Question about ~/.wine/dosdevices/

[Peter Berg Larsen]

WARNING: it is 3 in the night, and the better part of me said I should 
have got some sleep before answering. 


Am Sonntag, den 13.11.2005, 23:53 +0100 schrieb Peter Berg Larsen:

>Use one Harddisk, install windows on "C:" and your Programs on "D:".
>Add a second Harddisk with a Primary Partition (Drive-Letter has changed
>from "D:" to "E:") and see, how many Programs are broken.

Every program that uses absolute paths.


> > But neither wiki or the docs said anything about this, which was why I 
> > asked.

> Is the warning "Do not use your existing Windows installation as C: in
> wine" gone?

Properly not, but I do not see this a relevant to me or the question. More 
below.



On Sun, 13 Nov 2005, Vitaliy Margolen wrote:

> Can you run a program that you installed on wine in windows?

I do not think there is a correlation between this and my questions as 
"Wine makes it possible to run Windows programs alongside any Unix-like 
operating system, particularly Linux.". Ms does not state the opposite. (I 
think is the word "alongside" I am reading wrong here; I would have used 
"on" or "installed on")

> You program looking for "c:\Program Files\". That means "Program Files"
> directory on drive c: For wine (in default configuration) c: drive means
> ~/.wine/drive_c. Or more precisely where ~/.wine/dosdevices/c: points 
> to.

Answer below.


> > with; wine does not support running a program installed under
> > /mnt/windows/ I would only had to ask once.

> Of corse it does. If you can make program look for it's files somewhere 
> else. Because that's what you are doing.

The path is hardcoded, so I cannot change the behaviour of the program.


> And like I've mentioned before, please, don't run programs directly from 
> your windows drive. That won't make it any better. But that might brake 
> your windows.

Hmm, no you said:
> Please never point your c: drive to the real windows drive - that won't 
> help wine at all but it might brake your windows beyond repair.

The difference to me is: 

A) 
do not
/mnt/windows/program files/railroad tycoon 3 > wine rt3.exe

and do not have
B) 
/home/pebl/.wine/dosdevices > ls -l
total 0
lrwxrwxrwx  1 pebl pebl 10 Nov 10 17:21 c: -> /mnt/windows/

A implies that I cannot run programs installed under windows. B implies 
that wine is writing something (to registry whatever) to c: which will 
brake windows. (Note: B is not my setup)

Plenty who have answered have stated B, but I do not see what this has to 
do with wines ability to run a program installed under windows.

As it does not state on the wiki nor the docs that I must have installed 
the program under wine to expect it to run, I expected wine to do clever 
things to get it rigth. Like looking in both places or noticing the 
path of the exe.

In either case I had a program that this "clever" mechanism did not worked 
for, and as I could find any thing clever part in wine I asked wine-devel 
and not wine-user.

Peter