Howto | Install Wine on LTSP
06 Oct 2010
These instructions have not been tested since re-writing, in particular there will be permissions issues.
Step 1: Install Wine
Please visit for instructions on how to install Wine:
- http://www.winehq.org/site/download
If you get a problem with applications appearing without any text, then you need to install some Windows fonts in Wine. One option is to simply download them from http://sourceforge.net/projects/corefonts/. You may also be able to install via a debian installer package:
$ sudo apt-get ttf-mscorefonts-installer
Install Wine packages:
$ sudo apt-get install libwine libwine-print libwine-sane libwine-alsa
Your requirements may vary, a non-inclusive list of available libraries is:
- libwine: the core wine library
- libwine-print: the printing library
- libwine-sane: the scanning library
- libwine-alsa: the alsa sound library
- libwine-oss: the oss sound library
You will notice winetools mentioned on several websites, my understanding is that this is no longer supported.
Step 2: Create a Wine directory for your application
By default Windows applications are installed in /home/user/.wine. If you want to install your application in a different directory then you must use the WINEPREFIX variable.
If you want your application to be installed in /usr/local/share/appname you must first create the directory:
$ cd /usr/local/share
$ mkdir appname
$ WINEPREFIX="/usr/local/share/appname" wineprefixcreate
In this directory you will now find a fake Windows drive and the Wine configuration files system.reg and user.reg.
Step 3: Configure your Wine directory
You can probably skip this step for typical installations.
$ WINEPREFIX="/usr/local/share/appname" winecfg
Step 4: Install your application
Installing from an .msi file
You can install .msi files with the msiexec.exe utility. This command is built into Wine, so you don’t have to install Windows Installer from Microsoft. If the .msi file is called msifile.msi you just have to type msiexec /i msifile.msi and the application will be installed.
Make sure you’re not using a native version of msi.dll, but the builtin one. To run the Windows install program, please type the following:
$ WINEPREFIX="/usr/local/share/appname" wine /path/to/setup.exe
Substitute “/path/to/setup.exe” with the installation path executable for your application
Step 5: Test your application
$ WINEPREFIX="/usr/local/share/appname" wine "drive_c/Program Files/app/appname.exe"
Step 6: Configure for multi-user operation
This section needs a re-write (or just refer to Example automation script below)
It is possible to configure the system so that a system Wine installation (and applications) can be shared by all the users, and still let the users all have their own personalized configuration.
# Creating individual user directory, e.g. /home/username/.appname
# Symlink directory structure to /usr/local/share/appname
# Remove symlink for user.reg (will be auto-created for each user on first run)
$ ln -sf /usr/local/share/appname/system.reg system.reg
To assist in this process, please refer to the following guide:
- http://www.winehq.org/site/docs/wineusr-guide/using-regedit
and perhaps even symlink these back to the administrator’s account, to make it easier to install apps system-wide later:
You might be tempted to do the same for user.reg as well, however that file contains user specific settings. Every user should have their own copy of that file along with the permissions to modify it.
You’ll want to pay attention to drive mappings. If you’re sharing the system.reg file you’ll want to make sure the registry settings are compatible with the drive mappings in ~/.wine/dosdevices of each individual user. As a general rule of thumb, the closer you keep your drive mappings to the default configuration provided by wineprefixcreate, the easier this will be to manage. You may or may not be able to share some or all of the actual “c:” drive you originally installed the application to. Some applications require the ability to write specific settings to the drive, especially those designed for Windows 95/98/ME.
Example automation script
This script was probably cobbled together from the superb ies4linux installation, or possibly from Franks Corner,
#!/usr/bin/perl
# Launch script for multiuser appname, master copy in /usr/local/share/appname.
use strict;
my $MASTERPREFIX = '/usr/local/share/appname';
my $WINEPREFIX = $ENV['HOME'} . '/.appname';
use vars qw($MASTERPREFIX $WINEPREFIX);
# If we're not set up, create the user's magic symlink-copy of the master
# installation.
unless (-d "$WINEPREFIX") {
system('mkdir', '-p', "$WINEPREFIX") == 0 ](| die "mkdir -p $WINEPREFIX: $?";
system('lndir', "$MASTERPREFIX", "$WINEPREFIX") == 0 || die "lndir failed: is xutils installed? $?";
# The profile directory will be recreated automatically by wine on the
# first run, so it's OK to blow away eny existing copy hanging around in
# unwritable symlink form from the install, and it's OK to just create a
# blank one.
$PROFILES = $WINEPREFIX . '/drive_c/windows/profiles';
system('rm', '-fr', "$PROFILES") == 0 || die "rm -fr $PROFILES failed: $?";
system('mkdir', '-p', "$PROFILES") == 0 || die "mkdir -p $PROFILES failed: $?";
# WINE needs to be able to write to the following files, so they can't be
# symlinks to root-owned ones.
foreach my $file ('.no_prelaunch_window_flag', 'system.reg', 'userdef.reg', 'user.reg') {
if (-l $WINEPREFIX . '/' . $file) {
system('rm', '-f', $WINEPREFIX . '/' . $file) == 0 || die "rm -f $WINEPREFIX/$file failed: $?";
system('cp', $MASTERPREFIX . '/' . $file, $WINEPREFIX . '/' . $file) == 0 || die "Cannot copy $MASTERPREFIX/$file to $WINEPREFIX/$file: $?";
)
}
system('chmod', '-R', 'og-rwx', $WINEPREFIX) == 0 || die "Cannot chmod -R og-rwx $WINEPREFIX: $?";
}
exec('env', 'WINEPREFIX=' . $WINEPREFIX, 'wine', $WINEPREFIX . '/drive_c/Program Files/appname/appname.exe', @ARGV) == 0 || die "Failed to launch appname: $?\n";
exit;