Folder creation problems

[mark rumsey]

I hope you can help. I'm a bit of a newbie experimenting with Linux, virtual machines and (of course) Wine before I decide on how to set up my next computer, i.e. whether to go Windows or Linux. Wine is a very important part of this, but I am having a strange problem. I am running OpenSuSE 11.1 with Wine 1.1.19 and cannot get anything to install. I have tried Micrografx Designer 3.1 (16 bit) and Micrografx Draw 5 (32 bit) and both are exhibiting the same problem. Both start the installation programs fine and everything works perfectly until they need to create a folder. As soon as I get there, I get a message "Unable to create desired directory" and the whole thing fails. If I manually create the folder before starting the install, it works fine, copying files to the 'drive', until it needs to create another,and then it stops again with the same message.

So far I have tried manually setting the permissions (in Linux) to allow everyone read & write access to the entire .wine folder structure and the drive_c folder and it has made no difference. I am currently unable to try uninstalling and reinstalling Wine as the OpenSuSE download server is offline and Yast work properly without access to it. Yes, I know this is a very 'Windows' solution to fixing probems, but I've got a Windows background!

I've checked throught the config settings (winecfg) and can't find anything that looks wrong. One odd thing is Wine Explorer says that the create directory option is not yet implemented, but I could have sworn it was available. And just to make things more odd, the PC I've been experimenting on has been set up in various ways to see what works and what does not (different partitioning arrangements including making the .wine folder in it own native NTFS partition) and in one of my previous installations I was able to install software. Anyone got any ideas? I am sure it is just me doing something wrong, but I don't know what else to try.

Many thanks

Mark

[vitamin]

with Wine 1.1.19

There is no such version.

I have tried Micrografx Designer 3.1 (16 bit) and Micrografx Draw 5 (32 bit) and both are exhibiting the same problem. Both start the installation programs fine and everything works perfectly until they need to create a folder.

Are you running Wine as regular user and always ran it as regular user? Try removing ~/.wine directory and reinstall your program. Start with 32-version.

If things still don't work please post complete terminal output of installing the program.

[mark rumsey]

mark rumsey wrote:
with Wine 1.1.19

There is no such version.

Sorry, a small typo. I meant 1.1.16.

The system I have only has one user on the system. When I installed Wine I was asked for the root password (as with every other package Yast installs), but that's all. The .wine folder is under the users home folder as it should be (i.e. /home/my user name/.wine) and the Wine C drive is mapped as ../drive_c in winecfg. I'll try deleting the .wine folder and report back any changes.

Many thanks

Mark

[mark rumsey]

Right, things seem to be getting worse rather than better. I tried removing the .wine folder, the ran winecfg to automatically recreate the folder before trying the install again. This time when trying to run the 32 bit install, the wine glass on the cursor just bounced for a while with an unclickable wine tab with a question mark on the task bar, then both vanished, i.e. the application failed to start. So, I tried a little applet that runs from a single file, and that worked perfectly. So, I tried the 16 bit installer to find it behaving as before, i.e. everything was fine until it wanted to create a folder, and at that point it was denied permission and I had to cancel the install.

By this time the OpenSuSE download server was back on line, so I unloaded and reinstalled wine 1.1.16, just in case there was some corruption. I also deleted the .wine folder at the same time, just to be on the safe side. The results were as above, i.e. the 32 bit installer failed to start, the 16 bit ran but could not create folders, and the single file applet was fine.

As I see it I now have four options.
1) Try whatever you guys suggest to get 1.1.16 working on this machine.
2) Uninstall 1.1.16 and install the default 1.1.9 version shipped with the OpenSuse distro and see if that works,.
3) Uninstall 1.1.16 and install the stable 1.0.1 and see if that works.
4) Reformat the drive and start again from scratch, just in case the problem is deeper within this Linux install than I can reach.

The last one sounds drastic, but its not too bad. The machine is only set up for testing at the moment, and all I have loaded is OpenSuse 11.1, Wine and Sun VirtualBox with Windows XP set up as a guest with a couple of applications loaded into that. So, whilst it does involve some work, its not as bad as it could be and I'm happy to go down that route if necessary.

So, any ideas which way I should go?

[vitamin]

This time when trying to run the 32 bit install, the wine glass on the cursor just bounced for a while with an unclickable wine tab with a question mark on the task bar, then both vanished, i.e. the application failed to start.

Terminal output please: http://wiki.winehq.org/FAQ#head-3b297df ... b8edc21619

[mark rumsey]

I think you're going to like this. Trying to run setup from the command prompt (wine setup.exe) does not create any output in the terminal window, but I do get a message pop up from the setup program saying 'Setup failed to detect either Windows 95 or Windows NT3.51 or later'. When I hit OK on that the message 'wine client error:lb: write: Bad file descriptor' pops up on the command line. If I then press enter, I get back to the command prompt. Does that make any sense?

Just for reference, winecfg is set for Windows XP as the default version. If I try and run setup under 'real' WinXP (whether on a native XP machine or on a virtual machine under this installation of Linux) the setup program starts and runs normally. One odd thing I've just spotted about this software. Although it appears to be 32 bit, it may be partially 16 bit and it looks like the core code for setup is predominantly 16 bit as it is running up ntvdm.exe and wowexec.exe when run under 'real' windows.

I hope all of the above makes sense.

Thanks

Mark

[vitamin]

I think you're going to like this. Trying to run setup from the command prompt (wine setup.exe) does not create any output in the terminal window, but I do get a message pop up from the setup program saying 'Setup failed to detect either Windows 95 or Windows NT3.51 or later'. When I hit OK on that the message 'wine client error:lb: write: Bad file descriptor' pops up on the command line. If I then press enter, I get back to the command prompt. Does that make any sense?

I see, something fishy is going on. There was another report about permission problems...
Please open a bug report in Wine bugzilla. Lets limit it to 32-bit version (16-bit stuff works even worse on Wine).
You might be asked to provide additional debug output with one or the other debug channel.

But I don't see any simple solution for this problem. If it's some bogus flags being passed around - it's hard to "fix" that. If this happens intentionally - then Wine misinterpreting something.

Of course you can go ahead and try other program you were talking about. They might not have any problem. Also you could try and downgrade Wine to 1.0.1 (last stable version). See if it does any better.

[mark rumsey]

Been busy for a few days and only just got back here. Thanks for the info.

I see that a new version has now been released. I'll upgrade to that and see if the problem remains. I've also managed to borrow another laptop and I'm doing a clean install on that to see if the problem is isolated to the first machine. If the problem persists on the first machine I'll get a but report started. Perhaps the second machine will also give the same problems. If so, it might make the bug easier to track down and fix.