Written by &name-john-sheets; &email-john-sheets; Wine is a very complicated piece of software with many ways to adjust how it runs. With very few exceptions, you can activate the same set of features through the configuration file as you can with command-line parameters. In this chapter, we'll briefly discuss these parameters, and match them up with their corresponding configuration variables. You can invoke the wine --help command to get a listing of all Wine's command-line parameters: Usage: ./wine [options] program_name [arguments] Options: --debugmsg name Turn debugging-messages on or off --dll name Enable or disable built-in DLLs --dosver x.xx DOS version to imitate (e.g. 6.22) Only valid with --winver win31 --help,-h Show this help message --managed Allow the window manager to manage created windows --version,-v Display the Wine version --winver Version to imitate (win95,nt40,win31,nt2k,win98,nt351,win30,win20) You can specify as many options as you want, if any. Typically, you will want to have your configuration file set up with a sensible set of defaults; in this case, you can run wine without explicitly listing any options. In rare cases, you might want to override certain parameters on the command line. After the options, you should put the name of the file you want wine to execute. If the executable is in the Path parameter in the configuration file, you can simply give the executable file name. However, if the executable is not in Path, you must give the full path to the executable (in Windows format, not UNIX format!). For example, given a Path of the following: [wine] "Path"="c:\windows;c:\windows\system;e:\;e:\test;f:\" You could run the file c:\windows\system\foo.exe with: $ wine foo.exe However, you would have to run the file c:\myapps\foo.exe with this command: $ wine c:\myapps\foo.exe Finally, if you want to pass any parameters to your windows application, you can list them at the end, just after the executable name. Thus, to run the imaginary foo.exe Windows application with its /advanced mode parameter, while invoking Wine in --managed mode, you would do something like this: $ wine --managed foo.exe /advanced In other words, options that affect Wine should come before the Windows program name, while options that affect the Windows program should come after it. Wine isn't perfect, and many Windows applications still don't run without bugs under Wine (but then, many of them don't run without bugs under native Windows either!). To make it easier for people to track down the causes behind each bug, Wine provides a number of debug channels that you can tap into. Each debug channel, when activated, will trigger logging messages to be displayed to the console where you invoked wine. From there you can redirect the messages to a file and examine it at your leisure. But be forewarned! Some debug channels can generate incredible volumes of log messages. Among the most prolific offenders are relay which spits out a log message every time a win32 function is called, win which tracks windows message passing, and of course all which is an alias for every single debug channel that exists. For a complex application, your debug logs can easily top 1 MB and higher. A relay trace can often generate more than 10 MB of log messages, depending on how long you run the application. Logging does slow down Wine quite a bit, so don't use --debugmsg unless you really do want log files. Within each debug channel, you can further specify a message class, to filter out the different severities of errors. The four message classes are: trace fixme warn err . To turn on a debug channel, use the form class+channel. To turn it off, use class-channel. To list more than one channel in the same --debugmsg option, separate them with commas. For example, to request warn class messages in the heap debug channel, you could invoke wine like this: $ wine --debugmsg warn+heap program_name If you leave off the message class, wine will display messages from all four classes for that channel: $ wine --debugmsg +heap program_name If you wanted to see log messages for everything except the relay channel, you might do something like this: $ wine --debugmsg +all,-relay program_name Here is a master list of all the debug channels and classes in Wine. More channels might be added to (or subtracted from) later versions. all accel advapi animate aspi atom avifile bitblt bitmap caret cdrom class clipboard clipping combo comboex comm commctrl commdlg console crtdll cursor datetime dc ddeml ddraw debug debugstr delayhlp dialog dinput dll dosfs dosmem dplay driver dsound edit elfdll enhmetafile event exec file fixup font gdi global graphics header heap hook hotkey icmp icon imagehlp imagelist imm int int10 int16 int17 int19 int21 int31 io ipaddress joystick key keyboard ldt listbox listview local mci mcianim mciavi mcicda mcimidi mciwave mdi menu message metafile midi mmaux mmio mmsys mmtime module monthcal mpr msacm msg msvideo nativefont nonclient ntdll odbc ole opengl pager palette pidl print process profile progress prop propsheet psapi psdrv ras rebar reg region relay resource richedit scroll segment seh selector sendmsg server setupapi setupx shell snoop sound static statusbar storage stress string syscolor system tab tape tapi task text thread thunk timer toolbar toolhelp tooltips trackbar treeview ttydrv tweak typelib updown ver virtual vxd wave win win16drv win32 wing wininet winsock winspool wnet x11 x11drv For more details about debug channels, check out the The Wine Developer's Guide.