wine users - Jul 2010 - For what reason the "official" Wine does not support USB ?

Hello

A lot of windows application need access to an USB port.
For Wine a library (or a patch) exists to manage that but it is not include in
the "official" release.
If we want to work with this USB port, we have to compile a personal version of
Wine, but this is not really obvious for every body.

Why this feature is not include in the release ?

Do you plan an official release with USB ?

Regards

PS Apologies for poor my english but I am french

Because the USB support patches didn't integrate properly with the current
wine infrastructure. There was/is someone working on it though, and after the
release of wine 1.2 (probably this week), patches to implement USB support will
be accepted again. Patches to do this were not accepted before the release of
wine 1.2, because USB support would never be ready before the actual release.

cledesol <wineforum-user at winehq.org> wrote:
>Sent: Jul 14, 2010 12:54 PM
>To: wine-users at winehq.org
>Subject: [Wine] For what reason the "official" Wine does not
support USB ?
>
>Hello
>
>A lot of windows application need access to an USB port.
Hmmm.  Office 2007 and most games do not.  That is the focus of this project at
this time.
>For Wine a library (or a patch) exists to manage that but it is not included
in
>the "official" release.
The patch was rejected for many reasons.  It will be accepted when it is ready
and properly written.
>If we want to work with this USB port, we have to compile a personal version
of Wine,
>but this is not really obvious for every body.
There is/was a Sticky on this on the first page of the forum.  It even included
the bug report with the patch-in-progress.
>
>Why this feature is not include in the release ?
Because it was not ready and complete.
>
>Do you plan an official release with USB ?
>
When it is ready.  A timeline cannot be placed on this.  There are many reasons
that code is rejected for inclusion to the project.  Improper formatting, bad
coding practices and incomplete implementation are a few.  The latest version of
the patch is what we consider a 'hack' and was far from completely
implementing how USB devices work with Windows.  The fact that Wine does not
support USB hardware drivers is also being looked into.  Again, there is no
timeline when this has to be incorporated into Wine.
>Regards
>
>PS Apologies for poor my english but I am french
>
Your English is not bad, now my French is.  Makes watching the Tour de France in
French very interesting.

On Wed, Jul 14, 2010 at 2:54 PM, cledesol <wineforum-user at winehq.org>
wrote:
> Hello
>
> A lot of windows application need access to an USB port.
> For Wine a library (or a patch) exists to manage that but it is not include
> in the "official" release.
> If we want to work with this USB port, we have to compile a personal
> version of Wine, but this is not really obvious for every body.
>
> Why this feature is not include in the release ?
>
> Do you plan an official release with USB ?
>
> Regards
>
> PS Apologies for poor my english but I am french
>
>
>
> No need to apologize for your English. You actually do better than some
people I've talked to over the years. And don't worry about being
French,
we're an inclusive group. <joke>

Jim
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Marc Chamberlin wrote:
> 
> Version 1.1.50_1.2rc7-1.1-i586 of Wine broke my ability to use the USB 
> port with a Western Digital Passport disk drive. That prevents me from 
> using the PortableApps tools under Wine on Linux.  It also caused file 
> corruption on my Passport drive and required a significant amount of 
> effort for me to recover. So DO NOT use this version with USB disk drives!!
> 
> Sure would have been nice if a README or Release Notes had been included 
> with my distro's package (openSuSE11.2) giving me a heads up on this
USB
> issue, especially since it is apparently a known issue to the developers!
> 
> I downgraded Wine back to version 1.1.28-2.3-i586 which does work, but I 
> am back to living with some font problems in Thunderbird that I was 
> hoping the upgrade would fix.. Guess I will live with that for awhile 
> longer...
> 
> Marc..
Please run a regression test and file a bug. 
http://wiki.winehq.org/RegressionTesting

I don't know where you got the idea that this was a "known issue."
AFAIK, you're the first person to report it.

Sven wrote:
> Because the USB support patches didn't integrate properly with the
current wine infrastructure. There was/is someone working on it though, and
after the release of wine 1.2 (probably this week), patches to implement USB
support will be accepted again. Patches to do this were not accepted before the
release of wine 1.2, because USB support would never be ready before the actual
release.

Thanks to sven and James for the explanations

My need about Wine and USB is for a GPS update software (Navigon Fresh).
They do not plan to port it to Linux.
The software run with Wine but cannot acces to the GPS connected to an USB port.

I will try to compile myself and test what's hapen ....

Regards

Martin Gregorie <martin at gregorie.org> wrote:
>Sent: Jul 15, 2010 4:56 AM
>To: wine-users at winehq.org
>Subject: Re: [Wine] For what reason the "official" Wine does not
support USB ?
>
>On Thu, 2010-07-15 at 06:21 +0200, Gert van den Berg wrote:
>> On Thu, Jul 15, 2010 at 05:28, Marc Chamberlin <marc at
marcchamberlin.com> wrote:
>> > Version 1.1.50_1.2rc7-1.1-i586 of Wine broke my ability to use the
USB port
>> > with a Western Digital Passport disk drive. That prevents me from
using the
>> > PortableApps tools under Wine on Linux.  It also caused file
corruption on
>> > my Passport drive and required a significant amount of effort for
me to
>> > recover. So DO NOT use this version with USB disk drives!!
>> >
>> That's a completely different issue.... Everyone thougfht this is
>> about using USB drivers under Wine...
>> 
>How is your Passport drive formatted - ext2/3 or vfat?
>
>The default for USB drives is vfat, i.e. FAT-32.
>
The WD Passport drive IS formated as VFAT32 out of the box and if you want to
use their security software, it has to remain so.

The problem is that their security software IS NOT supported under Linux. 
Don't know if Wine will correct this.  I still have to fix my Thinkpad's
installation of Fedora.  I cannot get X to start on it (and the installation
screens are really funky as well.)

Contact me OFF LIST if you want to assist with an FC12 installation.

James McKenzie

Marc Chamberlin <marc at marcchamberlin.com>
wrote:
>Version 1.1.50_1.2rc7-1.1-i586 of Wine broke my ability to use the USB 
>port with a Western Digital Passport disk drive. That prevents me from 
>using the PortableApps tools under Wine on Linux.  It also caused file 
>corruption on my Passport drive and required a significant amount of 
>effort for me to recover. So DO NOT use this version with USB disk drives!!
>
This has got to be a Linux issue.  I use a Passport drive on my Mac without
issue.

Can you look at what Linux does with the drive.  Also, and as far as I know,
there is no security software for Linux.  If you enabled the security features
of the drive in Windows, the drive should be invisible to Linux.
>Sure would have been nice if a README or Release Notes had been included 
>with my distro's package (openSuSE11.2) giving me a heads up on this USB
>issue, especially since it is apparently a known issue to the developers!
>
Known issue to which developers?  Maybe OpenSUSE, but certainly not Wine's
as you are the first person to describe this problem.  Again, a Linux issue is
not a Wine issue.
 
>I downgraded Wine back to version 1.1.28-2.3-i586 which does work, but I 
>am back to living with some font problems in Thunderbird that I was 
>hoping the upgrade would fix.. Guess I will live with that for awhile 
>longer...
That is a long way back (.50 versus .28).  Do you know when this actually
'broke'?

A regression test is in order.  However, I normally would recommend a backup,
but these external devices are usually purposed for this.

James McKenzie

Martin Gregorie <martin at gregorie.org> wrote:
>
>On Thu, 2010-07-15 at 07:34 -0700, James Mckenzie wrote:
>> This has got to be a Linux issue.  I use a Passport drive on my Mac
>> without issue.  
>> 
>
>Both 'just work' and, because I'm not using vfat, the file
permissions
>don't get messed up and the file ownership isn't lost.
>
This is how it should be.  Security software should also be
'transparent', but it isn't.  Hopefully, WD will release a Linux
version (if they have not already done so) of the software that locks their
Passport drives.  This is a well-known security problem with removable devices
(USB flash/hard drives.)  The do have software for the Mac that works with both
Intel and PowerPC systems.  Maybe a few Linux users 'prodding' them to
produce a Linux version might be enough to get them to do so.

However, the problem is not that Linux/UNIX/Wine does not support hard drives
and flash drives, it is the 'other' USB devices, like pluggable phones
(I had a Samsung one and I could NEVER acces the internal storage on it.) 
Things like this are keeping folks from fully adopting Linux/Wine as an
alternative to Windows (not a replacement, we have a long way to go before that
can be considered) and to see migrations from Windows to Linux.

We do have folks working, independent of each other, to create USB solution(s). 
A concentrated effort could bring USB devices as another supported feature to
Wine without the driver mess that Windows creates.

Just a thought.

James McKenzie
>  
>Martin
>
>
>

>  As far as where I got the idea that this was a "known issue", I
inferred it from the previous replies in this thread by Sven and Jame Mckenzie.
If you read their responses it sure sounds like this issue about USB support was
known to them...
> 
You misunderstood the original question in this thread. That was about the
unofficial patch for support of USB devices (http://wiki.winehq.org/USB). That
patch has never been part of official Wine, and is completely unrelated to your
problem. If an older version of Wine works, and the latest doesn't,
that's a regression, and you should file a bug.

On 7/15/2010 9:48 AM, John Drescher wrote:
>> James -  No I am not using any of the security software that came with
the
>> Passport. In fact I removed all of it. I strictly use the drive to run
the
>> various PortableApps (www.portableapps.com) so as to have a set of
common
>> tools/data as I switch between Windows and Linux systems.
>>
> Then the drive should be directly mountable under linux.
>
> John
>
John - Yes, the drive mounts fine initially. I use Fat32 format since I 
want to use the drive both under Windoz and Linux. It was not until I 
started using wine to run my PortableApps that I start having problems 
with it. If I simply mount the drive under Linux, I can use other Linux 
utilities with it just fine. But once I tried to use Wine - rc7 to run 
the apps on it, then the usage of the drive broke and it started to act 
as if it was a read-only device, with file corruption problems occurring..

     Marc..

On 7/15/2010 10:14 AM, Gert van den Berg wrote:
> On Thu, Jul 15, 2010 at 19:02, Marc Chamberlin<marc at
marcchamberlin.com>  wrote:
>> James - ? Thanks for your replies... ?  I have not had any USB issues
either,
>> with using my Passport under Linux/Wine until I upgraded to rc7. And
then I
>> started experience all sorts of problems... Typically, the drive would
mount
>> OK as far as Linux was concerned, then I would use wine to launch to
>> PortableApps control application. That much would "appear" to
work fine, but
>> then I would launch the PortableApps version of Thunderbird, Firefox or
some
>> other app and soon discover that the Passport drive was no longer
writable
>> and act as if it had been mounted somehow as a read-only device. (Not
true,
>> it was originally mounted as read/write) That in turn, of course, lead
to
>> these apps crashing and locking up the drive. I would have to kill the
>> processes at that point, and it was at this point I discovered that the
>> Passport file system had become corrupted. Dropping back to an earlier
>> version of wine has resolved this and my Passport is again working
fine.
>> Therefore I must disagree with you as the evidence seems to strongly
>> indicate this is a wine issue and not a Linux one...
> Is the drive still actually writable under Linux directly?
>
> I have a 80GB (internal IDE) drive (with an ext3 partition) that
> sometimes stop being writeable (from native applications) until I
> reboot... (It seem to not happen since I upgraded to a new version of
> Ubuntu)
>
> The corruption also should not be possible to be done by Wine..
> (nothing run as a non-root user should be able to corrupt a
> filesystem...)
>
> It might be that the way files are handled under Win changed between
> the two version that might trigger a bug elsewhere? Finding which
> change caused this is where a regression test would be handy... (For
> something that takes long to test like this issue apparently it is
> quite frustrating...)
>
> Gert
>
Thanks Gert for your thoughts! No, once the drive changed states to 
being read-only, after running my wine apps, the only recourse I have to 
getting it going again is to reboot. I cannot dismount the drive as 
Linux continues to believe some process is using it, even though I have 
killed all the PortableApps processes and stopped the wine server 
itself. It is interesting to note that whenever I get into trouble with 
using the Passport drive,  even the Linux system itself cannot dismount 
the drive during its shutdown process. Which is really surprising since 
dismounting all drives is one of the last things that happens, after all 
other system and user processes have been terminated!

    Marc..

> Thanks Gert for your thoughts! No, once the drive changed states to being
> read-only, after running my wine apps, the only recourse I have to getting
> it going again is to reboot. I cannot dismount the drive as Linux continues
> to believe some process is using it, even though I have killed all the
> PortableApps processes and stopped the wine server itself. It is
interesting
> to note that whenever I get into trouble with using the Passport drive,
> ?even the Linux system itself cannot dismount the drive during its shutdown
> process. Which is really surprising since dismounting all drives is one of
> the last things that happens, after all other system and user processes
have
> been terminated!
>
Look at your dmesg output. To me this sounds like a HW failure or a kernel bug.\

John

John Drescher wrote:
> 
> > Thanks Gert for your thoughts! No, once the drive changed states to
being
> > read-only, after running my wine apps, the only recourse I have to
getting
> > it going again is to reboot. I cannot dismount the drive as Linux
continues
> > to believe some process is using it, even though I have killed all the
> > PortableApps processes and stopped the wine server itself. It is
interesting
> > to note that whenever I get into trouble with using the Passport
drive,
> > ?even the Linux system itself cannot dismount the drive during its
shutdown
> > process. Which is really surprising since dismounting all drives is
one of
> > the last things that happens, after all other system and user
processes have
> > been terminated!
> > 
> > 
> 
> Look at your dmesg output. To me this sounds like a HW failure or a kernel
bug.\
> 
Yes, this goes way beyond anything Wine can do. As Gert said, a change to Wine
may have triggered a bug somewhere else.

James Mckenzie wrote:
> cledesol <wineforum-user at winehq.org> wrote:
> 
> > My need about Wine and USB is for a GPS update software (Navigon
Fresh).
> > They do not plan to port it to Linux.
> > The software run with Wine but cannot acces to the GPS connected to an
USB port.
> > 
> > 
> Folks have been able to connect Garmin GPS devices to Linux and they appear
as a removable storage device.  Have you examined your system to see if a new
device appears when the GPS device is plugged in?
> 
> James McKenzie

Yes James, when I connect my GPS to an USB port I can see it and navigate thru
its files hierarchy.
But the GPS is always not seen by the application "Navigon Fresh"
running with Wine

On Thu, Jul 15, 2010 at 20:10, Marc Chamberlin <marc at
marcchamberlin.com> wrote:
> Thanks Gert for your thoughts! No, once the drive changed states to being
> read-only, after running my wine apps, the only recourse I have to getting
> it going again is to reboot. I cannot dismount the drive as Linux continues
> to believe some process is using it, even though I have killed all the
> PortableApps processes and stopped the wine server itself. It is
interesting
losf should show you what else might be using it... (possibly some
indexing crap...)

umount -l almost always gets the job done... (umount -f might work as well...)

You can try getting it read-write again by doing a "mount -O
remount,rw"...

Gert

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