moving or renaming .wine folder after installations

alfredo · Post by **alfredo** » Sat Mar 01, 2008 9:48 am

Hi,
i want to reorg my directories and move (and rename) some .wine folder to /opt.
After moving and renaming the .wine folder some applications don't start again. A least, i found some .lnk files in c:\... with absolute user and folder names inside.
I dont know if i misunderstand something or if something is misconfigured in my wine but until now i think that the C:\ / Z:\ devices are the highest level for the windows-world and access to linux files is via symbolic links.
If you use cedega, you can completly move or rename (with some minor changes in the config files) an installed windows-bottle. I have an installation at /home/db/.wine-t1 and want to move this to /opt/wine/railway. But there are entries like db and .wine-t1 in the .lnk files (.lnk was created by the applications installer).
What is my misunderstanding and why do windows programs know things about db and .wine-t1? I am expecting that they only know things defined in dosdevices, the trees under C: and so on....

Regards, Alfredo

vitamin · Post by **vitamin** » Sat Mar 01, 2008 10:02 am

alfredo wrote:Hi,
i want to reorg my directories and move (and rename) some .wine folder to /opt.
After moving and renaming the .wine folder some applications don't start again. A least, i found some .lnk files in c:\... with absolute user and folder names inside.

You can move ~/.wine directory anywhere you want. Just don't forget to set WINEPREFIX env var accordingly. The symlinks you are talking about:
$ ls -la ~/.wine/dosdevices
c: -> ../drive_c
z: -> /

Should still work, unless you modified them into absolute paths. The "../drive_c" is a relative path.

If you talking about windows paths, they will not change.

However, if you moving something to the /opt directory that means only _one_ user at a time can run Wine! And that _all_ users will have to have full access permissions to that directory!

alfredo · Post by **alfredo** » Sat Mar 01, 2008 10:27 am

vitamin,
i agree with you but i have the following problem:
I have installed MS-Trainsimulator in /home/db/.wine-t1. Now I want to move due space requirements and for reorganisation the .wine-t1 to /opt. OK, so far. The links in dosdevices are relative! Starting the program from the new location gives me .... train simulator has a problem ....
After some checks i found files with the extension .lnk in drive_c/windows/profiles/All Users/Desktop/Train Simulator.lnk
Inside this files are entries like db (the linux home dir) and .wine-t1 (the wine dir). These files are not from winecreateprefix or winecfg. They came from the trainsimulator-install program. I have made some tests with special dir like wine-d1 and wine-d2. After moving and patching 1 to 2 in the .lnk files i can restart the simulation in the renamed dir. But this was only a simple test because i only change one character! And the .lnk files are binary...
I don't understand why a windows programs can get information about absolute pathes in linux - they should stay in the world of C:!
Someone was calling Train Simulator.lnk at startup of the simulation and interpretes the linux path information, not only windows-path.

Regards,
Alfredo

Dan Kegel · Post by **Dan Kegel** » Sat Mar 01, 2008 10:34 am

On Sat, Mar 1, 2008 at 7:27 AM, alfredo <[email protected]> wrote:

I have installed MS-Trainsimulator in /home/db/.wine-t1.
Now I want to move due space requirements and for
reorganisation the .wine-t1 to /opt. OK, so far.
The links in dosdevices are relative! Starting the program
from the new location gives me .... train simulator has a problem ....
After some checks i found files with the extension .lnk in
drive_c/windows/profiles/All Users/Desktop/Train Simulator.lnk
Inside this files are entries like db (the linux home dir) and
.wine-t1 (the wine dir). These files are not from winecreateprefix
or winecfg. They came from the trainsimulator-install program. I

Good point. I've filed
http://bugs.winehq.org/show_bug.cgi?id=11797
for this problem.
- Dan

alfredo · Post by **alfredo** » Sat Mar 01, 2008 10:55 am

thank you, the old question - bug or feature - .
Any idea to shift around like "force relative paths" at installation?

Dan Kegel · Post by **Dan Kegel** » Sat Mar 01, 2008 11:02 am

On Sat, Mar 1, 2008 at 7:55 AM, alfredo <[email protected]> wrote:

thank you, the old question - bug or feature - .
Any idea to shift around like "force relative paths" at installation?

No reason to keep absolute paths if relative are better?

vitamin · Post by **vitamin** » Sat Mar 01, 2008 11:20 am

Dan Kegel wrote:On Sat, Mar 1, 2008 at 7:55 AM, alfredo <[email protected]> wrote:
thank you, the old question - bug or feature - .
Any idea to shift around like "force relative paths" at installation?
No reason to keep absolute paths if relative are better?

use winedump on that lnk and post here.

Renaud (Ron) OLGIATI · Sat Mar 01, 2008 11:48 am

On Saturday 01 March 2008, my mailbox was graced by a missive
from "alfredo" <[email protected]> who wrote:

i agree with you but i have the following problem:
I have installed MS-Trainsimulator in /home/db/.wine-t1. Now I want to move
due space requirements and for reorganisation the .wine-t1 to /opt. OK, so
far. The links in dosdevices are relative! Starting the program from the
new location gives me .... train simulator has a problem .... After some
checks i found files with the extension .lnk in
drive_c/windows/profiles/All Users/Desktop/Train Simulator.lnk Inside this
files are entries like db (the linux home dir) and .wine-t1 (the wine dir).
These files are not from winecreateprefix or winecfg. They came from the
trainsimulator-install program. I have made some tests with special dir
like wine-d1 and wine-d2. After moving and patching 1 to 2 in the .lnk
files i can restart the simulation in the renamed dir. But this was only a
simple test because i only change one character! And the .lnk files are
binary... I don't understand why a windows programs can get information
about absolute pathes in linux - they should stay in the world of C:!

What about putting .wine anywhere you want, and making ~/.wine a link to
that ?

Cheers,

Ron.
--
Any sufficiently advanced technology
is indistinguishable from magic.
-- Arthur C. Clarke

-- http://www.olgiati-in-paraguay.org --

alfredo · Post by **alfredo** » Sat Mar 01, 2008 1:03 pm

must play with that. Could be a management problem. I have more than one wine installation. Mostly one application in a different dir to prevent side-effects.

chroot could be a solution too, but i have nothing found about wine and chroot....

Dan Kegel · Post by **Dan Kegel** » Sat Mar 08, 2008 9:25 am

On Sat, Mar 1, 2008 at 7:33 AM, Dan Kegel <[email protected]> wrote:

On Sat, Mar 1, 2008 at 7:27 AM, alfredo <[email protected]> wrote:
I have installed MS-Trainsimulator in /home/db/.wine-t1.
Now I want to move due space requirements and for
reorganisation the .wine-t1 to /opt. OK, so far.
The links in dosdevices are relative! Starting the program
from the new location gives me .... train simulator has a problem ....
After some checks i found files with the extension .lnk in
drive_c/windows/profiles/All Users/Desktop/Train Simulator.lnk
Inside this files are entries like db (the linux home dir) and
.wine-t1 (the wine dir). These files are not from winecreateprefix
or winecfg. They came from the trainsimulator-install program. I
Good point. I've filed
http://bugs.winehq.org/show_bug.cgi?id=11797
for this problem.

Looks like this bug is invalid. I think Vitamin was right,
all you need to do is set WINEPREFIX. (Yes, strings shows
unix paths in the .lnk files, but I don't think they're used;
winedump will show you an ascii dump of the .lnk file,
and it doesn't show any unix path info.)
To verify this, I did
install iTunes
mv .wine .wine-foo
WINEPREFIX=$HOME/.wine-foo wine start Desktop/iTunes.lnk
it works just fine.
- Dan