I have found that DOSbox executables distributed by Ubuntu have in the past been horrendously out of date, by sometimes decades, and buggy. Possibly you will have an easier time with this if you ensure that you have a version compiled from up to date sources.

I'm on Ubuntu. Ubuntu has DOSBox Staging also, I just use that. The Ubuntu version of DOSBox is broken.

Thanks for your feedback @xcomcmdr and @bitwrangler, I really appreciate it. I cleared a couple of hurdles. I needed to link dosbox and my DOS apps folder inside cgi-bin to clear the permissions error. I also switched to SDL_VIDEODRIVER dummy and SDL_AUDIODRIVER file to avoid also errors. The dosbox banner window starts but that’s about all. So, so close. Runs okay outside Apache but not inside it. Tried on different boxes and distros with same results.

DOSbox seems pretty stable and well behaved, so I’m pretty sure it my error. Successful Docker projects make me hopeful.

Can you give some hints at what you are trying to do? Are you trying to write a webapp that uses dosbox for some functionality, or simply set something up to be able to trigger the opening of dosbox from a remote machine?

Thanks for your reply, @jakethompson! Yes, it is the web app scenario, not the remote launch scenario. Ideally some dos gaming fun in a browser, if it can be coaxed along.

The Web version of DOSBox lives here: (not affiliated with the original DOSBox project): https://github.com/caiiiycuk/js-dos

I've already used it successfully with tons of games, and at the time it was the v6.xx branch.

It's also used by archive.org.

Thank you so much, @xcomcmdr, for the pointer! I was not aware of js-dos. It looks fascinating, I will see how it fits my project!