Multiple Users

[slick666]

I could not find another thread that talked about this but all my searched pulled up manny manny results so I may have overlooked some.

The problem I have is that I recently upgraded my ubuntu 7.10 to 8.04 and the new version of wine (1.1.2) has broken my setup. I run a machine with multiple user (5) and to simplify my life all there Microsoft software they needed was installed under wine and they used linux to do everything else. Every user has the exact same software installed but some have there icons hidden and some not. Since everyone is basically the same everyone has the same .wine folder. It sits in the home directory and is sym-linked to each users account. I set up one wine system from my account and all the changes/additions are sen by everyone else.

After doing the update everything is broken because the wine project implemented a rule that you have to own the wine folder that you are executing. But in my case no one owns that folder. I understand it's to keep people from running as root but that is not the case here it it's still causing a problem. Besides that fact that I think it's a fundamentally bad idea anyway I can't find a work around because wine is insisting now that it own the .wine folder. This is VERY frustrating because what has worked is now broken and there is no clear path to fix it. if anyone has any ideas please let me know.

[vitamin]

I could not find another thread that talked about this but all my searched pulled up manny manny results so I may have overlooked some.

The problem I have is that I recently upgraded my ubuntu 7.10 to 8.04 and the new version of wine (1.1.2) has broken my setup. I run a machine with multiple user (5) and to simplify my life all there Microsoft software they needed was installed under wine and they used linux to do everything else. Every user has the exact same software installed but some have there icons hidden and some not. Since everyone is basically the same everyone has the same .wine folder. It sits in the home directory and is sym-linked to each users account. I set up one wine system from my account and all the changes/additions are sen by everyone else.

After doing the update everything is broken because the wine project implemented a rule that you have to own the wine folder that you are executing. But in my case no one owns that folder. I understand it's to keep people from running as root but that is not the case here it it's still causing a problem. Besides that fact that I think it's a fundamentally bad idea anyway I can't find a work around because wine is insisting now that it own the .wine folder. This is VERY frustrating because what has worked is now broken and there is no clear path to fix it. if anyone has any ideas please let me know.

What you doing is wrong. There are reasons why each user have to have their own ~/.wine directory.

Wine is a single user app.

[Joonas Sarajärvi]

2008/8/11 vitamin <[email protected]>:

slick666 wrote:

I could not find another thread that talked about this but all my searched pulled up manny manny results so I may have overlooked some.

The problem I have is that I recently upgraded my ubuntu 7.10 to 8.04 and the new version of wine (1.1.2) has broken my setup. I run a machine with multiple user (5) and to simplify my life all there Microsoft software they needed was installed under wine and they used linux to do everything else. Every user has the exact same software installed but some have there icons hidden and some not. Since everyone is basically the same everyone has the same .wine folder. It sits in the home directory and is sym-linked to each users account. I set up one wine system from my account and all the changes/additions are sen by everyone else.

After doing the update everything is broken because the wine project implemented a rule that you have to own the wine folder that you are executing. But in my case no one owns that folder. I understand it's to keep people from running as root but that is not the case here it it's still causing a problem. Besides that fact that I think it's a fundamentally bad idea anyway I can't find a work around because wine is insisting now that it own the .wine folder. This is VERY frustrating because what has worked is now broken and there is no clear path to fix it. if anyone has any ideas please let me know.

What you doing is wrong. There are reasons why each user have to have their own ~/.wine directory.

Wine is a single user app.

Is there any common solution to the problem of two users wishing to
use the same piece of software? For example, many games let different
players share hiscores and other game history, like towns in SimCity.
Many programs are also very large when installed, so I'd like to avoid
installing multiple copies.

One possibility is to just create a whole new account for these pieces
of software, but it would be a bit cumbersome to use.


--
Joonas Sarajärvi
[email protected]

[vitamin]

Is there any common solution to the problem of two users wishing to
use the same piece of software? For example, many games let different
players share hiscores and other game history, like towns in SimCity.

No Wine can't do that. You can only share files read only. Not read/write. And of course you can not share registry otherwise it will become corrupted.
Each of your users have to have their own separate copy of ~/.wine directory.

Many programs are also very large when installed, so I'd like to avoid
installing multiple copies.

The only thing you can share are the executables that are not modified. Use symlinks. But everything else have to be duplicated.

[slick666]

Well I can copy the .wine directory into each users account and chown -R chgrp -R so that each user owns the data but then you have about 19 Gigs of mostly duplicated data copied 5 times. Thats 95 Gigs of wine where 19 was before. On the system in question I don't have the necessary space at the moment so any other thoughts or suggestions would be appreciated. I'm going to try sym-linking not the .wine dir but some of data files that constitute most of the data.

[dimesio]

Well I can copy the .wine directory into each users account and chown -R chgrp -R so that each user owns the data but then you have about 19 Gigs of mostly duplicated data copied 5 times. Thats 95 Gigs of wine where 19 was before. On the system in question I don't have the necessary space at the moment so any other thoughts or suggestions would be appreciated. I'm going to try sym-linking not the .wine dir but some of data files that constitute most of the data.

You could create a separate account just for Wine use and give everyone the password.

[vitamin]

I'm going to try sym-linking not the .wine dir but some of data files that constitute most of the data.

You can do that only if these files are not modified. Which also means you can symlink whole directories if their content is not modified.

You could create a separate account just for Wine use and give everyone the password.

You can do that if only one user running it at a time. Each WINEPREFIX can run on only one DISPLAY at a time. I'm assuming his users are using remote X / VNC to run the apps.

[rsay]

I have posted a Howto over on the ubuntu forums that explains how to install wine applications for multiple users. The method that I use will still let you install and run wine applications for individuals so you get the best of both worlds.

http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=917422