Chapter 4. Configuring Wine

Setting up config files, etc.

4.1. General Configuration

Copyright 1999 Adam Sacarny

(Extracted from wine/documentation/config)

4.1.2. How Do I Make One?

This section will guide you through the process of making a config file. Take a look at the file <dirs to wine>/documentation/samples/config. It is organized by section.

4.1.2.1. The [Drive X] Section

It should be pretty self explanatory, but here is an in-depth tutorial about them. There are up to 6 lines for each drive in Wine.

[Drive X]
The above line begins the section for a drive whose letter is X.

Path=/dir/to/path
This path is where the drive will begin. When Wine is browsing in drive X, it will see the files that are in the directory /dir/to/path. Don't forget to leave off the trailing slash!

"Type" = "floppy|hd|cdrom|network"
Sets up the type of drive Wine will see it as. Type must equal one of the four floppy, hd, cdrom, or network. They are self-explanatory. (The |'s mean "Type = '<one of the options>'".)

"Label" = "blah"
Defines the drive label. Generally only needed for programs that look for a special CD-ROM. Info on finding the lable is in <dirs to wine>/documentation/cdrom-labels. The label may be up to 11 characters.

"Serial" = "deadbeef"
Tells Wine the serial number of the drive. A few programs with intense protection for pirating might need this, but otherwise don't use it. Up to 8 characters and hexadecimal.

"Filesystem" = "msdos|win95|unix"
Sets up the way Wine looks at files on the drive.

msdos

Case insensitive filesystem. Alike to DOS and Windows 3.x. 8.3 is the maximum length of files (eightdot.123) - longer ones will be truncated. (NOTE: this is a very bad choice if you plan on running apps that use long filenames. win95 should work fine with apps that were designed to run under the msdos system. In other words, you might not want to use this.)

win95

Case insensitive. Alike to Windows 9x/NT 4. This is the long filename filesystem you are probably used to working with. The filesystem of choice for most applications to be run under wine. PROBABLY THE ONE YOU WANT!

unix

Case sensitive. This filesystem has almost no use (Windows apps expect case insensitive filenames). Try it if you dare, but win95 is a much better choice.

"Device" = "/dev/xx"

Use this ONLY for floppy and cdrom devices. Using it on Extended2 partitions can have dire results (when a windows app tries to do a lowlevel write, they do it in a FAT way -- FAT does not mix with Extended2).

Note

This setting is not really important; almost all apps will have no problem if it remains unspecified. For CD-ROMs you might want to add it to get automatic label detection, though. If you are unsure about specifying device names, just leave out this setting for your drives.

Here is a setup for Drive X, a generic hard drive:

[Drive X]
"Path" = "/dos-a"
"Type" = "hd"
"Label" = "Hard Drive"
"Filesystem" = "win95"
This is a setup for Drive X, a generic CD-ROM drive:
[Drive X]
"Path" = "/dos-d"
"Type" = "cdrom"
"Label" = "Total Annihilation"
"Filesystem" = "win95"
"Device" = "/dev/hdc"
And here is a setup for Drive X, a generic floppy drive:
[Drive X]
"Type" = "floppy"
"Path" = "/mnt/floppy"
"Label" = "Floppy Drive"
"Serial" = "87654321"
"Filesystem" = "win95"
"Device" = "/dev/fd0"
            

4.1.2.2. The [wine] Section

The [wine] section of the configuration file contains all kinds of general settings for Wine. When specifying the directories for the directory related settings, make them as they would appear in wine. If your drive C has a path of /dos, and your windows directory is located in /dos/windows, then use:

"Windows" = "c:\\windows"

This sets up the windows directory. Make one if you don't already have one. NO TRAILING SLASH (NOT C:\\windows\)!

"System" = "c:\\windows\\system"
This sets up where the windows system files are. Should reside in the directory used for the Windows setting. If you don't have windows then this is where the system files will go. Again, NO TRAILING SLASH!

"Temp" = "c:\\temp"
This should be the directory you want your temp files stored in. YOU MUST HAVE WRITE ACCESS TO IT.

"Path" = "c:\\windows;c:\\windows\\system;c:\\blanco"
            

Behaves like the PATH setting on UNIX boxes. When wine is run like wine sol.exe, if sol.exe resides in a directory specified in the Path setting, wine will run it (Of course, if sol.exe resides in the current directory, wine will run that one). Make sure it always has your windows directory and system directory (For this setup, it must have "c:\\windows;c:\\windows\\system").

"GraphicsDriver" = "x11drv|ttydrv"
Sets the graphics driver to use for Wine output. x11drv is for X11 output, ttydrv is for text console output. WARNING: if you use ttydrv here, then you won't be able to run any Windows GUI programs. Thus this option is mainly interesting for e.g. embedded use of Wine in web server scripts.

"Printer" = "off|on"
Tells wine whether to allow printing via printer drivers to work. This option isn't needed for our builtin psdrv printer driver at all. Using these things are pretty alpha, so you might want to watch out. Some people might find it useful, however. If you're not planning on working on printing via windows printer drivers, don't even add this to your wine config file (It probably isn't already in it). Check out the [spooler] and [parallelports] sections too.

"ShellLinker" = "wineshelllink"
This setting specifies the shell linker script to use for setting up Windows icons in e.g. KDE or Gnome that are given by programs making use of appropriate shell32.dll functionality to create icons on the desktop/start menu during installation.

"ShowDirSymlinks" = "1"
Wine doesn't pass directory symlinks to Windows programs by default, as doing so may crash some programs that do recursive lookups of whole subdirectory trees whenever a directory symlink points back to itself or one of its parent directories. That's why we disallowed the use of directory symlinks and added this setting to reenable ("1") this functionality.

"SymbolTableFile" = "wine.sym"
Sets up the symbol table file for the wine debugger. You probably don't need to fiddle with this. May be useful if your wine is stripped.

4.1.2.6. The [DllOverrides] Section

The format for this section is the same for each line:

<DLL>{,<DLL>,<DLL>...} = <FORM>{,<FORM>,<FORM>...}
            

For example, to load builtin KERNEL pair (case doesn't matter here):

"kernel,kernel32" = "builtin"
            

To load the native COMMDLG pair, but if that doesn't work try builtin:

"commdlg,comdlg32" = "native,builtin"
            

To load the native COMCTL32:

"comctl32" = "native"
            

Here is a good generic setup (As it is defined in config that was included with your wine package):

[DllOverrides]
"commdlg"      = "builtin, native"
"comdlg32"     = "builtin, native"
"ver"          = "builtin, native"
"version"      = "builtin, native"
"shell"        = "builtin, native"
"shell32"      = "builtin, native"
"lzexpand"     = "builtin, native"
"lz32"         = "builtin, native"
"comctl32"     = "builtin, native"
"commctrl"     = "builtin, native"
"wsock32"      = "builtin"
"winsock"      = "builtin"
"advapi32"     = "builtin, native"
"crtdll"       = "builtin, native"
"mpr"          = "builtin, native"
"winspool.drv" = "builtin, native"
"ddraw"        = "builtin, native"
"dinput"       = "builtin, native"
"dsound"       = "builtin, native"
"mmsystem"     = "builtin"
"winmm"        = "builtin"
"msvcrt"       = "native, builtin"
"msvideo"      = "builtin, native"
"msvfw32"      = "builtin, native"
"mcicda.drv"   = "builtin, native"
"mciseq.drv"   = "builtin, native"
"mciwave.drv"  = "builtin, native"
"mciavi.drv"   = "native, builtin"
"mcianim.drv"  = "native, builtin"
"msacm.drv"    = "builtin, native"
"msacm"        = "builtin, native"
"msacm32"      = "builtin, native"
"midimap.drv"  = "builtin, native"
"wnaspi32"     = "builtin"
"icmp"         = "builtin"
            

Note

You see that elfdll or so is the first option for a few of these dll's. This will fail for you, but you won't notice it as wine will just use the second or third option.

4.1.2.7. The [fonts] Section

This section sets up wine's font handling.

"Resolution" = "96"

Since the way X handles fonts is different from the way Windows does, wine uses a special mechanism to deal with them. It must scale them using the number defined in the "Resolution" setting. 60-120 are reasonable values, 96 is a nice in the middle one. If you have the real windows fonts available (<dirs to wine>/documentation/ttfserver and fonts), this parameter will not be as important. Of course, it's always good to get your X fonts working acceptably in wine.

"Default" = "-adobe-times-"
The default font wine uses. Fool around with it if you'd like.

OPTIONAL:

The Alias setting allows you to map an X font to a font used in wine. This is good for apps that need a special font you don't have, but a good replacement exists. The syntax is like so:

"AliasX" = "[Fake windows name],[Real X name]"<,optional "masking" section>
            

Pretty straightforward. Replace "AliasX" with "Alias0", then "Alias1" and so on. The fake windows name is the name that the font will be under a windows app in wine. The real X name is the font name as seen by X (Run "xfontsel"). The optional "masking" section allows you to utilize the fake windows name you define. If it is not used, then wine will just try to extract the fake windows name itself and not use the value you enter.

Here is an example of an alias without masking. The font will show up in windows apps as "Google". When defining an alias in a config file, forget about my comment text (The "<-- blah" stuff)

"Alias0" = "Foo,--google-"      <
            

Here is an example with masking enabled. The font will show up as "Foo" in windows apps.

"Alias1" = "Foo,--google-,subst"
            

For more info check out <dirs to wine>/documentation/fonts

4.1.2.8. The [serialports], [parallelports], [spooler], and [ports] Sections

Even though it sounds like a lot of sections, these are all closely related. They are all for communications and parallel ports.

The [serialports] section tells wine what serial ports it is allowed to use.

"ComX" = "/dev/cuaY"

Replace X with the number of the COM port in Windows (1-8) and Y with the number of it in X (Usually the number of the port in Windows minus 1). ComX can actually equal any device (/dev/modem is acceptable). It is not always necessary to define any COM ports (An optional setting). Here is an example:

"Com1" = "/dev/cua0"

Use as many of these as you like in the section to define all of the COM ports you need.

The [parallelports] section sets up any parallel ports that will be allowed access under wine.

"LptX" = "/dev/lpY"

Sounds familiar? Syntax is just like the COM port setting. Replace X with a value from 1-4 as it is in Windows and Y with a value from 0-3 (Y is usually the value in windows minus 1, just like for COM ports). You don't always need to define a parallel port (AKA, it's optional). As with the other section, LptX can equal any device (Maybe /dev/printer). Here is an example:

"Lpt1" = "/dev/lp0"

The [spooler] section will inform wine where to spool print jobs. Use this if you want to try printing. Wine docs claim that spooling is "rather primitive" at this time, so it won't work perfectly. IT IS OPTIONAL. The only setting you use in this section works to map a port (LPT1, for example) to a file or a command. Here is an example, mapping LPT1 to the file out.ps:

"LPT1:" = "out.ps"

The following command maps printing jobs to LPT1 to the command lpr. Notice the |:

"LPT1:" = "|lpr"

The [ports] section is usually useful only for people who need direct port access for programs requiring dongles or scanners. IF YOU DON'T NEED IT, DON'T USE IT!

"read" = "0x779,0x379,0x280-0x2a0"
Gives direct read access to those IO's.

"write" = "0x779,0x379,0x280-0x2a0"
Gives direct write access to those IO's. It's probably a good idea to keep the values of the read and write settings the same. This stuff will only work when you're root.

4.1.4. What If It Doesn't Work?

There is always a chance that things will go wrong. If the unthinkable happens report the problem to Wine Bugzilla, try the newsgroup comp.emulators.ms-windows.wine, or the IRCnet channel #WineHQ found on irc.stealth.net:6668, or connected servers. Make sure that you have looked over this document thoroughly, and have also read:

  • README

  • http://www.la-sorciere.de/wine/index.html (optional but recommended)

If indeed it looks like you've done your research, be prepared for helpful suggestions. If you haven't, brace yourself for heaving flaming.