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#370 Deleting REN folder dumps the whole FreeDos installation
Dear Ladies and Gentlemen,
there is a REN or something like that on the root folder obviously symbolically referring to the original FreeDOS installation. If I delete this folder - to save space -, I will loose my whole FreeDOS installation.
Is this unique to me ? I might have overinstalled the Feb 2022 1.3 release over a pre-existing candidate release, but the installer did not tell me. After installing 1.3, all the files from the previous release were still there.
I notices this evil backup folder over the last years and had the same issues.
Yours,
Alex
If I understand your bug report, you installed some version of FreeDOS, then installed FreeDOS 1.3 on top of it. And that process created a backup folder - and if you delete the folder, you lose your FreeDOS install?
To reproduce: I installed FreeDOS on a test system, then installed another FreeDOS on top of that. As part of the install process, the installer recognizes that there's a version of FreeDOS already there, so it forced me to run the installer manually by typing SETUP. This is to make sure people know they are installing on top of a previous install.
As part of that install attempt, and before installing anything, the installer asked if I wanted to backup my previous install first. I selected the prompt to do that. The installer ran several tasks to backup my old install, then proceeded to install the new FreeDOS.
When the new install was finished, I had this:
FDOS_OLD.000FDAUTO.000FDCONFIG.000FDOS_OLD.000/FDBACKUP.LSTFREEDOS(I checked and there are no references to
FDOS_OLD.000in either FDAUTO.BAT or FDCONFIG.SYS)The
RENdirectory that you mentioned is not there, but maybe you are misremembering theFDOS_OLD.000directory?The
FDOS_OLD.000backup directory and the.000backup files are as intended. You can safely delete these and not break your current FreeDOS install. However, if you had changes in there, then deleting theFDOS_OLD.000backup folder will delete your changes.Hmmm, ren is also an internal command of freedos command.com (renames files and folders).
So I am not sure what really happened.
It would be interesting to know:
a) what was inside the REN folder (files of your own, FreeDOS files, subfolders etc.?)
b) which command or program (e.g. dosnavigator or other Norton Commander Clone) you used to
delete this folder, as deleting a folder only works with rd if the folder is empty. So only deltree is a possibility for deleting folders at once.
Ah, one more idea, there are known problems when labelname and file- / foldername are identical. Could it be something like this?
I think this bug report is too vague to provide useful feedback. "REN or something like that" makes it difficult to debug if we don't have the exact name that was used.
Can the original submitter (Agena) provide additional details here? Can you confirm my debugging, above?
marking as closed because it seems the reporter has deleted a directory on their own. please reopen if this is not the case.
Cleaning up - this was meant to be marked closed but was marked resolved