xboard and wine

[mathmoi]

Hi everyone, long time no see!

I was wondering if any of you had success running windows engines in xboard through WINE?

I'm trying to do exactly that and it seems every engine I try is playing fine, but the process does not close when xboard close.

Is this a known problem?

[mathmoi]

I've done some search in this forum and it seems lots of peoples uses engines as I'm trying under Linux : xboard -> polyglot -> wine or xboard -> wine.

However I get the same problem with two differents engines I tried (gibbon and monarch). Their process keeps running even after xboard is closed.

Is this a problem with theses particular engines? Honestly, I don't know what to test next.

[Michel]

However I get the same problem with two differents engines I tried (gibbon and monarch). Their process keeps running even after xboard is closed.

Windows engines run mostly transparently under Linux. E.g.

xboard -fcp ./rybka.exe -fUCI

should work as expected if ./rybka.exe exists.

I suspect there is a problem with the engines you use. You should first look at the log file
generated by xboard (xboard -debug ....). Perhaps that gives a clue.

[Guenther]

I've done some search in this forum and it seems lots of peoples uses engines as I'm trying under Linux : xboard -> polyglot -> wine or xboard -> wine.

However I get the same problem with two differents engines I tried (gibbon and monarch). Their process keeps running even after xboard is closed.

Is this a problem with theses particular engines? Honestly, I don't know what to test next.

I don't use Linux and Wine currently, but at least I can confirm that there are
dozens of engines out which don't close correctly and I need to kill their
processes automatically (I use kill commands in a batch file).
Gibbon is in my list of those and I think I remember problems with some
Monarch versions too, but I haven't used it for a while.
From hearsaying I heard good things about Microwine...
I hope this was of any help.

Guenther

[mathmoi]

Hi Guenther,

Thanks for theses info, maybe I was just unlucky and choosed two engines that are having problems with wine.

You mentioned that you kill them automatically, how do you do this. I'm running some kinds of tournaments with xboard and I'd need a way to kill them when xboard is closed.

[jshriver]

I've done this before in a different way. I dont run Winboard under wine. Instead I recommend using xboard natively under linux, then run the engines under wine.

xboard -size small -fcp "wine ./crafty.exe" -scp "wine ./rybka.exe"

Assuming both crafty and rybka are in the current directory else

"wine /mnt/windows/Program\ Files/crafty/crafty.exe" or however you have it on your system.

Have even done this with UCI engines using an UCI->Xboard translation under wine

Good luck.
-Josh

[Michel]

xboard -size small -fcp "wine ./crafty.exe" -scp "wine ./rybka.exe"

Specifying "wine" is superfluous. On modern linux systems you can just use ./crafty.exe.

[Guenther]

Hi Guenther,

Thanks for theses info, maybe I was just unlucky and choosed two engines that are having problems with wine.

You mentioned that you kill them automatically, how do you do this. I'm running some kinds of tournaments with xboard and I'd need a way to kill them when xboard is closed.

Hi Mathieu

Well I can feed any command to the tourney manager I use(PSWBTM) after
each executed game and here I just feed batch files if needed for
certain missbehaving programs. The batch files call up a free command
line utility named PV and this does a forced kill for each process which I
found to be hanging once in my tests even after Polyglot tried to end it already.
I have a list containing all programs which were at least hanging once
during the last years.
All the above I only tested under Windows. I guess it should also work under Wine,
but I would be surprised if there shouldn't be a solution with a bash script doing the same.

Guenther

[Michel]

I tried Monarch and it seemed to behave correctly

xboard -debug -fcp "./Monarch\(v1.7\).exe" -fUCI -mg 1 -xponder

This is with polyglot 1.4.55b.

Pondering did not seem to work. I have not figured out if this is a polyglot or a Monarch bug.

[krazyken]

I've seen this before, with some versions of xboard, particularly 4.3.14. Which are version are you using? I'm currently using 4.3.16 without the issue anymore.