New WoW Launcher.exe changes directory permissions

emn8w8 · Post by **emn8w8** » Wed Nov 11, 2009 5:30 pm

I'm using Wine (1.1.13) for over a year now on openSuSE Linux (11.1); I'm using a few Windows programs but mostly used is WoW. Never ran Wine as root, never had a noteworthy problem with any program; WoW was installed, upgraded and patched without a glitch (now at 3.2.2.10505) and ran just fine. Until 2 days ago when Blizzard delivered a small update which included a new launcher. Every time this launcher is started it shows it's screen but it cannot start WoW.exe anymore. And that's no wonder: The permissions of the WoW directory are changed from the original drwxr-xr-x into d---r-x---..which makes it inaccessible quite effectively.....The accusing finger would point to Blizzard, but the real question is:
How is a Windows program running on Wine capable of messing with these permissions..?
A workaround is to manually restore the permissions to their original before pressing the "Play" button, or to use a copy of this entire directory from an NTFS partition on an USB drive (in this case the permissions are left alone).
But that's quick and very dirty.....anyone a suggestion..?

Best regards, Erik

Martin Gregorie · Post by **Martin Gregorie** » Wed Nov 11, 2009 6:35 pm

On Wed, 2009-11-11 at 16:30 -0600, emn8w8 wrote:

I'm using Wine (1.1.13) for over a year now on openSuSE Linux (11.1); I'm using a few Windows programs but mostly used is WoW. Never ran Wine as root, never had a noteworthy problem with any program; WoW was installed, upgraded and patched without a glitch (now at 3.2.2.10505) and ran just fine. Until 2 days ago when Blizzard delivered a small update which included a new launcher. Every time this launcher is started it shows it's screen but it cannot start WoW.exe anymore. And that's no wonder: The permissions of the WoW directory are changed from the original drwxr-xr-x into d---r-x---..which makes it inaccessible quite effectively.....The accusing finger would point to Blizzard, but the real question is:
How is a Windows program running on Wine capable of messing with these permissions..?
A workaround is to manually restore the permissions to their original before pressing the "Play" button, or to use a copy of this entire directory from an NTFS partition on an USB drive (in this case the permissions are left alone).
But that's quick and very dirty.....anyone a suggestion..?

File a bug with Blizzard.

Martin

oiaohm · Post by **oiaohm** » Wed Nov 11, 2009 6:49 pm

emn8w8 acl the directory. I think is the simplest. I don't think they are smart enough to nuke that. acl(access control lists) group permissions also look left alone.

Wine does have the right to be messing with permissions. Now windows permissions need to be compared to what wine is spitting out it might be a wine bug.

Some applications do stunts like that to stop them from being run mult times. But that is still pointing to a bug because the application not releasing when existing.

So try newer wine just in case it some form of bug with 1.1.13 that is fixed.

tparker · Post by **tparker** » Wed Nov 11, 2009 7:22 pm

All patches, each time applied for both the regular game and the test
server seem to change the permissions now. It has been this way on the
test server for quite a while so I assume that something from that has
been applied to the live game since it just started happening there. It
has been reported to Blizzard but while waiting for a fix it is simple,
if annoying to reset the permissions after a patch.

I'm using 1.1.29 and it still happens, so it is not unique to your wine
version.

vitamin · Post by **vitamin** » Thu Nov 12, 2009 12:15 am

oiaohm wrote:emn8w8 acl the directory. I think is the simplest. I don't think they are smart enough to nuke that. acl(access control lists) group permissions also look left alone.

According to the bug that won't help: http://bugs.winehq.org/show_bug.cgi?id=20643

The only thing I can think of - hack Wine and disable that functionality. See if that works.

emn8w8 · Post by **emn8w8** » Thu Nov 12, 2009 8:19 am

Thanks for the replies..!

Martin Gregorie wrote:
File a bug with Blizzard.

Martin

I seriously doubt if Blizzard has any concerns about the effect their program has on an ext3 filesystem...but since users on native Windows have the same problem I'm sure there will be a bug report...

oiaohm wrote: Wine does have the right to be messing with permissions. Now windows permissions need to be compared to what wine is spitting out it might be a wine bug.

I have assumed that Wine would not change these permissions unless there's a real big need to do so...I can't think of any reason why Wine needs to mimick the dreaded Windows habit of working as Administrator on a Linux system...

oiaohm wrote: Some applications do stunts like that to stop them from being run mult times. But that is still pointing to a bug because the application not releasing when existing.

Indeed rumors are that Blizzard intended this to prevent multiboxing WoW (which btw. can easily be avoided..)

oiaohm wrote: So try newer wine just in case it some form of bug with 1.1.13 that is fixed.

I'm now at 1.1.32.....still the same....

tparker wrote: All patches, each time applied for both the regular game and the test
server seem to change the permissions now. It has been this way on the
test server for quite a while so I assume that something from that has
been applied to the live game since it just started happening there. It
has been reported to Blizzard but while waiting for a fix it is simple,
if annoying to reset the permissions after a patch.

Patching & updating always have had the need to change permissions which make sense when running on native Windows..and was a bit annoying on a Linux system. But it's not only after these actions anymore: I have to restore the permissions every time I start the program....and that's more than just annoying...

I think this is what happened: The latest patch is a new version of Launcher.exe which tries to prevent multiboxing. But the way Blizzard has implemented this causes access problems on all platforms. Their patching system has always been problematic but with this action they have really made a mess of things...

vitamin wrote: The only thing I can think of - hack Wine and disable that functionality. See if that works.

2 reasons why this a good idea but not for me:
A. Although I'm capable of writing a decent program, hacking "systems" like Wine has left me with enormous headaches, creating more problems than I can solve and far more coffee than is good for me...

..
B. Since this problem is apparently affecting WoW users on all platforms I'll wait until Blizzard developers have had their necessary programming training...
For now I can live with the workaround, annoying as it is.....

Best regards, Erik

tparker · Post by **tparker** » Thu Nov 12, 2009 11:18 am

On 11/12/2009 08:19 AM, emn8w8 wrote:

I have to restore the permissions every time I start the

program....and that's more than just annoying...

I agree that would be a pain! Now I'm wondering why I haven't run into
this. When I got the latest patch I had to reset my permissions, but I
have been able to exit and restart the game, with and without reboots,
and have not had to reset the permissions at all. I just checked on the
windows boxes in the house (2 XP, 2 Vista) and they are updated as well
but none of them had to fix permissions at all. They can multibox fine
still without changing anything as well.

tparker · Post by **tparker** » Thu Nov 12, 2009 8:13 pm

On 11/12/2009 08:19 AM, emn8w8 wrote:

I seriously doubt if Blizzard has any concerns about the effect their program has on an ext3 filesystem

There are several blue posts on the forums now, this problem is a bug,
not intended, and they are working on the fix already.

Indeed rumors are that Blizzard intended this to prevent multiboxing WoW

Those rumors would be wrong. Blizzard doesn't like botting, but they
don't care about multiboxing. They have said this several times in the
past, as long as you are using legal copies of the game and are at the
keyboard playing them you can run as many WoW clients at once as you
want to. If you are playing illegal accounts or servers, other people's
accounts, or botting the accounts instead of playing them, then they get
upset about it.

emn8w8 · Post by **emn8w8** » Fri Nov 13, 2009 1:06 pm

You are right....I've seen it too....
Since this is a problem from Blizzard, that can be circumvented even with some elegance, and has nothing to do with Wine itself nor is a Wine-bug
I will go back to my state as a happy Wine user....

and will just wait when and how this will be solved....

I thank you all for your time and replies,

Best regards, Erik