"This program cannot be run in DOS mode"

Fred Gray
Thu, 08 Apr 2004 20:05:25 -0000

Hi, all,

I'm trying to use Wine to run an FPGA synthesis application for an older
generation device from Lattice.  The tool is called ispDesignExpert
and is mostly a repackaged version of Synplicity.  It is a generation of
software older than the current ispLever application availble from
Lattice's web site, the free version of which doesn't support this
device.

I think it has a good chance of working, except that the flexlm license
manager gets in the way, complaining that the hostid of the license
doesn't match the hostid of the computer.  Unfortunately, the error
message doesn't tell you flexlm's opinion about the computer's
hostid.
I do have a valid license.dat file where the hostid is the computer's
Ethernet hardware address.

So, to get to my question...there is a tool called lmutil.exe included in the
distribution that can be used ("lmutil hostid") to get the hostid.
However, it fails with the following set of messages:

-------
Invoking /usr/lib/wine/wine.bin lmutil.exe hostid ...
Warning: Language 'us' was not recognized, defaulting to English.
Warning: unprotecting the first 64KB of memory to allow real-mode calls.
NULL pointer accesses will no longer be caught.
This program cannot be run in DOS mode.

Wine failed with return code 1
-------

Does anyone know why it would think it's running in DOS mode, or have a
workaround?  (Any other suggestions on this situation would of course be
welcome as well, short of "you should really just install Windows..."
:-)

I am using Debian-packaged Wine 20040309 with the default configuration
generated by winesetup.  I have also tried the current version of Crossover
Office, with the same results.

Thanks in advance to everyone for your help,

-- Fred

-- Fred Gray / Visiting Postdoctoral Researcher                 --
-- Department of Physics / University of California, Berkeley   --
-- fegray@berkeley.edu / phone 510-642-4057 / fax 510-642-9811  --