[Wine] [FAQ] [RFC] entry about locations of Windows drives

[Paul Menzel]

Am Samstag, den 02.01.2010, 09:07 -0600 schrieb dimesio:
> Paul Menzel wrote:
> > 
> > Wine’s C: drive is located in your home directory under
> > `~/.wine/dosdrives/c:` which points to `~/.wine/drive_c/`.
> 
> This is not correct. First of all ~/.wine/dosdevices/c: is just a
> symlink to ~/.wine/drive_c.

That is what I tried to express by writing »points to«.

> Second, it is possible to have other wineprefixes besides ~/.wine,
> each will have their own drive_c, and they do not have to be located
> in your home directory.

I learned this from oiaohm in another thread today. Thanks! But
wineprefixes seem to serve a different purpose as written in 7.2 in the
FAQs than changing the C: [1]. But the question was to just *move* the
whole directory. Using wineprefixes with all its advantages still leaves
(after the first run of Wine(?)) `~/.wine/drive_c` in my home directory
and most of the time the user will already have something installed in
there before s/he knows more about it and thinks about moving it to a
different place.

The question is also how a person, not familiar with the CLI is supposed
to do this.

> The reason winecfg will not allow users to point C: elsewhere is to
> prevent them from pointing it to a real Windows partition. If they do,
> Wine will overwrite the real Windows registry and Windows will be
> toast. This is already explained in the FAQ, and the decision not to
> include information on how to circumvent it is a deliberate one.
> http://wiki.winehq.org/FAQ#head-497f1a295d53dd3444f211df2b13312c7767afa2

Thank you, I overlooked that. In my opinion this is hard to find and
should be covered in a separate question where 7.2 can point to.

Here is my next proposal including the comments by Gert. My comments
included with »>«.


=== x.y Can I point the Wine’s letter C: to the partition with my Windows C:? ===

Never ever do this or your Windows installation will be toast!!!

WARNING: Do not try to configure Wine to point to your actual Windows C:
\ drive. This will break Windows and require a reinstall. 


=== How do I change the location of Wine’s C: drive? ===

or

=== I cannot change the drive mapping for letter C: in `winecfg`! ===
> (no question indeed)

WARNING:Do not try to configure Wine to point to your actual Windows C:\
drive. This will break Windows and require a reinstall. Read 7.2 and
x.y!

We have tried to make this hard to do so you probably cannot do it by
accident. If you do manage this, Wine may or may not continue to
operate, but your Windows install will be 100% dead due to critical
parts of it being overwritten. The only way to fix Windows after this
has happened is to reinstall it.

That is why you cannot change this in the configuration tool. If you
know what you are doing you can figure this out yourself!

> I do know if the following should be included.

You can read about *wineprefixes* in the manual page (type `man wine` in
a terminal), but remember to not let it point to your actual Windows
installation.


Thanks,

Paul


[1] http://wiki.winehq.org/FAQ#head-f2f5f3bc795247f11962ea613a1f9e15657ad552
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