* Problems with Linux installation

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Mark1834
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Problems with Linux installation

Post by Mark1834 »

I have an old basic system (AMD A6/4 GB RAM, 250 GB SATA disk) dedicated to Ubuntu, as there are some things that are either easier in Linux or even not possible in Windows, and I learnt many years ago that dual-booting is riddled with problems.

I have just done a clean install of Ubuntu 20.04, so it was a good opportunity to test FH under Wine. I've never used emulators before, so could I set it up from the provided instructions?

Wine installed easily enough, and I tried installing FH from the version 6 CD, which was simple to do as it has just a single exe file (presumably a self-extracting zip file). The installation didn't go smoothly, as it hung when it got to the part on PDF support. I re-ran it, and second time around went to completion, but with the attached error messages in the terminal window.

Checking the supplied demo tree, basic operation seemed fine, but reports had only the images and no text. However, they printed correctly.

If somebody is going to the trouble of using an emulator, they are probably far more experienced than I am in sorting out Linux problems, but I thought it worth pointing out that it is a far from simple process, even for somebody with a lot of computing experience over the years. Does it need a bit more guidance on the basic installation process?
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Re: Problems with Linux installation

Post by LornaCraig »

reports had only the images and no text. However, they printed correctly.
Did you see this section in the KB how_to:family_historian_v6_on_crossover_wine#program_configuration|> Program Configuration
To ensure ƒh Reports display text correctly, set ƒh Tools > Preferences > General > Advanced > Emulator Compatibility Mode.
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Re: Problems with Linux installation

Post by tatewise »

Elsewhere in how_to:family_historian_v6_on_crossover_wine|> Family Historian V6 & Ancestral Sources V5 on Crossover, PlayOnLinux/Mac & Wine under Program Installation it says to disable Create a desktop icon and disable Launch Family Historian that you left ticked in your screenshot and can cause problems.

Later under Reported Problems the issues with the Family Historian PDF (novaPDF printer) are mentioned.
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Re: Problems with Linux installation

Post by mjashby »

@Mark1834,

You can't avoid the NovaPDF installation because it's a built-in part of the Family Historian Installer, but as already mentioned it's useless in Wine/Linux because Wine cannot install usable Windows Driver packages. You can safely uninstall the NovaPDF package without affecting Family Historian using the Wine Add/Remove GUI app which, if you can't find it in Ubuntu's 'menus', you should be able to launch using the Terminal Command: wine uninstaller (see image below).- The NovaPDF installation won't do any harm, but it's untidy leaving it installed as it can only cause confusion/waste a little disk space.

For Linux, you need to install the CUPS PDF Printer package using the Ubuntu Package Manager - https://packages.ubuntu.com/search?keywords=cups-pdf
Once the PDF Printer has been created using CUPS, it should be available for selection as a Printer in the Family Historian.

Hope that helps as I'm still only exploring various Linux systems in spare time and my primary system is MacOS.

By the way, there is no need to use the command line to install Windows apps on Wine. Try navigating to the location of the installer and double-click the installation file, or right-click and select "Open with Wine Windows Program Loader"

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Re: Problems with Linux installation

Post by Mark1834 »

Apologies folks, that was not the clearest post I have ever written, as I included a misleading screen grab and unnecessarily discussed a known issue with an easy workaround. It was actually posted in the recent thread on updating the knowledge base https://www.fhug.org.uk/forum/viewtopic ... 32&t=17880, but somebody seems to have taken it on themselves to move my posting into a new thread without explanation or comment so it also lost its context (unless of course I had a complete brain fade this morning, and I don't think that was the case!).

My objective was not to install FH on Ubuntu per-se - if you also use Windows, there is no point. I wanted to take the opportunity of having a clean Ubuntu 20.04 install to test the installation and see how a casual, non-expert, Ubuntu user like me who has never used an emulator before got on. I might spot issues that the expert wouldn't even regard as a problem...

To recap - I started with a clean install of Ubuntu 20.04, fully updated and upgraded, and installed Wine from the Ubuntu repository. I configured it as per advice to Windows 7, and installed FH via the self-extracting zip file on the Version 6 installation CD. Everything seemed to go smoothly until it got to the PDF installer, when it froze at the following screen.
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I aborted the terminal process with <ctrl>c, and the Setup window disappeared. FH appeared to load and run ok (within the stated limitations of Linux), and I confirmed that both FH and NovaPDF were installed.

Starting again from a fresh installation, I tried it again, but this time with Wine set to Windows 10 rather than Windows 7. This time, the installation ran through to completion (it was on the PDF setup page for only a fraction of a second), with a slightly different set of stated errors.
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FH appeared to run ok, as before, and this time, NovaPDF had not been installed
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My takeaway from this is that I do not think the current Knowledge Base page has enough on the basic Wine installation process to make a casual user feel comfortable. If I were intending to use FH under Ubuntu for real, I would need reassuring that those error messages were not going to cause trouble in the future before investing the considerable amount of effort required to tweak the installation to make it (almost) work properly.
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Re: Problems with Linux installation

Post by Valkrider »

@Mark

The original topic that you posted on was asking for successful installations of FH on what versions of Linux. Your post was saying there were problems that you ran into installing on Ubuntu and was not contributing to the thread subject. It appeared that your post was a support request for how to install on Linux that is why it was split off from the original post.

The Knowledgebase is currently being updated to a new platform. If you have specific suggestions as to how the current KB article can be improved we would like to have them so that they can be included in the new KB.
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Re: Problems with Linux installation

Post by Mark1834 »

Colin, it wasn’t well phrased, but I think it was highly relevant. I don’t know whether an installation that hangs if the instructions are followed or completes with a screenful of error messages if they are modified is successful or not.

It’s probably a moot point, as I suspect that only an advanced Linux user would try to run FH anyway, and they are probably comfortable dealing with such situations. I’ll happily comment on the draft KB though - I’ll send it through in the next day or so.
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Re: Problems with Linux installation

Post by mjashby »

Mark,

One of the problems with linux installations is that the process of installing Wine is similar but not identical across all distributions and there is also limited consistency on which version of Wine is delivered in which Linux distribution. IMHO this is one of the reasons that will continue to prevent 'Linux' from providing any serious challenge to the Windows Desktop experience (the multiplicity of user choices versus a 'common' strand).

I'm also looking the documentation for Colin, but one question that immediately arises is how far to go with explaining and keeping non-Windows Operating System processes up to date in a Knowledge Base that is principally about Family Historian rather than how to manage installation in a wide variety of Operating Systems; e.g. in some Linux distributions Wine is immediately available, from the provided repositories, in some distributions the 'correct' repositories have to be 'activated' by the User before Wine can be installed; and in others, e.g. Fedora, initially installing Wine is an entirely Command Line process.

Haven't tried in Ubuntu, but basic test installations in Linux Mint, which is Ubuntu-based, and Manjaro (Arch Linux-based) was as straightforward as it is in Windows and neither presented the errors you experienced. I will try with Ubuntu when I get a chance, just for interest.

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Re: Problems with Linux installation

Post by Mark1834 »

Mervyn,

You are certainly right about Wine variability! This was a good time to experiment, so I repeated the exercise with Ubuntu 18.04. This installs Wine 3 by default, and I went with this rather than jumping through hoops to force Wine 5. Wine 3 set to either Win 7 or Win 10 behaved similarly to Wine 5 set to Win 10 - i.e. installation went to completion without installing NovaPDF, but gave similar errors to those shown above. I also tried Mint 20 Cinnamon, and for me it behaved exactly as Ubuntu 20.04.

Another variability - FH installed with Wine 3 prompts that an update is available when first run (as it does in Windows). FH installed with Wine 5 does not!!!!

I think that answers the question you posed regarding the KB - Wine is clearly not yet sufficiently stable to be suitable for non-experts, so a basic guide for the casual user would not be appropriate.

To answer Colin's original question - successful Linux installations that I would feel comfortable trusting my valuable family history database to - in my experience as a reasonably IT-literate but not Linux expert, none so far.....

It will probably be the end of the week before I restore my data and applications, so happy to try any further experiments until then.
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Re: Problems with Linux installation

Post by Mark1834 »

PS - to test my current setup (Mint), I tried installing the free demo version of RootsMagic under Wine. It installed fine, with only a couple of minor warning messages, and appears to run my basic database copy ok (but very superficial testing only).
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Re: Problems with Linux installation

Post by tatewise »

You could report that scenario to Calico Pie and remind them of their stated commitment to Crossover/Wine.
In reply to a support posting by me in March 2014 they said:
We're keen that FH should run well under Crossover/Wine and it is something that we plan to look into as soon as we can make time to do so. We're confident that we can get to the bottom of the problems there have been, but unfortunately when we looked into it recently, we found that it was taking longer to investigate than we could afford at that time. However, we will definitely revisit this as soon as we can.
As far as I can recall the only significant enhancement has been the Tools > Preferences > General > Advanced > Emulator Compatibility Mode tick option that fixes Reports.
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Re: Problems with Linux installation

Post by Mark1834 »

The release notes for FH 6.2.6 (i.e. the latest substantive revision) do at least recognise that there is more to do for Wine/Crossover compatibility, so hopefully V7 will take us further in that direction.....

A couple of other hopefully relevant observations:

I tried the installation on Fedora 32/Wine 5, just in case it was a Debian issue I was seeing, but behaviour was broadly similar - i.e. hangs on PDF setup when set to W7, but completes without installing NovaPDF when set to W10, both showing error messages in the terminal window.

I also tried the Wine installation of FH directly from the GUI, as suggested by Mervyn. That goes to completion without any apparent issues when Wine is set to W10, so you do not see the error messages displayed when working from the command line in the terminal.
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Re: Problems with Linux installation

Post by mjashby »

Mark (and anyone else interested),

I've re-tried the installation process for Wine and Family Historian in both Ubuntu 20.04 and OpenSUSE (Tumbleweed) and yes, the initial installation of FH did leave a frozen on screen image at the end of the installation process during/after the installation of novaPDF, but not during/after the actual installation of Family Historian, so I suspect the issue is something connected to the novaPDF installation which, of course, serves no useful purpose in Linux (or MacOS), but which Calico Pie probably can't really be expected to change when it works as intended in Windows. Family Historian itself ran successfully even with those on-screen elements left behind in the background and, for me, novaPDF also appeared in Wine's 'Uninstaller' screen as a fully installed program (which I uninstalled). However, the only way I could get rid of the 'frozen' novaPDF installation screen window was to reboot the OS - a little disturbing when not expected, but something I tend to do anyway after any software installation. Interestingly, running the FH 6.2.7 update didn't reproduce the problem, even though the update repeats the novaPDF installation process.

Both FH and and Ancestral Sources (x64) were installed in the default 64-bit prefix without any problems, but installing dotNet Framework 3.5 SP1 was a very lengthy process which changed the prefix profile from Windows 7 to Windows XP, which seems to be a requirement (currently) for completing a successful installation of 64-bit Frameworks in Wine. I'm wondering if Nick Walker would be prepared to consider compiling the software so that it could run using 'Mono' which would make life much easier for Wine User's on both Linux and MacOS. - It already installs under Mono and can be launched, but brings up some compatibility errors in operation.

So far, the OpenSUSE installations (with Wine 5.12) seem to run very smoothly, much better than on MacOS under Crossover, and at least as fast as a native install in a Windows Virtual Machine. Have also tested Mike Tate's Ancestral Sources Launcher plugin and that worked flawlessly, but time is needed to take feature testing any further.

I do intend to perform another test install using Mint 20.04, when I get a chance, and will see what happens there, so will try to grab some screenshots of the process/results having already been though the process a couple of times.

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Re: Problems with Linux installation

Post by Mark1834 »

Mervyn,

I'm sure you are correct in thinking it is the NovaPDF install that is hanging, rather than the core FH one. I was able to kill the frozen installation screen by ending the "novaink7.exe" process in the Fedora System Monitor (very similar to and presumably modelled on Window's Task Manager).

I suspect that the errors that show when installing from the terminal are also present when installing from the GUI, just not displayed. I tried installing NovaPDF on its own as a control test, but it wouldn't let me install unless I also installed the .NET framework. I wonder if that is part of the problem (but that was NovaPDF 10, not the V7 that is included in FH).

The only relevant Linux forum postings I could find said installing from the command line was the only way to see Wine errors. Calico Pie must see the same thing if they are working on improving Wine compatibility, so hopefully they can delve into the plumbing in a bit more detail to ascertain exactly what is going on. If I were intending to run FH within Wine for real, I think these unexplained errors would make me a little nervous.
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Re: Problems with Linux installation

Post by tatewise »

If any of you guys want Calico Pie to improve matters then I recommend you raise support tickets with them, remind them of their commitment to Crossover/Wine, and provide them with specific evidence of the problems you have encountered.
I doubt if they are experimenting with as many flavours of Linux and Wine as you are, so the feedback should help them.
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Re: Problems with Linux installation

Post by Mark1834 »

I’d be inclined to wait until V7 appears and give that a thorough test. Hopefully CP at least skim-read this forum to pick up programming issues, so I will assume they are familiar with the general issues. If they have made improvements, it would be good idea to invite Linux/Mac users to be beta testers.
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Re: Problems with Linux installation

Post by tatewise »

I would not assume or hope for anything.
Post a support ticket with references to appropriate Forum threads and see what CP say.
If they are in the process of making improvements they might tell you.
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