System Error --- failure in opening oed files

Questions about Wine on Linux
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rquint
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System Error --- failure in opening oed files

Post by rquint »

I have been using WINE for years on Ubuntu, now through 18.04, to run the Oxford English Dictionary, an old Win 3.1 program. Out of curiosity I've tried to install WINE and the OED on an old notebook running a 32 bit OS, the Raspberry Pi Desktop (it's a Debian derivative). Installation of WINE went smoothly, but after installing the OED, the app starts up, showing its splash screen, but then I get a System Error dialog "failure in opening oed files". I checked permissions which seemed correct, and to double check I ran chmod -r 777 * on the OED folder and contents so there shouldn't be any conflicts there. But, I continued to get the same error. I used winecfg to set the mode to be Win 3.1 from Default, but again, no change. All the necessary files are in their appropriate places. I've never seen this error before and couldn't find any references when I googled it. I also searched the Wine Wiki and FAQs without any success.
spoon0042
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Re: System Error --- failure in opening oed files

Post by spoon0042 »

Are you running from a terminal and starting the exe from the directory it's in? That would be one simple thing to check.

Also I don't know if the Pi is an x86 chip? If it isn't that would be a problem, though I would expect something other than an error dialog in that case.
rquint
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Re: System Error --- failure in opening oed files

Post by rquint »

Yes. I opened a terminal in the directory containing the executable and its dlls and ran

Code: Select all

wine ./OED.EXE
I got the OED splash screen and then the System Error dialog box. The laptop is an old SONY Vaio with a Intel Core Duo T2300 chip.

The Raspberry Pi Desktop I'm using is a Debian/LXDE derived distribution from the Raspbery Pi Foundation, which is intended to give a similar experience to the default distribution for the armf powered Raspberry Pis. Unlike crashes on Ubuntu I can't see a way to generate a backtrace.txt file.
spoon0042
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Re: System Error --- failure in opening oed files

Post by spoon0042 »

ok, so I assume the error message is from the program itself so there isn't really a crash or backtrace. Which makes things difficult. Other than guessing at WINEDEBUG settings the one thought I have is to check older wine versions, as it sounds like you had it working before. Or does it work in the same wine version on another system?
rquint
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Re: System Error --- failure in opening oed files

Post by rquint »

I hadn't thought of that (that is, that the dialog was generated by the OED not WINE). I've always installed WINE on my Desktop PC running Ubuntu via the synaptic package manager, accepting new versions as they get into the Ubuntu repositories. What's the best way to download and install an old version without getting into a dependency black hole?
spoon0042
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Re: System Error --- failure in opening oed files

Post by spoon0042 »

Consult your distribution documentation. :)

eh, actually trying to be helpful: on Debian/Ubuntu/etc you can specify a version with 'apt install', something like 'apt install wine-devel=5.10~CODENAME wine-devel-i386=5.10~CODENAME' replacing CODENAME with whatever is appropriate and 5.10 with whatever version. And for 32-bit it should just be those two packages. (If you do an 'apt upgrade' the newest version will be installed unless you hold or pin packages. Consult your distro documentation.)

If you haven't yet it may be enough to try wine-stable rather than -devel or -staging. Also if you have a more... conventional(?) system to try that may be easier. Or if it works on one and not the other that could narrow things down.
rquint
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Re: System Error --- failure in opening oed files

Post by rquint »

If you have a valid repository in /etc/apt/sources.list, e.g., deb https://dl.winehq.org/wine-builds/debian/ stretch main, then running

sudo apt install --install-recommends winehq-[stable | devel \ staging]

pulls in the other packages. None of the versions I've tried work for the OED. I'm trying to install a much older version, say 3.0.5, which may work on a 32-bit machine running a very old Windows 3.1 program. However just downloading

winehq-stable_3.0.5~buster_i386.deb

and

wine-stable-i386_3.0.5~buster_i386.deb

and running dpkg isn't enough. Either I need another package or the exact command order for dkpg. I'll search through the Debian wiki and see if there is anything about installing old versions---just backporting older distros usually pulls in a more up to date version of WINE.
spoon0042
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Re: System Error --- failure in opening oed files

Post by spoon0042 »

In theory you should be able to just 'dpkg -i wine-stable_3.0.5~buster_i386.deb wine-stable-i386_3.0.5~buster_i386.deb'. If you already have some wine-stable package(s) installed you may either have to remove them first or specify all of them at once -- for 32-bit: wine-stable and wine-stable-i386. winehq-stable is optional and only links like /usr/bin/wine to /opt/wine-whatever.

Oh, and if this distro is based on 'stretch' rather than 'buster' you'll want to install 'stretch' versions otherwise you'll likely have missing dependencies.
rquint
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Re: System Error --- failure in opening oed files

Post by rquint »

Found the missing dependency---e.g, I needed wine-stable-i386_3.0.5~Buster_i386, wine-stable_3.0.5~Buster_i386, and winehq-stable_3.0.5~Buster_i386 along with a couple non-wine packages. Unfortunately, nothing helps. So it may well be something deeper in the Raspberry Pi Desktop. WINE does install OK and I can run other programs using it. I'll check over at the Raspberry Pi forums to see if anyone else has run into this.
rquint
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Re: System Error --- failure in opening oed files

Post by rquint »

After some more trial and error I at least know the problem is not with WINE. I've installed DOSBOX with Windows 3.1 running inside it. I have successfully installed and run MSWord and Bookshelf in the Windows 3.1 installation, but when I tried the OED again I got the same system error message, "failure in opening oed files". Whatever the problem is, it doesn't occur in any of my 64-bit Ubuntu machines, physical or virtual.
fargodwe

Re: System Error --- failure in opening oed files

Post by fargodwe »

I'll go with a simple response:

(1) did you create a 32-bit prefix?

(2) via winecfg did you set it to windows 3.1?

(3) have you checked to see if you are missing a dll - perhaps something that doesn't show in winetricks?

That's the best I can do.

When I did a search on .oed file type it came up with a link that was supposedly a download of the dictionary. I created a test prefix and let it install and instead it installed some remote access protocol things. I deleted the new prefix, then open the installer .exe with the archive manager and found a lot of dummy things with file dates of 1969. So, it is an installer to let someone control your pc. The key point being don't download that one!
rquint
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Re: System Error --- failure in opening oed files

Post by rquint »

Well, I finally got around to thinking about this again. I installed a plain vanilla version of Debian Buster on the same laptop and tried installing its default version of WINE (Debian 4.0-2) and the OED. Worked without any trouble. So it's the RaspiOS version of Debian that's the problem. I've kept the RaspiOS updated regularly, so whatever was the problem last year is still there. I'll post my experience over at Forums on www.raspberrypi.org and see if anyone has an idea.
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