RE: The network redirector can only deal with short file names?

Hi Bart,
so only LFN-aware applications can make use of LFN for DOS. If a shell
and some tools like copy/dir would be among them... are they? I wonder
why the kernel needs to provide a LFN interface then (as I understood
it does).
However, I now understand the issue: The required interface is defined
for DOS boxes in Windows only for local drives, so everything else would
use real Windows library calls instead of some DOS interrupt. I guess
this means DOS is really out of luck here. The only thing we could do
was to define our own int 2f.11 extensions to have networked LFN at least
for some tools that would be in "our" LFN for DOS suite (such as copy/dir,
you guessed it).
To collect some opinions on the issue, I CC: to the list.

PS: On that server issue, the question was both about me (preferring to
work with standard kernels and servers but flexible otherwise) and about
the newbie who has asked me (and who would prefer Win9x + Apache + Perl...).
The question on minimum hardware requirements has to be seen in that light.
A Pentium 90 + 64 MB + 850 MB works nicely for me as a server/surf-station
here, and a 486 50 + 16 MB + 250 MB was really too slow (not much RAM) and
it was kind of impossible to make it both a surf-station and a server at
the same time with such a small harddisk (this is why I am now using the P90).
[To the list: Bart has answered that it really depends. As long as its 32bit...]

PPS: Here part of the original mail, for the list:
> > so you want to say there is a generic reason for DOS being unable to
> > use long network file names?
> 
> DOS is unable to use LFNs at all. An LFN interface was added but is only
> active in DOS boxes in Winxx. But Winxx can implement that in 32-bit
> code outside of DOS space. For some reason int2f/ax=11xx wasn't expanded
> (or it is truely undocumented).

Thanks for the info and happy DOSing so far.

Eric