when you access a file created in the DOS filesystem while mounted on the UNIX system, the timestamp will be wrong because DOS assumes that the timestamp was recorded in the local time. If you mount the DOS filesystem under the UNIX system and access a file created under DOS, the timestamp will also be wrong because the UNIX system assumes the timestamp was recorded in GMT and converts it to the local time.