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Linux Wine issues - wine 7.22 and 8.0

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Linux Wine issues - wine 7.22 and 8.0 30/01/2023 at 15:14 #150321
Ford
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So this is annoying - have been running SImsig in Wine on my linux laptop for 2 years now with barely a problem.

But a couple of days ago, after an upgrade to wine 8.0, it's started to tell me the "System Files are not installed" and offers to take me this website to download them.

The SImsigLoader.exe doesn't seem to have a version number, but it's dated 18/06/2022 10:31.

Now, my wine setup hasn't (obviously) changed, and all the other software I have in here - mostly old games - are working fine. I've cleaned this out, reinstalled wine, removed and re-installed the installer, and the msxml packages. Still getting the same message. Any one know what the Loader is trying to find or attempting to detect? I can see the loader windows briefly before it quits - so wine is able to execute it - but clearly something in my config the loader does not like (anymore).

The fonts file appears to be correct, and i've gone through the linus related advice on the website. THere's mention of a Registry file - but most of the keys listed in that do not even existing within my wine setup - suspecting this is old and from 32 bit windows?

Downgrading back down to 7.22 hasn't helped. Any advice would be welcomed.

Dave

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Linux Wine issues - wine 7.22 and 8.0 30/01/2023 at 21:16 #150332
headshot119
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I know you've said the font files appear to be correct, but I wonder if it's a missing font file that's gotten lost somewhere? You can manually download the font files only from https://www.SimSig.co.uk/File / https://www.SimSig.co.uk/File/Download/2722

Having had a scour through the core code, the message you're getting is only relevant to missing the font file. Case sensitivity may be an issue on Linux with the directory names within WINE.

"Passengers for New Lane, should be seated in the rear coach of the train " - Opinions are my own and not those of my employer
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Linux Wine issues - wine 7.22 and 8.0 30/01/2023 at 21:44 #150333
Ford
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headshot119 in post 150332 said:
I know you've said the font files appear to be correct, but I wonder if it's a missing font file that's gotten lost somewhere? You can manually download the font files only from https://www.SimSig.co.uk/File / https://www.SimSig.co.uk/File/Download/2722

Having had a scour through the core code, the message you're getting is only relevant to missing the font file. Case sensitivity may be an issue on Linux with the directory names within WINE.
Thanks for taking a loot - the font file is there - or seems ot be - SimSigv2.fon in c:\windows\Fonts. It's defn the right Font folder wine is using, as installing extra ones via winetricks is putting them there. I've tried making it both all upper and all lower case with no effect - same with the containing fonts folder.

Dave

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Linux Wine issues - wine 7.22 and 8.0 30/01/2023 at 21:47 #150334
headshot119
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C:\Windows\Fonts

Is the directory naming for me on Windows 10. Have you tried "W" in Windows as upper case instead of lower?

"Passengers for New Lane, should be seated in the rear coach of the train " - Opinions are my own and not those of my employer
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Linux Wine issues - wine 7.22 and 8.0 30/01/2023 at 22:08 #150335
MrSuttonmann
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Just looking at my Wine setup on PopOS (an Ubuntu-based distro):

~/.wine/drive_c/Program Files (x86)/SimSig - SimSig.exe location.
~/.wine/drive_c/windows/Fonts/SimSigv2.fon - font file location.
~/.wine/drive_c/users/Public/Documents/SimSig - Simulations, timetables, and other misc files

The capitalisation is correct as written above.

I'm not using winetricks however, just a standard wine installation with WineGUI for a little extra help.

There's also a program called Bottles which can have multiple Wine "containers" - maybe you could try installing SimSig into one of those and see if it works?

(Formerly known as manadude2)
Last edited: 30/01/2023 at 22:11 by MrSuttonmann
Reason: users is lower case u

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Linux Wine issues - wine 7.22 and 8.0 30/01/2023 at 22:17 #150336
Sacro
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MrSuttonmann in post 150335 said:
Just looking at my Wine setup on PopOS (an Ubuntu-based distro):

~/.wine/drive_c/Program Files (x86)/SimSig - SimSig.exe location.
~/.wine/drive_c/windows/Fonts/SimSigv2.fon - font file location.
~/.wine/drive_c/users/Public/Documents/SimSig - Simulations, timetables, and other misc files

The capitalisation is correct as written above.

I'm not using winetricks however, just a standard wine installation with WineGUI for a little extra help.

There's also a program called Bottles which can have multiple Wine "containers" - maybe you could try installing SimSig into one of those and see if it works?
Just tried removing my .wine folder here and reinstalling and all looks fine.

I've tried using Bottles in the past, but I could never figure out which dependencies it needs, it can't seem to read the .sim files.

Last edited: 30/01/2023 at 22:18 by Sacro
Reason: None given

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Linux Wine issues - wine 7.22 and 8.0 31/01/2023 at 03:48 #150338
GeoffM
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The casing is SimSigV2 - the V is a capital letter; earlier posts have listed lower case. Though I suspected this might be the... case... (sorry) earlier, having looked at the source and the Borland library source, I don't think it is an issue. SimSig gets a list of installed fonts from Windows, ultimately calling EnumFontFamiliesEx which I believe is in gdi32.dll. It then looks through that list for a case-insensitive match to SimSigV2 - and, if it doesn't find it, raises the error you saw.

If you open Character Map, you should see it listed there. If it's not, then I suspect it's not installed properly - or bitmap fonts are no longer supported. You could look for FixedSys, Terminal, and Courier (not Courier New or the other variations) to see if bitmap fonts are still working.

SimSig Boss
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Linux Wine issues - wine 7.22 and 8.0 31/01/2023 at 08:10 #150339
MrSuttonmann
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GeoffM in post 150338 said:
The casing is SimSigV2 - the V is a capital letter; earlier posts have listed lower case.
Mine works fine with the lowercase 'v' in the font file name, though I suspect casing probably isn't the issue.

Linux itself is case-sensitive (but Wine isn't):

Quote:
Since most file systems used in NT are case insensitive and since most Unix file systems are case sensitive, Wine undergoes a case insensitive search when it has found the Unix path is has to look for.
Quote:
...if there are two files in the same directory whose names match in a case sensitive comparison, Wine will pick up the right one if the filename given matches one of the names (in a case sensitive way), but will pickup one of the two (without defining the one it's going to pickup) if the filename given matches none of the two names in a case sensitive way (but in a case insensitive way). For example, if the two filenames are my_neat_file.txt and My_Neat_File.txt, Wine behavior when opening MY_neat_FILE.txt is undefined.
However this doesn’t solve the issue that Ford has had SimSig running already in this setup and probably hasn’t gone and changed SimSig file names.

This points to a change in Wine 8 that has broken Fonts, and indeed there are two entries in the Wine changelog for version 8 under Fonts. Whether those changes have actually broken it, I don’t know.

It would be interesting to see if anyone else has Wine 8 installed with SimSig running.

(Formerly known as manadude2)
Last edited: 31/01/2023 at 09:05 by MrSuttonmann
Reason: None given

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Linux Wine issues - wine 7.22 and 8.0 31/01/2023 at 09:56 #150341
Sacro
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1171 posts
MrSuttonmann in post 150339 said:
GeoffM in post 150338 said:
The casing is SimSigV2 - the V is a capital letter; earlier posts have listed lower case.
Mine works fine with the lowercase 'v' in the font file name, though I suspect casing probably isn't the issue.

Linux itself is case-sensitive (but Wine isn't):

Quote:
Since most file systems used in NT are case insensitive and since most Unix file systems are case sensitive, Wine undergoes a case insensitive search when it has found the Unix path is has to look for.
Quote:
...if there are two files in the same directory whose names match in a case sensitive comparison, Wine will pick up the right one if the filename given matches one of the names (in a case sensitive way), but will pickup one of the two (without defining the one it's going to pickup) if the filename given matches none of the two names in a case sensitive way (but in a case insensitive way). For example, if the two filenames are my_neat_file.txt and My_Neat_File.txt, Wine behavior when opening MY_neat_FILE.txt is undefined.
However this doesn’t solve the issue that Ford has had SimSig running already in this setup and probably hasn’t gone and changed SimSig file names.

This points to a change in Wine 8 that has broken Fonts, and indeed there are two entries in the Wine changelog for version 8 under Fonts. Whether those changes have actually broken it, I don’t know.

It would be interesting to see if anyone else has Wine 8 installed with SimSig running.
Me, worked fine last night. Wine 8.0 on Arch.

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Linux Wine issues - wine 7.22 and 8.0 31/01/2023 at 15:31 #150349
Ford
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Sacro in post 150341 said:
[quote=MrSuttonmann;post=150339]
Me, worked fine last night. Wine 8.0 on Arch.

Thanks for the all the replies. I've rebuilt wine, removed all traces of config, tried three versions now, 7.0.1, 7.22 and 8.0 and they all do the same thing. Which is really bizarre since in all other respects and all other software is fine. And nothing on my system changed when it stopped working that seems to be related to wine.

As others have said, I feel that case shouldn't be a problem. Multiple 'types' of wine and different installations, e.g. via winetricks, lutris and vanilla wine all behave the same. So there must be something more fundamentally broken about my linux setup. But I can't image what would cause this.

I'll do more investigating, e.g setting up a new user..

Dave

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Linux Wine issues - wine 7.22 and 8.0 31/01/2023 at 15:46 #150350
Ford
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Ford in post 150349 said:

I'll do more investigating, e.g setting up a new user..
Well, that did nothing - still the same problem, which indicates this is some weird system-wide problem, perhaps not with Wine at all...

Might need to change OS - currently using Gentoo which is a bit, err, bleeding edge at the best of times, but has otherwise been fine for a few years for me.. <sigh>

Thanks

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Linux Wine issues - wine 7.22 and 8.0 01/02/2023 at 11:26 #150363
Ford
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Well, some progress - I downloaded the source code for wine and compiled a pure 32-bit version, and that appeared to work fine. So there must be something about the mixed 32/64 bit environment that my laptop is providing that is causing issues with it - perhaps whatever dll provides the font lookup code isn't behaving properly. This is far more complex than anything related to the file name - indeed, the problem appears completely unaffected by the WINEPREFIX (the set of folders used by Wine as an pretend Windows filesystem)

I'll need to do much more research and raise a bug report with my distro and more testing. But at least I do now actually have a way to use SimSig, even if it's going to be in some sort of half-baked jury-rigged wine environment outside of everything else running fine in my existing Wine installation.

Cheers
Dave

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