Signalbox simulator will not run under Linux

[peterm]

Hello everyone.

This is my first post to this forum and the reason is, I need your help and advice to get a piece of Windows software to run on Linux.

Firstly, apologies for the length of this post, but it is necessary to explain the problem.

The software is a railway signalbox simulation by Blockpost Software http://www.blockpostsoftware.co.uk/

There are several simulations available and all produce the same error. For the purpose of this post I have tried Barnham Junction.

I have run it several times with Wine and get the same error message each time. The message is

BBCWrun
Cannot create file C\users\peterm\Temp\BBC0ff.tmp\Sim
Resources\Barnham Junction\Nameboard.bmp

I have contacted the developer and this is his reply

"Nameboard.bmp is the first of a fairly long list of graphics files which
the sim uses. It is embedded in the exe file, and the sim extracts it to
a temp folder each time it is run, then deletes it all on exit. -
C\users\peterm\Temp\BBC0ff.temp is the path it is trying to use for
the folder in which it wants to create \SimResources\Barnham
Junction\Nameboard.bmp.

Now I nothing about Linux, nor how WINE runs on it - but the question
you need to answer is this:- is C\users\peterm\Temp\BBC40ff.temp a
valid file path on your system? Is it writable? It rather sounds like
the answer to one of these questions is "no" - so therein lies your way
forward!!

My software generates this path using the Windows "SHGetFolderPath"
function so, on Windows systems, this is automatically a valid folder -
regardless of the O/S version in use. So far as I know, this function
is properly emulated in WINE (certainly it is on MAC systems) but it
might be that you need to set certain permissions in order for such
folders to be writable.

Sorry I can't be more help."

When I questioned him further he replied

"Yes, - the point about the sim creating a new folder is that it is
deleted every time the programme closes - thus these files are not
stored anywhere on your system, Compressed in the exe file they take up
about 6 MB - uncompressed they take up three times that space. So the
sim unpacks them to a newly created and randomly named folder which is
deleted on exit. Therefore *you* *cannot* create the folder path for the
sim in advance.

What I don't know is this:- if that folder path is valid, why is your
"operating system" not allowing the sim to write to it? I suggest you
get on to the "user support" service for Linux to find the answer!!"!!
HA HA!

It is possible that there is some equivalent in LINUX of User
Permissions which allow or prevent writing to certain folder locations.

Just at a simplistic level the Location "C" is a 30 year old tradition
in WIndows and it exists only for historic reasons - but are those
reasons valid in LINUX? Is there "C Drive" on a LINUX system? Where is
the default "temp" location in LINUX?

Or you could always buy a MAC... "

The reference to the Mac is that the simulation runs in Wine on a Mac.

The Wine terminal output is ;-

p11-kit: couldn't load module: /usr/lib/i386-linux-gnu/pkcs11/p11-kit-trust.so: /usr/lib/i386-linux-gnu/pkcs11/p11-kit-trust.so: cannot open shared object file: No such file or director


The specs of my computer are:-

Asus P8P67 Deluxe motherboard
Intel i5-2500K processor running at 3400Ghz
8G RAM
GeForce GTX550 Ti graphics card
Linux Mint 17 OS
Wine 1.6.2

Now, if you can make any sense of that lot and can help I would be very grateful.

Peter

[dimesio]

I downloaded the Barnham Junction demo and got the same results in 1.7.40. Wine does create a C\users\username\Temp\BBC*.tmp folder, but not the subfolders. That folder has an empty file named "$" in it.

File a bug.

[peterm]

I reported this as a bug as instructed and I have been sent a script to get the program working.

However, there are no instructions how to use it.

Can someone please tell me how and where to use this script.

[dimesio]

The bug report is https://bugs.winehq.org/show_bug.cgi?id=38379.

That's not a script, it's a patch. You have to patch and build Wine yourself.

[peterm]

Can anyone explain how to incorporate this patch while compiling Wine?

[dimesio]

http://wiki.winehq.org/FAQ#head-719d19c ... c2a301ce52