how to share wine programs between users?

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rkleemann
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Joined: Sun May 18, 2008 12:36 am

how to share wine programs between users?

Post by rkleemann »

Hi,

I installed Office 2007 under my account, but mostly it is my wife that needs to use it.

I hadn't realized that installs apply only to the particular user account.

Isn't there a way to install software such that wine can use it for any user on the system?

I tried moving my .wine directory to /home/.wine and then symlinking ~/.wine, but that only works for me... if I try it under my wife's account I get an error that wine isn't owned by her. So the .wine directory has to be owned by the user in order for wine to work.

It would be nice to be able to share applications. Can that be done in any way?

Thanks
Ricardo
vitamin
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Re: how to share wine programs between users?

Post by vitamin »

rkleemann wrote:Hi,

I installed Office 2007 under my account, but mostly it is my wife that needs to use it.

I hadn't realized that installs apply only to the particular user account.

Isn't there a way to install software such that wine can use it for any user on the system?

I tried moving my .wine directory to /home/.wine and then symlinking ~/.wine, but that only works for me... if I try it under my wife's account I get an error that wine isn't owned by her. So the .wine directory has to be owned by the user in order for wine to work.

It would be nice to be able to share applications. Can that be done in any way?

Thanks
Ricardo
In short - you can only share binary files read-only between users. You can not share registry. Files that are being modified might get corrupt and it's your call how far you want to go with it.

In this case what you can do is:
1. Start with clean ~/.wine dir (just remove it)
2. Install program under your account, configure it and make sure it works.
3. Move ~/.wine/drive_c/Program Files/Office into a shared place, set appropriate permissions on it.
4. Symlink that directory to ~/.wine/drive_c/Program Files/Office
5. Copy your ~/.wine directory to other user and set correct owevner.

You can try and share more files this way. But please don't share directories like system32 - they are constantly being written to.
Paul Johnson

how to share wine programs between users?

Post by Paul Johnson »

On Sunday 18 May 2008 07:50:51 am rkleemann wrote:
It would be nice to be able to share applications. Can that be done in any
way?
Since Windows assumes 1 machine/1 user, wine makes the same assumption.

--
Paul Johnson
[email protected]

Explaination of .pgp part: http://linuxmafia.com/faq/Mail/rant-gpg.html
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austin987
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Joined: Fri Feb 22, 2008 8:19 pm

how to share wine programs between users?

Post by austin987 »

On Sun, May 18, 2008 at 12:56 PM, Paul Johnson <[email protected]> wrote:
On Sunday 18 May 2008 07:50:51 am rkleemann wrote:
It would be nice to be able to share applications. Can that be done in any
way?
Since Windows assumes 1 machine/1 user, wine makes the same assumption.
No...Windows allows installing apps for multiple users. The problem is
that running multiple wineservers can cause race conditions or
corruptions. The checks were put in place to prevent that, and
whenever the wineserver issue is resolved, AJ has agreed to remove
those checks.
rkleemann
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Posts: 5
Joined: Sun May 18, 2008 12:36 am

Re: how to share wine programs between users?

Post by rkleemann »

vitamin wrote:
rkleemann wrote:Hi,

I installed Office 2007 under my account, but mostly it is my wife that needs to use it.

I hadn't realized that installs apply only to the particular user account.

Isn't there a way to install software such that wine can use it for any user on the system?

I tried moving my .wine directory to /home/.wine and then symlinking ~/.wine, but that only works for me... if I try it under my wife's account I get an error that wine isn't owned by her. So the .wine directory has to be owned by the user in order for wine to work.

It would be nice to be able to share applications. Can that be done in any way?

Thanks
Ricardo
In short - you can only share binary files read-only between users. You can not share registry. Files that are being modified might get corrupt and it's your call how far you want to go with it.

In this case what you can do is:
1. Start with clean ~/.wine dir (just remove it)
2. Install program under your account, configure it and make sure it works.
3. Move ~/.wine/drive_c/Program Files/Office into a shared place, set appropriate permissions on it.
4. Symlink that directory to ~/.wine/drive_c/Program Files/Office
5. Copy your ~/.wine directory to other user and set correct owevner.

You can try and share more files this way. But please don't share directories like system32 - they are constantly being written to.
Ok, this almost worked.

I'm actually able to run Office on the other user account if I browse to Program Files/Office and double click on winword.exe.

The Wine menu for running Office only appears on my account, it does not appear on the other account... How is that menu built up?
Marcel W. Wysocki

how to share wine programs between users?

Post by Marcel W. Wysocki »

Ok, this almost worked.

I'm actually able to run Office on the other user account if I browse to Program Files/Office and double click on winword.exe.

The Wine menu for running Office only appears on my account, it does not appear on the other account... How is that menu built up?



check .local/share
and .config
in your home dir

--
Marcel W. Wysocki <[email protected]>
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rkleemann
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Posts: 5
Joined: Sun May 18, 2008 12:36 am

Re: how to share wine programs between users?

Post by rkleemann »

Marcel W. Wysocki wrote:
Ok, this almost worked.

I'm actually able to run Office on the other user account if I browse to Program Files/Office and double click on winword.exe.

The Wine menu for running Office only appears on my account, it does not appear on the other account... How is that menu built up?



check .local/share
and .config
in your home dir

almost there... I copied the menus info from my account to the other account. Now the Office menus do appear but they're called wine-menus-Microsoft Office and they don't show the application icons... plus clicking on the application does not bring up the app...

So simply copying them doesn't work. :-(
vitamin
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Joined: Sat Feb 23, 2008 2:29 pm

Re: how to share wine programs between users?

Post by vitamin »

rkleemann wrote:almost there... I copied the menus info from my account to the other account. Now the Office menus do appear but they're called wine-menus-Microsoft Office and they don't show the application icons... plus clicking on the application does not bring up the app...

So simply copying them doesn't work. :-(
You will need to edit them. They do refer to your WINEPREFIX. It needs to be changes to the other user's ~/.wine directory.

Images can be found in ~/.local/share/icons
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