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Can't write config file!

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First post, by oeolycus

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Hello, I searched for help on this particular problem but found none.

I have dosbox 0.70 on Ubuntu 7.04 (installed from source). I also installed Dosbox Game Launcher. Inside the dosbox shell, I cannot write a config file. I've used, per the FAQ,

config -writeconf "~/.dosbox/dosbox.conf"

and I get the error, "Can't open file ~/.dosbox/dosbox.conf"

DBGL, thankfully created its own config file, and I can run dosbox with it, but can't save any new settings. I'm new to Linux and dosbox, so maybe I made a mistake during installation? I downloaded, unpacked the tar, and followed A.I.'s guide (which seems to be down right now). Afterwards, I threw out the .tar and its extracted contents.

All help is greatly appreciated.

Reply 1 of 8, by oeolycus

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I solved my problem--sort of.

config -writeconf "dosbox.conf"

Typing this in wrote a config file to my home directory. Can't write a config to any other directory though, mounted or otherwise.

Reply 2 of 8, by Kippesoep

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Make sure you actually have the proper permission to write to those folders (you should have permission to write to your home folder and everything in it, as well as /tmp, but that's basically it). I haven't tried DOSBox on Linux, but I'm not sure what happens when you use the ~ shortcut. Try using an absolute path. (Such as /home/oeolycus/.dosbox/dosbox.conf)

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Reply 3 of 8, by oeolycus

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Yes, that worked. I used the full path and it created the config file. Thanks so much for the help, Kippesoep!

Reply 4 of 8, by IIGS_User

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Kippesoep wrote:

(Such as /home/oeolycus/.dosbox/dosbox.conf)

Is the ".dosbox/" part not that invisible?

Klimawandel.

Reply 5 of 8, by Kippesoep

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Invisible to normal file listing commands, not inaccessible if you specify the name.

My site: Ramblings on mostly tech stuff.

Reply 6 of 8, by MiniMax

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It is an old Unix-tradtion to not show directory/folder entries that starts with . (dot). This prevents file-listing commands like ls(1) from listing 2 dot-names that is always present in any Unix-directory:

. = the directory itself
.. = the parent directory

Similar, user-specific configuration files like your login profile, X11 start-up files, configuration files for mail, editors, Oracle, anything, takes advantages of this do-not-show-dot-file tradition by giving their files a dot-prefix. Here is what I have in my Cygwin home directory:

.                .bash_logout  .emacs.d  .lynxrc    .texmf         .wgetrc
.. .checkstyle .forward .mc .tnsnames.ora
.aliases .completions .fvwm .ncftp .twmrc
.ant.properties .cvsignore .gnupg .profile+ .vim
.bash_history .cvspass .gvimrc .rnd .viminfo
.bash_login .cvsrc .inputrc .ssh .vimrc

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Reply 7 of 8, by boyofdestiny

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One thing I'm happy about, and I should have typed "man dosbox" before...

I renamed the dosbox.conf in my home folder to .dosboxrc

DOSBox loads its setting from there, no longer will my linux boxen have a dosbox.conf floating in home... 😀

Reply 8 of 8, by MiniMax

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Yup! DOSBox is a good Unix-citizen 😀 Btw. the rc-part is short for run-commands.

DOSBox 60 seconds guide | How to ask questions
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Lenovo M58p | Core 2 Quad Q8400 @ 2.66 GHz | Radeon R7 240 | LG HL-DT-ST DVDRAM GH40N | Fedora 32