How can wine be available for all users?

pcdoctor · Post by **pcdoctor** » Mon Oct 20, 2008 5:50 am

I'm using kubuntu 8.04 and I'm able to run three programs that I installed but another user can't. Is there any way to make .wine available for all users? I thought about copying .wine to wine in /usr/lib/wine or /usr/bin/wine.

Nevermind, I found this:
http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=917422

Warren Dumortier · Post by **Warren Dumortier** » Mon Oct 20, 2008 9:56 am

I might be a nub, but you could symlink a .wine dir for each user to your
.wine directory...

2008/10/20 pcdoctor <[email protected]>

I'm using kubuntu 8.04 and I'm able to run three programs that I installed
but another user can't. Is there any way to make .wine available for all
users? I thought about copying .wine to wine in /usr/lib/wine or
/usr/bin/wine.

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vitamin · Post by **vitamin** » Mon Oct 20, 2008 11:17 am

Warren Dumortier wrote:I might be a nub, but you could symlink a .wine dir for each user to your .wine directory...

No you can't.

Erik Hahn · Post by **Erik Hahn** » Mon Oct 20, 2008 11:37 am

On Mon, Oct 20, 2008 at 05:50:51AM -0500, pcdoctor wrote:

I'm using kubuntu 8.04 and I'm able to run three programs that I installed
but another user can't. Is there any way to make .wine available for
all users? I thought about copying .wine to wine in /usr/lib/wine or
/usr/bin/wine.

That should work, better use /usr/wine or something under /opt. You have
to set the WINEPREFIX variable to the location, also make sure you get
the access rights right (Users need read access of course, avoid write
access if possible)

-Erik

--
hackerkey://v4sw5hw2ln3pr5ck0ma2u7LwXm4l7Gi2e2t4b7Ken4/7a16s0r1p-5.62/-6.56g5OR

Erik Hahn · Post by **Erik Hahn** » Mon Oct 20, 2008 11:53 am

On Mon, Oct 20, 2008 at 11:17:48AM -0500, vitamin wrote:

Warren Dumortier wrote:
I might be a nub, but you could symlink a .wine dir for each user to your .wine directory...
No you can't.

Why not (as long as the permissions are set correctly, that is)?
--
hackerkey://v4sw5hw2ln3pr5ck0ma2u7LwXm4l7Gi2e2t4b7Ken4/7a16s0r1p-5.62/-6.56g5OR

austin987 · Post by **austin987** » Mon Oct 20, 2008 12:43 pm

On Mon, Oct 20, 2008 at 11:53 AM, Erik Hahn <[email protected]> wrote:

On Mon, Oct 20, 2008 at 11:17:48AM -0500, vitamin wrote:
Warren Dumortier wrote:
I might be a nub, but you could symlink a .wine dir for each user to your .wine directory...
No you can't.
Why not (as long as the permissions are set correctly, that is)?
--
hackerkey://v4sw5hw2ln3pr5ck0ma2u7LwXm4l7Gi2e2t4b7Ken4/7a16s0r1p-5.62/-6.56g5OR

Wineserver doesn't support running multiple instances on the same prefix.
http://bugs.winehq.org/show_bug.cgi?id=11112

--
-Austin

vitamin · Post by **vitamin** » Mon Oct 20, 2008 3:05 pm

Erik Hahn wrote:Why not (as long as the permissions are set correctly, that is)?

You can't share registry. You can't share any files read/write. And as Austin noted wineserver doesn't support more then one user per prefix.

Each user have to have their own WINEPREFIX. You can only share files read-only or you risking file corruption.

Erik Hahn · Post by **Erik Hahn** » Mon Oct 20, 2008 4:13 pm

On Mon, Oct 20, 2008 at 03:05:33PM -0500, vitamin wrote:
Erik Hahn wrote:

Why not (as long as the permissions are set correctly, that is)?
You can't share registry. You can't share any files read/write. And as Austin
noted wineserver doesn't support more then one user per prefix.

Each user have to have their own WINEPREFIX. You can only share files
read-only or you risking file corruption.

Do you refer to multiple users using the prefix at the same time or at
different times? After all there usually aren't multiple users logged in
at the same time.

--
hackerkey://v4sw5hw2ln3pr5ck0ma2u7LwXm4l7Gi2e2t4b7Ken4/7a16s0r1p-5.62/-6.56g5OR

stimpak · Post by **stimpak** » Tue Oct 21, 2008 7:53 am

why assume that two or more people will be running wine at the same time?

from what i've gathered so far, most ppl have an ubuntu rig, which they have an account for them, another account for their sister/spouse/grandma or whoever. The whole idea is that the other accounts will be able to run their applications without having to access another account /home/~/.wine.
we're talking about centralization here!

Dont assume that every linux distro is to be run in a multi-user environment and dont assume that it is even running as server!!

i think its quite possible if you put restrictions, and warnings and thus allowing one account to run wine at a given time

vitamin · Post by **vitamin** » Tue Oct 21, 2008 8:33 am

stimpak wrote:why assume that two or more people will be running wine at the same time?

Because this is waht *NIX is. And that is what it's made for.

Anyway, wineserver won't let you use someone else's WINEPREFIX. Each user still have to have their own.

austin987 · Post by **austin987** » Tue Oct 21, 2008 10:35 am

On Tue, Oct 21, 2008 at 7:53 AM, stimpak <[email protected]> wrote:

why assume that two or more people will be running wine at the same time?

from what i've gathered so far, most ppl have an ubuntu rig, which they have an account for them, another account for their sister/spouse/grandma or whoever. The whole idea is that the other accounts will be able to run their applications without having to access another account /home/~/.wine.
we're talking about centralization here!

Dont assume that every linux distro is to be run in a multi-user environment and dont assume that it is even running as server!!

i think its quite possible if you put restrictions, and warnings and thus allowing one account to run wine at a given time

*Nix is designed to be a multiuser system, even if you don't use it
that way. If you're adventurous, you can patch around it, but you risk
corruption of the registry, permission errors, etc.

Of course, if you've got a better implementation that would prevent
corruption, etc., patches are welcome.
--
-Austin

stimpak · Post by **stimpak** » Tue Oct 21, 2008 1:59 pm

vitamin wrote:
stimpak wrote:why assume that two or more people will be running wine at the same time?
Because this is waht *NIX is. And that is what it's made for.

not anymore, or soon enough at least, more and more rigs are being sold with Ubuntu in them by default. Are we going to turn a blind eye on them and just say they're the minority and we dont care about them?

austin987 wrote:Of course, if you've got a better implementation that would prevent
corruption, etc., patches are welcome.

Still working on that, need to learn C first and review the algorithms WINE uses to run

austin987 · Post by **austin987** » Tue Oct 21, 2008 5:12 pm

On Tue, Oct 21, 2008 at 1:59 PM, stimpak <[email protected]> wrote:

vitamin wrote: stimpak wrote:
why assume that two or more people will be running wine at the same time?
Because this is waht *NIX is. And that is what it's made for.

not anymore, or soon enough at least, more and more rigs are being sold with Ubuntu in them by default. Are we going to turn a blind eye on them and just say they're the minority and we dont care about them?

While it may be more often used for that purpose, Unixlike systems are
at their heart, mulituser systems. Multiple users could share that
directory over VNC/SSH with X11 forwarding/etc.

--
-Austin

JuEUS-U · Post by **JuEUS-U** » Tue Oct 21, 2008 8:13 pm

I think sharing 'wineserver' is better than sharing 'WINEPREFIX'.
bcuz it's little bit risky to let a number of process access a file at the same time.
Make the wineserver a real "server". This might be funny

vitamin · Post by **vitamin** » Tue Oct 21, 2008 8:19 pm

JuEUS-U wrote:I think sharing 'wineserver' is better than sharing 'WINEPREFIX'.
bcuz it's little bit risky to let a number of process access a file at the same time.
Make the wineserver a real "server". This might be funny

It's much more complicated then seems.

occhigrigi · Post by **occhigrigi** » Wed Oct 22, 2008 5:19 am

I've done it this way
Created a /windows directory where i put all the WINEPREFIX created for every application i need.
Here is an example with 3 applications

/windows
/windows/remedes
/windows/remedes/drive_c
/windows/remedes/user.reg
/windows/remedes/userdef.reg
/windows/remedes/system.reg
/windows/remedes/dosdevices
/windows/lotusnotes
/windows/lotusnotes/drive_c
/windows/lotusnotes/user.reg
/windows/lotusnotes/userdef.reg
/windows/lotusnotes/system.reg
/windows/lotusnotes/dosdevices
/windows/teraterm
/windows/teraterm/drive_c
/windows/teraterm/user.reg
/windows/teraterm/userdef.reg
/windows/teraterm/system.reg
/windows/teraterm/dosdevices

Then I've made a launch script for every application
Here's the script i use for lotusnotes

winapp=lotusnotes
if [ ! -d $HOME/.windows/$winapp ]; then
mkdir -p $HOME/.windows/$winapp
cd $HOME/.windows/$winapp
ln -s /windows/$winapp/dosdevices
ln -s /windows/$winapp/drive_c
ln -s /windows/$winapp/system.reg
cp /windows/$winapp/user.reg .
ln -s /windows/$winapp/userdef.reg
fi
export WINEPREFIX=$HOME/.windows/$winapp
wine 'c:\programmi\lotus\notes\notes.exe' 2> /dev/null

As you can see I use a ~/.windows to link all the necessary files ad directories for each user.
So i can still have a ~/.wine for each user's use

Disadvantages: security, under /windows each dir has to be 777 and disk space waste
Advantages: every user still has his own settings.

Hope this helps

stimpak · Post by **stimpak** » Wed Oct 22, 2008 2:53 pm

exactly the file hierarchy i was thinking about!

put the core files somewhere reachable for all users,but instead of making syslinks, wouldnt be best or possible to create separate *.reg for each account, so you wont risk a registry corruption?

still that script doesnt make WINE multiuser (as in many users as the same time - so dont try that if you're looking for that solution), but its good enough for rigs that have only one user active at any given time. - such as desktop computers

Craig73 · Post by **Craig73** » Tue Jan 13, 2009 11:57 pm

stimpak wrote:exactly the file hierarchy i was thinking about!

put the core files somewhere reachable for all users,but instead of making syslinks, wouldnt be best or possible to create separate *.reg for each account, so you wont risk a registry corruption?

still that script doesnt make WINE multiuser (as in many users as the same time - so dont try that if you're looking for that solution), but its good enough for rigs that have only one user active at any given time. - such as desktop computers

Why doesn't the script make Wine multiuser? All the shared (ie - non-user modifiable files) are in a central directory and the registry (user modifiable) is the users directory. I might comment that the users profile folder and the temp folders are not local, but the users profile folder should be unique and the Wine should only ever hand out unique files in temp. So there is a privacy/security risk of having the temp and user profile folder exposed, but it shouldn't prevent multiuser should it?

[I haven't played much behind the scenes, so what am I not understanding?]

Craig73 · Post by **Craig73** » Tue Jan 13, 2009 11:59 pm

Craig73 wrote:
stimpak wrote:exactly the file hierarchy i was thinking about!

put the core files somewhere reachable for all users,but instead of making syslinks, wouldnt be best or possible to create separate *.reg for each account, so you wont risk a registry corruption?

still that script doesnt make WINE multiuser (as in many users as the same time - so dont try that if you're looking for that solution), but its good enough for rigs that have only one user active at any given time. - such as desktop computers
Why doesn't the script make Wine multiuser? All the shared (ie - non-user modifiable files) are in a central directory and the registry (user modifiable) is the users directory. I might comment that the users profile folder and the temp folders are not local, but the users profile folder should be unique and the Wine should only ever hand out unique files in temp. So there is a privacy/security risk of having the temp and user profile folder exposed, but it shouldn't prevent multiuser should it?

[I haven't played much behind the scenes, so what am I not understanding?]

Sorry - my idea for a application setup would be all this stuff in the script file be run once, the first time the application is setup. (I can see where it would cause issues if that ran every time)