Linux

[Deathravin]

Okay. I made a nice little box and threw Ubuntu Linux 7.10 on it a couple months ago.

I've got stormfront to work (poorly) using Wine. But I can't install Wizard. What do you all use (the other two people that use Linux for GS).

One thing I've noticed is I don't have the fixedsys font (which is what I've always used for GS).

[BigWorm]

I don't use Ubuntu, but anything you can do on another distro you can probably do in Ubuntu and probably more easily. Anyway, a good package to look into would be Wine Tools (http://www.von-thadden.de/Joachim/WineTools/). That will help you install the Windows Core Fonts, which are most of what you need (I think fixedsys is in there, but I'm not 100% sure).

Anyway, SF is just barely unusable for me in Wine, but my laptop is seriously due for on upgrade (1.5ish GHz or so P4) so it may be better for you. My problems were mostly intermittent freezing and wonkiness with the behavior of the window like moving it and minimizing/maximizing but that might be blamed on my dual head xinerama setup with uneven borders. The wizard works really well other than not maximizing (again a quirk in my setup I think) and it actually seems faster on Linux than in Windows (which isn't all that uncommon for Wine apps).

If you use Psinet, I have sad news because you won't be able to use Psinet2 or Sage or wtf its called under linux. If someone else has a way to do this, LET ME KNOW, because I would really like to have this. You will be able to use the old version, but without any of the on-line features. Lich, which is really nice under linux, works perfectly and replaces a lot of the features, but lichnet != psinet ooc.

[Shaelun]

Eh? You can't install the Wizard...? What's not working right -- I don't recall having any problems doing it whenever it was that I did; I assume I just entered wine wizInstall.exe in a shell or something. What's the output when you try to run the installer.exe with Wine?


Also, I'm not sure what version of Wine you're working with, but one of the more recent ones actually runs SF pretty nicely on my machine -- the redrawing of the windows is noticeably slow, but otherwise it appears nearly perfect.

If all else fails, d/l the latest Wine release and compile it from source: that's about the only difference that I can think of between your Ubuntu setup and my Slackware one, and Wine always works like a charm for me.

[Deathravin]

I just installed Wine, it's version 0.9.46. It sounds like SF runs just about the same as yours.

Maybe it's because I'm trying to install Wizard using the Simu Launcher. it downloads it. The installation starts, it says "Searching for Wizard Front End", and sits there for a good 2-3 minutes. Then it says: ERROR: The application was not installed properly, please try again or contact Tech Support.

Unfortunately I don't see an installer that I can DL from Simu.

[septus]

SF has weird redrawing issues, but it's not like it used to be (it used to constantly flicker) SF also has problems with keeping the cursor in the text box.

Ok, with running the wizard in wine the installer has a problem. It gets confused when it looks for an already installed version of the wizard, so what do you do? Copy over c:\program files\simu\wizard from a windows machine into your ~/.wine/drive_c/program\ files/simu directory and then run wine Sge.exe. It'll find it and the install over it. After that you might have to change the log/script/music/sound/etc directories as they'll now be case sensitive.

As for a fixedsys font, I use the fixedsys500c.zip font from http://fixedsys.moviecorner.de/?p=download&l=1. Just unzip it in ~/.wine/drive_c/windows/fonts directory (I probably got the case wrong here, but I'm too lazy to pull out my eee pc)

Works fine for me doing it this way: http://www.skyshadows.net/gs-eeepc1.png.

And yes, unfortunately psinet will not work as net 2.0 doesn't work correctly in wine atm.


Oh, and one of the GMs is currently coding a Linux FE. No sure when it'll be out, if ever.. (There's been a handful that people have worked on..none of which have actually come out)

[Shaelun]

If you use Psinet, I have sad news because you won't be able to use Psinet2 or Sage or wtf its called under linux. If someone else has a way to do this, LET ME KNOW, because I would really like to have this.


Mono will run Psinet2. It took me around 4-6 hours to figure out how to actually tweak Mono's environment properly, and in all honesty, I can't even remember the steps I went through... essentially what it came down to is that Jamus made Psinet2 very fickle, and you have to add all the necessary registry keys by hand for Mono.

Most of what took me so long to get it working was figuring out wtf Psinet2 kept giving me a generic error because of, and then figuring out how to make Mono fake the proper registry entires. Turns out Mono uses a directory hierarchy and xml files for its registry.

For my setup (default options when compiled from source, so should be the same if you go that route), the necessary files are (file location followed by contents of the XML files):

/usr/local/etc/mono/registry/LocalMachine/software/classes/simutronics.autolaunch/shell/open/command/values.xml


<values>
<value name="" type="string">"/home/fallen/.wine/drive_c/Program Files/SIMU/Launcher.exe" %1</value>
</values>

/usr/local/etc/mono/registry/LocalMachine/software/psinet/values.xml


<values>
<value name="Version"
type="string">2.1.1.1823</value>
<value name="InstallDirectory"
type="string">/home/fallen/.wine/drive_c/PsiNet</value>
<value name="OpenCommand" type="string">"/home/fallen/.wine/drive_c/Program Files/SIMU/Launcher/Launcher.exe" %1</value>

</values>

(note that I tweaked the version by hand, if memory serves, and can't guarantee you won't have to do the same)

/usr/local/etc/mono/registry/LocalMachine/software/simutronics/launcher/values.xml


<values>
<value name="Directory"
type="string">/home/fallen/.wine/drive_c/Program Files/SIMU</value>
</values>


/usr/local/etc/mono/registry/LocalMachine/software/simutronics/sge32/values.xml


<values>
<value name="Directory"
type="string">C:\PROG~FBU\SIMU\SGE</value>
</values>


That looks to be the only files under my Mono registry dirpath. I may have also had to decompress the setup.exe program using actual decompression software, because I think it's so touchy it refused to even unzip itself... but I can't 'member very well.


That should get you far enough to tweak the rest yourself, if you're so inclined, at least. Have fun -- though "good luck" is probably more accurate...

[Shaelun]

... yeah, I obviously forgot to point out that you're going to have to alter my home directory (/home/fallen) to whatever yours is -- or wherever else your .wine dir is.

[Deathravin]

Copy over c:\program files\simu\wizard from a windows machine into your ~/.wine/drive_c/program\ files/simu directory and then run wine Sge.exe. It'll find it and the install over it. After that you might have to change the log/script/music/sound/etc directories as they'll now be case sensitive.

That's what I was going to try next... Thanks ^^.

[BigWorm]

I just installed Wine, it's version 0.9.46. It sounds like SF runs just about the same as yours.

Maybe it's because I'm trying to install Wizard using the Simu Launcher. it downloads it. The installation starts, it says "Searching for Wizard Front End", and sits there for a good 2-3 minutes. Then it says: ERROR: The application was not installed properly, please try again or contact Tech Support.

Unfortunately I don't see an installer that I can DL from Simu.

You probably need to install the launcher first. Any software you need is available at http://www.play.net/software/


Mono will run Psinet2. It took me around 4-6 hours to figure out how to actually tweak Mono's environment properly, and in all honesty, I can't even remember the steps I went through... essentially what it came down to is that Jamus made Psinet2 very fickle, and you have to add all the necessary registry keys by hand for Mono.

This is... good news I guess. I haven't installed Mono on my laptop yet and that is going to be a huge ass install, but I will have to look into it. All my hunting partners are WTF when I tell them I don't have Psinet. Thanks for the info, I'll have to give it a try.


Works fine for me doing it this way: http://www.skyshadows.net/gs-eeepc1.png.
Slightly off topic, but what distro are you running on your eeepc? I plan on getting one of these in the near future, but it still looks like support is spotty, especially for the wlan drivers.


Oh, and one of the GMs is currently coding a Linux FE. No sure when it'll be out, if ever.. (There's been a handful that people have worked on..none of which have actually come out)
I'll believe it when I see it. I would guess it would be either Naos (who does the Mac FE) or Ildran (who wrote the EclipseFE) who would be doing this. I know some DR? players were writing a FE called ArchLich but it seems development on that has fizzled like dev on Warlock did.

[Deathravin]

Okie... well, Ubuntu doesn't like lich...

Lich:5997: in 'find': Permission denied - /home/deathravin/lich/.cache.5472.605965718 (Errno::EACCES)
from LICH:5997

I'm assuming this is because root is disabled in Ubuntu, and Lich installs itself to root.

[Deathravin]

I got that error to go away, but now it doesn't connect to the game.

[Shaelun]

How does Ubuntu not allow "root" installations? Don't a dozen or so standard Nix progs all but require that they be installed setuid root? (a file attribute that causes the program to be run as the superuser regardless of what user account executes the prog)

Lich uses root privileges to modify the hosts file, then immediately drops all privileges and sets its effective & real ids to the user that executed it: if you aren't bothered by that, just su to root (or use sudo) and chmod 4755 lich -- if you run it with sudo, it may or may not drop its root privileges after modifying the hosts file (if the SUDO_USER environment variable is set by sudo it will, if not, it won't).

FYI, Wine chokes when you launch a Windows prog that in turn tries to execute a Nix prog -- meaning Lich can't be autostarted in Linux. If you didn't realize that, there's your problem.

If all else fails, remove that .cache file yourself.

[Deathravin]

I know maybe .003% of things on linux, let me preface with that.

I've probably broken it beyond repair. When it's installed with your installer, it puts a little lock on the folder like all the other system folders, and then I can't do anything with it.

[Shaelun]

Hm. Funky. I don't think you've broken a single thing. Particularly since your user account shouldn't have the capability to break anything :)

Okay, so to make sure you follow (not trying to patronize you, if you know some of this ignore my explanations)...

su is a program that allows you to switch your user account (SwitchUser). Without any arguments, it logs you in as root (if you have the password of course). You'd need root permissions to alter the file attributes, which is presumably why that "locK" thing is showing up (your user account doesn't have permission to do anything to the file).

Oh, if you don't know, root is the superuser account. I tend to use both terms, but they're the same thing.

So what I suggest is getting to a terminal screen (for example, run the xterm program to do that). Then cd ~/lich to get into Lich's directory. Then type lich & -- the ampersand (&) after a command causes the program to be automatically launched in the background (otherwise the terminal would be stuck open). Then start SGE and login, and it should work.

[BigWorm]

Hm. Funky. I don't think you've broken a single thing. Particularly since your user account shouldn't have the capability to break anything :)

Okay, so to make sure you follow (not trying to patronize you, if you know some of this ignore my explanations)...

su is a program that allows you to switch your user account (SwitchUser). Without any arguments, it logs you in as root (if you have the password of course). You'd need root permissions to alter the file attributes, which is presumably why that "locK" thing is showing up (your user account doesn't have permission to do anything to the file).

Oh, if you don't know, root is the superuser account. I tend to use both terms, but they're the same thing.

So what I suggest is getting to a terminal screen (for example, run the xterm program to do that). Then cd ~/lich to get into Lich's directory. Then type lich & -- the ampersand (&) after a command causes the program to be automatically launched in the background (otherwise the terminal would be stuck open). Then start SGE and login, and it should work.

Shaelun, he means that you can't login as root in Ubuntu; you have have to run tasks as root using sudo.

[Shaelun]

[edit] nevermind the question; stopped being lazy and asked google.

If it still isn't working, Deathravin, try running Lich with sudo. If that doesn't work either... well then I'm out of possible reasons for why it wouldn't be working.

[septus]

Slightly off topic, but what distro are you running on your eeepc? I plan on getting one of these in the near future, but it still looks like support is spotty, especially for the wlan drivers.

I'm still running the default Xandros, with some updated packages and advanced mode (check out the wiki on eeeuser.com for more info on advanced mode..it's basically just kde vs the icewm setup the easy mode is). I assume it wouldn't be too difficult to get the wlan drivers working, but I'm not sure. Either way, I'd suggest waiting until the new 8.9" Version comes out.. 1024x800 resolution instead of 800x480.


I'll believe it when I see it. I would guess it would be either Naos (who does the Mac FE) or Ildran (who wrote the EclipseFE) who would be doing this. I know some DR? players were writing a FE called ArchLich but it seems development on that has fizzled like dev on Warlock did.

It's a new GM, Vanern.. I believe he started before he was a GM. We'll see if it goes anywhere, as I'm pretty sure it's a personal project.

[septus]

Ubuntu is one of the distros that use the relatively new trend of having root (uid 0) locked out. The reason for this is that it's perceived as more secure, which it's not from an outside threat (disregarding brute force password attacks), however it does prevent the user from logging in as root 100% of the time. You can override this by setting a password for root, but there's no real reason to. Everyone uses 'sudo su' to get around it. (or if you want to keep your own environment you can sudo -s)

I've had lich work in linux, but that was probably a little over 2 years ago. My main desktop is an iMac now, and I use VMWare Fusion with Vista installed to run StormFront.

--

Thanks Shaelun for the info. Didn't know mono supported .net 2 now. Oh, one question.. How do you run psinet and the frontend in wine at the same time?

[Deathravin]

Well I decided to dust off my old Vista hard drive and check out SP1 before i install it on my wife's laptop (always a good idea).

I'll try to run it with sudo su when Vista's done being slow (2-3 weeks tops LOL). I bet that will work. I think it might also be because I have the new SGE which I've already seen has issues with Lich & Plat. I grabbed the old version from my laptop and I'll update it too when Vista's done.


I got bored one day...
http://members.cox.net/valendros/Mineral1.jpg

[Deathravin]

TT

Lich:5997:in 'find': Permission denied - /home/deathravin/lich/.cache.6031.606113858 {Errno::EACCES}
from Lich:5997

[Deathravin]

OH Got it... nevermind. Rock on, thanks everybody ^^

Only difference between what I was doing and what you had me do is I was trying to run lich with a double-click.

Sudo su /home/deathravin/lich/lich &

^^ that worked ^^
Only with the old SGE though.

[BigWorm]

OH Got it... nevermind. Rock on, thanks everybody ^^

Only difference between what I was doing and what you had me do is I was trying to run lich with a double-click.

Sudo su /home/deathravin/lich/lich &

^^ that worked ^^
Only with the old SGE though.

You should only need to do sudo ~/lich/lich &

You can just run the lich by doubleclicking on it if you do: sudo chmod u+s ~/lich/lich

After that, it should give itself root permissions at runtime, so you can run it normally by double clicking on it or typing: ~/lich/lich &

My shortcut to start the lich and the SGE is (not at home, but close to):
~/lich/lich && ~/.wine/drive_c/Program\ Files/SIMU/Sge.exe.

You should double check the path on this, but it should give you something to start with.

[Deathravin]

That's very cool. Thanks so much.

[LMingrone]

Sorry to change subjects. Anyone own an EeePc? I was just about to order one.. Any experiences with one?

[Deathravin]

::sigh::

Now it can't find any scripts...
Although It could have very well been doing the same thing yesterday and I just didn't notice. It doesn't find infomonitor or lichnet. But it obviously finds favorates.txt to try to run those...

It puts a data folder in /home/deathravin/data instead of using /home/deathravin/lich/data

I think that's why it can't find scripts, it's looking for them in /home/deathravin/scripts insted of /home/deathravin/lich/scripts.

[septus]

Sorry to change subjects. Anyone own an EeePc? I was just about to order one.. Any experiences with one?

If you can, wait until the 8.9" ones comes out.. 1024x800 instead of 800x480. (Unless of course you'd rather save the money and deal with the 7" screen)

I like mine a lot. It's my only laptop now. If you overclock it you can output 1920x1600 iirc.. I know you can do 1650x1080, as I've done that myself..but only overclocked.. the default won't be able to push resolution that high.

PM me or start a new thread if you have any specific questions on it

[Deathravin]

Lich's `home' directory is: /home/deathravin/
Lich's `saved data' dir is: /home/deathravin/data
Lich's script directory is: /home/deathravin/

How do I change those?

[Deathravin]

I hate computers... I can't figure this directory issue out...
Friggin Linux, in Windows i'd just go into the registry and change the folder locations to the right folders and it would work ><... I feel retarded when I use Linux LOL.

[septus]

It's not specified in the .lich.cfg file that you place in your home directory? If not, then you might have to edit the ruby code and change it yourself.

[Deathravin]

I found lich.cfg... all it has in it is:

-e /home/deathravin/lich


Sort of figured some of it out...

For some reason my distro doesn't understand these lines:
ln -s "$HOME/lich/lich" 2> /dev/null
echo -e "$HOME/lich\n" > "$HOME/.lich.cfg"
ls "$HOME/lich/*.txt"

If I take out the quotes, it all goes through... HOWEVER, it still tries to read it from /home/deathravin/data instead of /home/deathravin/lich/data (before it was using /data and / for it's folders. So it makes a bunch of files in my root folders...

[Deathravin]

FIXED IT YEAUH!

echo -e doesn't work... it was making my lich.cfg file say:

-e /home/deathravin/lich

instead of

/home/deathravin/lich


just took out the -e...

Does there need to be a line break after that path?

[septus]

FIXED IT YEAUH!

echo -e doesn't work... it was making my lich.cfg file say:

-e /home/deathravin/lich

instead of

/home/deathravin/lich


just took out the -e...

Does there need to be a line break after that path?

Weird. the -e is to tell echo to interpret backslash characters (add a new line to /home/deathravin/lich)

make the lich.cfg just have:

/home/deathravin/lich

in it.

[Deathravin]

That's why it was so strange...

It's gotta be a wierd thing with Ubuntu