Wine Doesn't Detect Extra Drives

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WarKirby
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Wine Doesn't Detect Extra Drives

Post by WarKirby »

Hello folks. I'm running Ubuntu 9.10 (karmic Koala)
I'm a former windows user, trying to use wine to continue using windows apps I need. Unfortunately, I'm running into a snag.

My computer has three physical drives:

one 160 GB drive, divided into two 80GB partitions. With windows XP on one, and ubuntu on the other

One 300 GB drive with a single 300GB partition on it. This drive contains almost all of my programs, games, and apps

One 750 GB drive, split into two 40GB partitions (empty) and one 670 GB partition, which holds most of my data.

I have my apps and data on entirely seperate drives from OSes, so that things aren't getting lost when I reinstall. This seemed like a pretty logical decision at the time.

Wine detects both partitions of the 160 gb drive, and all removable devices. USB sticks, dvd-rw drive, etc. But the 300 and 750 drives are entirely undetected. They're just...not there. I've tried adding them through autodetect in the wine config, but they're not detected. I've also tried adding them manually and browsing to the path, but wine only allows me to choose paths from within the ubuntu partition on the first drive.

Ubuntu natively detects these drives and lets me access them just fine. I can also run things from them through wine, by navigating to the directory. However, I cannot run files in those directories by using links from the ubuntu desktop. Any App I try to do that with gives me lots of errors about missing files, and crashes. Also, whenever I successfully do run an app from one of those drives, said apps are unable to save or load anything to/from them.

It's really going to be a lot of bother to rebuild my filesystem on the 160 drive, not to mention I can only fit about 16% of it on there. Is there any way to get wine detecting these extra drives, as both windows and ubuntu can ?
WarKirby
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Post by WarKirby »

Additional information:

I've found that if I create a link to a location on one of those two drives, and put the link somewhere wine can see, I can use that link to reach the directory, and load things from there. I can also browse every child of that directory, but NOT any parent directories of it. Going up a level takes me back to where the link is.

I guess I can just create links to the root of those drives as a workaround then, this doesn't really solve the problem, but at least it's manageable.


Also, all three drives are SATA
Thunderbird
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Post by Thunderbird »

In winecfg you need to set the drives up but really don't use Wine in combination with Windows partitions, you can easily mess up your Windows installation, break programs and also mess up Wine. Most programs don't work from a Windows partition due to missing registry keys and dlls.
WarKirby
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Post by WarKirby »

Thunderbird wrote:In winecfg you need to set the drives up
I explained that I'd already tried several things in the wine config, so I don't know what to do with this advice. Can you be more specfic on how I would set them up?
but really don't use Wine in combination with Windows partitions, you can easily mess up your Windows installation, break programs and also mess up Wine. Most programs don't work from a Windows partition due to missing registry keys and dlls.
What's the alternative, wipe 300 GB of apps and reinstall everything?

I find that a lot things actually work ok. Poser 7, for example, has worked for me across about 5 different windows installs, and now ubuntu too. It seems to have everything it needs self contained in it's own directory.

For things that don't, then I reinstall them as needed.
Martin Gregorie

Wine Doesn't Detect Extra Drives

Post by Martin Gregorie »

On Sat, 2010-02-27 at 09:13 -0600, WarKirby wrote:
Hello folks. I'm running Ubuntu 9.10 (karmic Koala)
I'm a former windows user, trying to use wine to continue using windows apps I need. Unfortunately, I'm running into a snag.

My computer has three physical drives:

one 160 GB drive, divided into two 80GB partitions. With windows XP on
one, and ubuntu on the other

One 300 GB drive with a single 300GB partition on it. This drive
contains almost all of my programs, games, and apps

One 750 GB drive, split into two 40GB partitions (empty) and one 670
GB partition, which holds most of my data.

I have my apps and data on entirely seperate drives from OSes, so that
things aren't getting lost when I reinstall. This seemed like a pretty
logical decision at the time.
That's a reasonable approach: I do the same myself, though only with
partitions on one disk, for exactly the same reasons.

I have all logins in one partition, mounted as /home. It also contains a
'local', which contains all my locally developed programs and scripts,
and a 'java' directory, which contains my Sun Java installation and 3rd
party jar files. These are linked like this:

'ln -s /home/local local' in /usr
'ln -s /home/java java' in /usr

IOW, /usr/local/bin finds my own programs and /usr/java/sdk finds the
current Java version because /home/java contains a 'jdk' symlink
pointing to the latest download: 'ln -s jdk1.6.0_17 jdk'


How are you mounting the partitions on the 300GB and 750GB drives?
By that I mean where are you mounting them in the Linux filing system?

Changing their mount point might make them more accessible, e.g.:

- mounting them on directories inside your usual login.
This would make them more accessible to Wine apps, but also
wouldn't do anything you can't also do with symbolic links.

- mounting them on directories in /home and setting them up as login
home directories. This would be my choice, but then I tend to use
different logins to keep unrelated data separate, e.g. I use separate
directories for program development, word processing, web pages,
Wine apps, etc.


Martin
WarKirby
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Post by WarKirby »

I normally mount the drives through the places menu, or disk utility. No option is presented to choose a mount point, but looking, they appear to be on the default /media

I am unsure of how to change this. Can you advise ?
WarKirby
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Post by WarKirby »

Oh, nevermind, I suddenly get it. /media is a subdirectory of the ubuntu partition, so I can access it through there.

When I said former windows user, perhaps I should have clarified, former as of 3 days ago. Still very new to linux. :lol:
Martin Gregorie

Wine Doesn't Detect Extra Drives

Post by Martin Gregorie »

On Sat, 2010-02-27 at 11:49 -0600, WarKirby wrote:
I normally mount the drives through the places menu, or disk utility. No option is presented to choose a mount point, but looking, they appear to be on the default /media

I am unsure of how to change this. Can you advise ?
The traditional way would be to edit /etc/fstab

If you'd like to post the contents of /etc/fstab and the output from
running df I may have some other suggestions.


Martin
Martin Gregorie

Wine Doesn't Detect Extra Drives

Post by Martin Gregorie »

On Sat, 2010-02-27 at 11:58 -0600, WarKirby wrote:
Oh, nevermind, I suddenly get it. /media is a subdirectory of the ubuntu partition, so I can access it through there.
The usual way to introduce multiple disks is to do a custom Linux
installation, which uses an interactive screen to let you assign labels
and mount points to partitions and specify which disks are to be
reformatted. This assumes that all the disks are not swappable, i.e.
they are screwed down in the computer chassis and connected via
IDS/SCSI/SATA cables.

This way its easy to say that /home is the mountpoint for a partition
containing login directories and to add additional mountpoints for extra
disks.

Typically anything mounted on a subdirectory in /media would be
removable (CD/DVD/SD card/USB drive).

How did you configure your extra drives to be mounted in /media, or are
they just removable drives?


Martin
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Post by DaVince »

Thunderbird wrote:In winecfg you need to set the drives up but really don't use Wine in combination with Windows partitions, you can easily mess up your Windows installation, break programs and also mess up Wine.
Only if you set a Windows disk as C:. Mounting under D, E etc. isn't usually as bad as you would describe it.
Most programs don't work from a Windows partition due to missing registry keys and dlls.
Mostly the commercial ones. A lot of other apps, especially ones not requiring any sort of registration or activation, will usually just work fine over the board. It's a case-by-case basis, really.
James McKenzie

Wine Doesn't Detect Extra Drives

Post by James McKenzie »

WarKirby wrote:
Thunderbird wrote:
In winecfg you need to set the drives up
I explained that I'd already tried several things in the wine config, so I don't know what to do with this advice. Can you be more specfic on how I would set them up?


but really don't use Wine in combination with Windows partitions, you can easily mess up your Windows installation, break programs and also mess up Wine. Most programs don't work from a Windows partition due to missing registry keys and dlls.
What's the alternative, wipe 300 GB of apps and reinstall everything?
If you want to use them with Wine, yes. If you really don't need them, no.
I find that a lot things actually work ok. Poser 7, for example, has worked for me across about 5 different windows installs, and now ubuntu too. It seems to have everything it needs self contained in it's own directory.
If that is the case, then you might be able to get away with linking to
the program itself and then linking into an area that both Linux and
Windows can 'see'. However, Linux may or may not be able to use it.
The file system, for now, must be FAT16/FAT32. Most, if not all, NTFS
drivers have problems with Wine.
For things that don't, then I reinstall them as needed.

Good idea. See comment above about a cross-system solution. I've used
when passing files between the two. I really don't like NTFS, but it is
an unavoidable evil for most later versions of Windows.

One comment: I've been using Linux/Windows/Other OSs for many years.
My knowledge may be a little rusty...

James McKenzie
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