self-fixing problems

ckx3009 · Post by **ckx3009** » Sun May 25, 2008 6:16 pm

is there any way to learn how to fix little problems listed by the console logs?

in this site i have not found something interesting in this way, so it is possible that for a little bug that can be easily fixed by a normal user, someone needs to disturb a developer.

if someone make a little "howto" that teaches to read logs and to fix the problems reported by the same logs, it can be a very useful resource for all who want to begin to fix their wine troubles and perhaps then they could help other users to solve their own problems.

i'm sorry if the question is already been asked (i searched and found nothing about it).

thanks for replies.

Bond Masuda · Post by **Bond Masuda** » Sun May 25, 2008 7:52 pm

I would have to agree with this suggestion. The "How To" section on the
website seems mainly focused for application developers. The only
"resource" for users is to goto AppDB and see if you get lucky, or
trying this mailing list.

As for AppDB, it would be more useful if reports included information on
setup/configuration details so other users know what settings need to be
changed to make an application run under wine. Right now, any such
information is purely voluntary in the "comments" section; it would be
nice to see a few questions with drop down lists to select from. For
example, my recent attempt to get EE2 working requires that "Emulate
Virtual Desktop" be enabled. (i've now posted that info to AppDB)

Just my $0.02

ckx3009 wrote:

is there any way to learn how to fix little problems listed by the console logs?

in this site i have not found something interesting in this way, so it is possible that for a little bug that can be easily fixed by a normal user, someone needs to disturb a developer.

if someone make a little "howto" that teaches to read logs and to fix the problems reported by the same logs, it can be a very useful resource for all who want to begin to fix their wine troubles and perhaps then they could help other users to solve their own problems.

i'm sorry if the question is already been asked (i searched and found nothing about it).

thanks for replies.

vitamin · Post by **vitamin** » Sun May 25, 2008 10:41 pm

ckx3009 wrote:is there any way to learn how to fix little problems listed by the console logs?

Sure - learn C, win32api, Wine source. Find the place that prints that "little problem" and ... fix it or implement missing functionality.

ckx3009 · Post by **ckx3009** » Mon May 26, 2008 3:40 am

vitamin wrote: Sure - learn C, win32api, Wine source. Find the place that prints that "little problem" and ... fix it or implement missing functionality.

but this means to became a wine developer...
it is not so easy as it could seem to you

anyway: to learn C is not so difficult; for win32api, i don't know, and the same for wine source...

this reply seems to want to say: leave to devs the dev's work...
but in this way we (users) will never be able to help with our own work about little things the dev team...

vitamin · Post by **vitamin** » Mon May 26, 2008 11:35 am

ckx3009 wrote:
vitamin wrote: Sure - learn C, win32api, Wine source. Find the place that prints that "little problem" and ... fix it or implement missing functionality.
but this means to became a wine developer...

Pretty much - yes.

ckx3009 wrote: this reply seems to want to say: leave to devs the dev's work...

Yup. How else can you fix a ... "fixme" if it's telling about not implemented functionality?

ckx3009 wrote:but in this way we (users) will never be able to help with our own work about little things the dev team...

What you can do as a user - look for real problems with applications you are running not imaginary problems in a form of some debug information printed by Wine.

hendrik · Post by **hendrik** » Mon May 26, 2008 11:58 am

On Mon, May 26, 2008 at 11:35:03AM -0500, vitamin wrote:

ckx3009 wrote:
vitamin wrote:
Sure - learn C, win32api, Wine source. Find the place that prints that "little problem" and ... fix it or implement missing functionality.
but this means to became a wine developer...

Pretty much - yes.

ckx3009 wrote:
this reply seems to want to say: leave to devs the dev's work...
Yup. How else can you fix a ... "fixme" if it's telling about not implemented functionality?

ckx3009 wrote:
but in this way we (users) will never be able to help with our own work about little things the dev team...
What you can do as a user - look for real problems with applications you are running not imaginary problems in a form of some debug information printed by Wine.

I suppose the next question is: How can naive users distinguish real
problems from debug messages? Maybe there should be a guide for that!

-- hendrik

Post by **dimesio** » Mon May 26, 2008 12:03 pm

I think what they're looking for is a list of commonly encountered error messages that point to problems for which there are known workarounds, like the preloader page zero issue. Not all of the messages spit out by Wine are meaningless, and for those of us who are trying to learn how to interpret them, there's little guidance.

David Gerard · Post by **David Gerard** » Mon May 26, 2008 12:05 pm

2008/5/26 <[email protected]>:

I suppose the next question is: How can naive users distinguish real
problems from debug messages? Maybe there should be a guide for that!

If it's a FIXME:, it's for developers who care. If it's ERR:,
something's broken and reportable.

- d.

vitamin · Post by **vitamin** » Mon May 26, 2008 12:10 pm

hendrik wrote:On Mon, May 26, 2008 at 11:35:03AM -0500, vitamin wrote:
ckx3009 wrote:
vitamin wrote: but this means to became a wine developer...

Pretty much - yes.

ckx3009 wrote:
this reply seems to want to say: leave to devs the dev's work...
Yup. How else can you fix a ... "fixme" if it's telling about not implemented functionality?

ckx3009 wrote:
but in this way we (users) will never be able to help with our own work about little things the dev team...
What you can do as a user - look for real problems with applications you are running not imaginary problems in a form of some debug information printed by Wine.
I suppose the next question is: How can naive users distinguish real
problems from debug messages? Maybe there should be a guide for that!

Just read them and try to understand I guess. If a message says "can't findMFC42.DLL" then install that dll. See FAQ for this.

austin987 · Post by **austin987** » Tue May 27, 2008 10:34 am

On Mon, May 26, 2008 at 12:03 PM, dimesio <[email protected]> wrote:

I think what they're looking for is a list of commonly encountered error messages that point to problems for which there are known workarounds, like the preloader page zero issue. Not all of the messages spit out by Wine are meaningless, and for those of us who are trying to learn how to interpret them, there's little guidance.

If you're app isn't behaving as on windows, then you've got an actual
problem. Whatever the terminal prints out isn't necessarily a problem.

hendrik · Post by **hendrik** » Tue May 27, 2008 10:48 am

On Tue, May 27, 2008 at 10:33:59AM -0500, Austin English wrote:

On Mon, May 26, 2008 at 12:03 PM, dimesio <[email protected]> wrote:
I think what they're looking for is a list of commonly encountered error messages that point to problems for which there are known workarounds, like the preloader page zero issue. Not all of the messages spit out by Wine are meaningless, and for those of us who are trying to learn how to interpret them, there's little guidance.

If you're app isn't behaving as on windows, then you've got an actual
problem. Whatever the terminal prints out isn't necessarily a problem.

Now maybe that sentence is the actual information that the novices
need. Would it help if Wine wrote that out on the terminal if it writes
any other messages?

Is this a technical fix to a social problem?

-- hendrik

Post by **dimesio** » Tue May 27, 2008 11:45 am

If you're app isn't behaving as on windows, then you've got an actual
problem. Whatever the terminal prints out isn't necessarily a problem.

I know that. That's not the point. The point is that sometimes when you do have a problem, the terminal may give some useful information, but it's not necessarily as obvious as a dll not found. The preloader page zero problem is a perfect example of the kind of message I'm talking about--it points to a specific problem, with a known workaround, but the error message itself is not something a beginner would understand without reading the sticky at the top of this forum, which I assume is why you put it there. So the question is, are there any other such cryptic error messages that point to problems with known fixes that beginners could apply themselves if they only knew what the message meant in the first place?

austin987 · Post by **austin987** » Tue May 27, 2008 11:51 am

On Tue, May 27, 2008 at 11:45 AM, dimesio <[email protected]> wrote:

If you're app isn't behaving as on windows, then you've got an actual
problem. Whatever the terminal prints out isn't necessarily a problem.
I know that. That's not the point. The point is that sometimes when you do have a problem, the terminal may give some useful information, but it's not necessarily as obvious as a dll not found. The preloader page zero problem is a perfect example of the kind of message I'm talking about--it points to a specific problem, with a known workaround, but the error message itself is not something a beginner would understand without reading the sticky at the top of this forum, which I assume is why you put it there. So the question is, are there any other such cryptic error messages that point to problems with known fixes that beginners could apply themselves if they only knew what the message meant in the first place?

The FAQ has some listed:
http://wiki.winehq.org/FAQ

Post by **dimesio** » Tue May 27, 2008 12:39 pm

austin987 wrote: The FAQ has some listed:
http://wiki.winehq.org/FAQ

Okay, so I should have specified "other than the ones already in the FAQ."

But since you brought it up, reorganizing the FAQ a bit to make this information more prominent would also be helpful. The "Using Wine" section is getting pretty long, making it harder to find things. Grouping all the error-message-related questions together under their own heading (called something like, say, "Common Error Messages") would make this info easier to find as well as to maintain. (And if no one objects to that suggestion, yeah, I'm willing to do the work.)

Timeout · Post by **Timeout** » Tue May 27, 2008 1:33 pm

If you know how to use Google, it's a gold mine for error message in Wine. Just type the wording of the last error message in Google with quotes, most of the times you are sent back to other logs from Wine having the same wording and other people having discussions about applications failing with the same error at the end.

Some errors have an error code that you can find in Microsoft database, some error (mostly errors messages) did appear on Windows too under some conditions, take not e of these conditions and ask yourself what is missing in Wine, if there is a chance of it being solved any time soon.

Wine's homepage has a tiny part of all logs, but you should start there, because most of the error reports on distribution's forums oft end up with nobody answering or with so "ask Wine for more help".

ckx3009 · Post by **ckx3009** » Wed May 28, 2008 6:29 am

dimesio wrote:
If you're app isn't behaving as on windows, then you've got an actual
problem. Whatever the terminal prints out isn't necessarily a problem.
I know that. That's not the point. The point is that sometimes when you do have a problem, the terminal may give some useful information, but it's not necessarily as obvious as a dll not found. The preloader page zero problem is a perfect example of the kind of message I'm talking about--it points to a specific problem, with a known workaround, but the error message itself is not something a beginner would understand without reading the sticky at the top of this forum, which I assume is why you put it there. So the question is, are there any other such cryptic error messages that point to problems with known fixes that beginners could apply themselves if they only knew what the message meant in the first place?

this is exactly what i wanted to say.

the FAQ does not contain a list of problems that may be avoided by users in a specific way... so could be a good idea to create a little page with listed some common problems and the workaround for them.
and may be also a good idea to explain what is the meaning of the most frequent console messages.
for example you could write:
"fixme" means that this problem can only be fixed by a developer, so don't pay attention to that or report that in "this specific way".
or something like:
"this_problem" means that you need to do the following things
[ list / workaround ]

something like this...so a normal user who want to solve himself the most common problems, can do this without searching all over the entire internet.

austin987 · Post by **austin987** » Wed May 28, 2008 10:27 am

On Wed, May 28, 2008 at 6:29 AM, ckx3009 <[email protected]> wrote:

dimesio wrote:

If you're app isn't behaving as on windows, then you've got an actual
problem. Whatever the terminal prints out isn't necessarily a problem.
I know that. That's not the point. The point is that sometimes when you do have a problem, the terminal may give some useful information, but it's not necessarily as obvious as a dll not found. The preloader page zero problem is a perfect example of the kind of message I'm talking about--it points to a specific problem, with a known workaround, but the error message itself is not something a beginner would understand without reading the sticky at the top of this forum, which I assume is why you put it there. So the question is, are there any other such cryptic error messages that point to problems with known fixes that beginners could apply themselves if they only knew what the message meant in the first place?
this is exactly what i wanted to say.

the FAQ does not contain a list of problems that may be avoided by users in a specific way... so could be a good idea to create a little page with listed some common problems and the workaround for them.
and may be also a good idea to explain what is the meaning of the most frequent console messages.
for example you could write:
"fixme" means that this problem can only be fixed by a developer, so don't pay attention to that or report that in "this specific way".
or something like:
"this_problem" means that you need to do the following things
[ list / workaround ]

something like this...so a normal user who want to solve himself the most common problems, can do this without searching all over the entire internet.

The wiki is freely editable. Feel free to do so.

Timeout · Post by **Timeout** » Wed May 28, 2008 10:50 am

Would it be possible to make some kind of index of the most frequent problem, (but not a bugzilla).

Like I say "install failed to finalize with error 1603" (for .NET installation) - other places I see that it had been fixed, what does 1603 mean then??

Then I could add reference to all places I found hints of the problems like mentioning that the same error of my logs appeared on Windows during betas and had been cleared with a Patch from Microsoft - it was an installer problem.

I could mention that installing a Windows patch on Wine is failing too.

Then I would like a category "errors connecting to server", various problems with assemblies etc.
People having problems with drivers would get one and another for people having problems with directx.

The difference to the Bugzilla is that there would not be a bug with one user and the developers. This could be discussed between users. Bugzilla is not a place for discussing since it would be closed with some mentions like "Bugzilla is not a self-help support" - the difference why people post their problems in forums, they want to know if others experienced the same.

austin987 · Post by **austin987** » Wed May 28, 2008 10:57 am

On Wed, May 28, 2008 at 10:50 AM, Timeout <[email protected]> wrote:

Would it be possible to make some kind of index of the most frequent problem, (but not a bugzilla).

The wiki would be a good place for this, but there isn't a list of
common errors that I know of.

Like I say "install failed to finalize with error 1603" (for .NET installation) - other places I see that it had been fixed, what does 1603 mean then??

Error 1603 is a generic error.

Then I could add reference to all places I found hints of the problems like mentioning that the same error of my logs appeared on Windows during betas and had been cleared with a Patch from Microsoft - it was an installer problem.

I could mention that installing a Windows patch on Wine is failing too.

Then I would like a category "errors connecting to server", various problems with assemblies etc.
People having problems with drivers would get one and another for people having problems with directx.

The difference to the Bugzilla is that there would not be a bug with one user and the developers. This could be discussed between users. Bugzilla is not a place for discussing since it would be closed with some mentions like "Bugzilla is not a self-help support" - the difference why people post their problems in forums, they want to know if others experienced the same.

AppDB serves a lot of this purpose, but not across applications.