At startup and at attempts to save a document, MS Word 6.0 for DOS complains
that there is no space on the disk.  Other programs are able to write files
without any problem.  The problem is not present under MS DOS 5.0 (also under
DOSEmu).

I have the same behaviour with Word 5.5.

You can see more on
http://marc.theaimsgroup.com/?l=linux-msdos&m=110350596810380&w=2

The funy thing is that I see the "disk full" nonsense only when running word on
SMP  machine. on UP machine everithing is fine.

Versions:
dosemu: 1.2.1-3 [1]
freedos: b8p-3 [2]
word: 5.5A
libc6: 2.3.2.ds1-20 on SMP, 2.3.2.ds1-12 on UP [3]

The setup is completely the same - it is a standard debian setup.
autoexec.ba/config.sys copied to be sure.

One difference between two machines is on ldd output:

UP$ ldd /usr/bin/dosemu.bin
        libXext.so.6 => /usr/X11R6/lib/libXext.so.6 (0x4166a000)
        libX11.so.6 => /usr/X11R6/lib/libX11.so.6 (0x4158e000)
        libslang.so.1 => /lib/libslang.so.1 (0x4000d000)
        libm.so.6 => /lib/libm.so.6 (0x4114e000)
        libdl.so.2 => /lib/libdl.so.2 (0x41172000)
        libc.so.6 => /lib/libc.so.6 (0x41019000)
        /lib/ld-linux.so.2 => /lib/ld-linux.so.2 (0x41000000)
SMP$ ldd /usr/bin/dosemu.bin
                libXext.so.6 => /usr/X11R6/lib/libXext.so.6 (0x40027000)
        libX11.so.6 => /usr/X11R6/lib/libX11.so.6 (0x40035000)
        libslang.so.1 => /lib/libslang.so.1 (0x400fd000)
        libm.so.6 => /lib/tls/libm.so.6 (0x40170000)
        libdl.so.2 => /lib/tls/libdl.so.2 (0x40192000)
        libc.so.6 => /lib/tls/libc.so.6 (0x40195000)
        /lib/ld-linux.so.2 => /lib/ld-linux.so.2 (0x40000000)

As you can see, UP uses /lib/ and SMP - /lib/tls/ for base libraries.
I can't imagine whether this has something to do with the problem, thouth.

Another difference is the kernel version.
UP: 2.4.21 UP
SMP: 2.6.8 SMP, tried with 2.4.27 SMP

Any clues and additional tests? The only thing I can't test is UP kernel on the
SMP - the machine acts as a X terminal server.

[1] -3 is Debian-specific revision. the only suspicious change is:
src/plugin/commands/generic.S: Set stack_size to 2K
[2] again, -3 is debian specific revision. This time however there is no
significant changes - only packaging ones
[3] full changelog between -12 and -20 can be found at
http://packages.debian.org/changelogs/pool/main/g/glibc/glibc_2.3.2.ds1-20/changelog

The problem happens only on a redirected drives, so it affects the
dosemu users mostly. This may be a dosemu bug as well btw, but
there is no such a problem with MS-DOS. The easiest workaround is
to use mkfatimage16 utility from dosemu package thus avoiding to
save on the redirected drive.

The test-case for the bug (Word 5.5, 3Mb) can be obtained here:
http://download.microsoft.com/download/word97win/Wd55_be/97/WIN98/EN-US/Wd55_ben.exe

see
http://marc.theaimsgroup.com/?l=linux-msdos&m=111493618910830&w=2
it's really a dosemu problem after all, the fix is in that message.

Word does a "commit file" request. FreeDOS forwards that to the redirector
(DOSEMU), and DOSEMU handled that incorrectly, so Word complains.

MSDOS for some unknown reason did not forward the request to the redirector, so
DOSEMU's bug did not surface.

I'd say this fixes the issue, unless you truly want FreeDOS to be a 100% bug
compatible to MSDOS.