Recreating missing WINE menu entries and Desktop Configuration Files in Lubuntu 20.10

I use a few Windows applications I installed via WINE in my user account on my family’s desktop machine running Lubuntu 20.10 (LXQt Desktop Environment). A few days ago I logged in and found that the icons for the Windows applications had disappeared from my Desktop, and the ‘Wine’ entry in the LXQt applications menu had also disappeared. This was rather bizarre and I still have no idea why it happened. However, the directories for each WINEPREFIX were still present so I set about recreating the missing menu entries and Desktop Configuration Files. I reinstalled one of the Windows applications, and its icon reappeared on my Desktop but the ‘Wine’ entry in the LXQt applications menu did not reappear. I had to delve into WINE menu structures to fix everything.

Three key directories are involved in defining the ‘Wine’ menu entries:

~/.config/menus/applications-merged/

~/.local/share/applications/wine/Programs/

~/.local/share/desktop-directories/

The role and contents of these directories are best explained by studying an example of an application in the ‘Wine’ menu. One of the Windows applications I had installed previously via WINE is Visio Professional 5, and I will use it as an example to illustrate how I got everything working again. I had installed the application using a WINEPREFIX of ~/.wine-visio, and the missing icon on my Desktop had been labelled ‘Visio Professional’.

1. I recreated the directory ~/.local/share/applications/wine/Programs/Visio Professional/:

user $ mkdir -p ~/.local/share/applications/wine/Programs/Visio\ Professional

2. I recreated the file ~/.config/menus/applications-merged/wine-Programs-Visio Professional-Visio Professional.menu (chmod 664) containing the following:

<!DOCTYPE Menu PUBLIC "-//freedesktop//DTD Menu 1.0//EN"
"http://www.freedesktop.org/standards/menu-spec/menu-1.0.dtd">
<Menu>
  <Name>Applications</Name>
  <Menu>
    <Name>wine-wine</Name>
    <Directory>wine-wine.directory</Directory>
  <Menu>
    <Name>wine-Programs</Name>
    <Directory>wine-Programs.directory</Directory>
  <Menu>
    <Name>wine-Programs-Visio Professional</Name>
    <Directory>wine-Programs-Visio Professional.directory</Directory>
    <Include>
      <Filename>wine-Programs-Visio Professional-Visio Professional.desktop</Filename>
    </Include>
  </Menu>
  </Menu>
  </Menu>
</Menu>

‘wine-wine‘ corresponds to the ‘Wine’ entry in the top-level LXQt applications menu.

‘wine-Programs‘ corresponds to the second-level menu entry ‘Programs’ (i.e. ‘Wine’ > ‘Programs’).

‘wine-Programs-Visio Professional‘ corresponds to the third-level menu entry ‘Visio Professional’ (i.e. ‘Wine’ > ‘Programs’ > ‘Visio Professional’).

‘wine-Programs-Visio Professional-Visio Professional‘ corresponds to the fourth-level menu entry ‘Visio Professional’ for the application itself (i.e. ‘Wine’ > ‘Programs’ > ‘Visio Professional’ > ‘Visio Professional’).

3. Notice in the above file the syntax for menu directory files corresponding to menu entries. I had to recreate the directory files as follows:

~/.local/share/desktop-directories/wine-wine.directory (chmod 664) containing:

[Desktop Entry]
Type=Directory
Name=Wine
Icon=wine

~/.local/share/desktop-directories/wine-Programs.directory (chmod 664) containing:

[Desktop Entry]
Type=Directory
Name=Programs
Icon=folder

~/.local/share/desktop-directories/wine-Programs-Visio Professional.directory (chmod 664) containing:

[Desktop Entry]
Type=Directory
Name=Visio Professional
Icon=folder

4. I recreated the file ~/.local/share/applications/wine/Programs/Visio Professional/Visio Professional.desktop (chmod 664) containing:

[Desktop Entry]
Name=Visio Professional
Exec=env WINEPREFIX="/home/fitzcarraldo/.wine-visio" wine-stable /home/fitzcarraldo/.wine-visio/drive_c/Program\ Files/Visio/Visio32.EXE
Type=Application
StartupNotify=true
Path=/home/fitzcarraldo/.wine-visio/dosdevices/c:/Program Files/Visio
Comment=Visio Professional
Icon=AAE3_Visio32.0
StartupWMClass=visio32.exe

and I copied the file to ~/Desktop/Visio Professional.desktop (chmod 755). I right-clicked on ~/Desktop/Visio Professional.desktop and ticked ‘Trust this executable’. It is not necessary to do that for .desktop files in ~/.local/share/applications/wine/Programs/ and its sub-directories.

I used the command ‘locate -i visio | grep -i png‘ to find the name of the existing icon file (AAE3_Visio32.0.png) that WINE had created when I originally installed the application. The StartupWMClass variable seems to be the same as the application’s executable file name but all in lower case. I found the Exec and Path entries by examining the existing sub-directories and files in ~/.wine-visio/drive_c/.

The ‘Wine’ menu entry and sub-entries all reappeared correctly after I logged out and back in, and I could again launch the application either by selecting the application from the LXQt application menu or by double-clicking on the application’s icon on my Desktop.

Resulting application menu entry for Windows application Visio Professional 5

The Windows applications are now all usable again, although I wish I knew what caused the problem in the first place.

Anyway the exercise was not a waste of time because I now know how to modify WINE menus. Some Windows application installation programs in WINE result in a menu entry ‘Wine’ > ‘Programs’ > ‘<application>’ > ‘<application>’ whereas others result in a menu entry ‘Wine’ > ‘Programs’ > ‘<application>’, and I now know how to change the menu hierarchy if I want to. For example, I have just now installed the Windows application SumatraPDF to read e-books. The SumatraPDF installation program launched using WINE resulted in a menu entry ‘Wine’ > ‘Programs’ > ‘SumatraPDF’. The resulting file ~/.config/menus/applications-merged/wine-Programs-SumatraPDF.menu contained the following:

<!DOCTYPE Menu PUBLIC "-//freedesktop//DTD Menu 1.0//EN"
"http://www.freedesktop.org/standards/menu-spec/menu-1.0.dtd">
<Menu>
  <Name>Applications</Name>
  <Menu>
    <Name>wine-wine</Name>
    <Directory>wine-wine.directory</Directory>
  <Menu>
    <Name>wine-Programs</Name>
    <Directory>wine-Programs.directory</Directory>
    <Include>
      <Filename>wine-Programs-SumatraPDF.desktop</Filename>
    </Include>
  </Menu>
  </Menu>
</Menu>

Original application menu entry for Windows application SumatraPDF installed via WINE

There was no .directory file for SumatraPDF in ~/.local/share/desktop-directories/ because the menu entry to launch SumatraPDF is under ‘Wine’ > ‘Programs’. If I wanted to change the menu entry to be under ‘Wine’ > ‘Programs’ > ‘SumatraPDF’ I could modify the contents of the file ~/.config/menus/applications-merged/wine-Programs-SumatraPDF.menu, create the file ~/.local/share/desktop-directories/wine-Programs-SumatraPDF.directory, create the directory ~/.local/share/applications/wine/Programs/SumatraPDF/ and move the file ~/.local/share/applications/wine/Programs/SumatraPDF.desktop to ~/.local/share/applications/wine/Programs/SumatraPDF/SumatraPDF.desktop. I decided to do this as an exercise:

user $ mkdir -p ~/.local/share/applications/wine/Programs/SumatraPDF/
$ mv ~/.local/share/applications/wine/Programs/SumatraPDF.desktop ~/.local/share/applications/wine/Programs/SumatraPDF/SumatraPDF.desktop

I edited the file ~/.config/menus/applications-merged/wine-Programs-SumatraPDF.menu so it now contains the following:

<!DOCTYPE Menu PUBLIC "-//freedesktop//DTD Menu 1.0//EN"
"http://www.freedesktop.org/standards/menu-spec/menu-1.0.dtd">
<Menu>
  <Name>Applications</Name>
  <Menu>
    <Name>wine-wine</Name>
    <Directory>wine-wine.directory</Directory>
  <Menu>
    <Name>wine-Programs</Name>
    <Directory>wine-Programs.directory</Directory>
  <Menu>
    <Name>wine-Programs-SumatraPDF</Name>
    <Directory>wine-Programs-SumatraPDF.directory</Directory>
    <Include>
      <Filename>wine-Programs-SumatraPDF-SumatraPDF.desktop</Filename>
    </Include>
  </Menu>
  </Menu>
  </Menu>
</Menu>

I created the file ~/.local/share/desktop-directories/wine-Programs-SumatraPDF.directory containing the following:

[Desktop Entry]
Type=Directory
Name=SumatraPDF
Icon=folder

I logged out and back in, and the application menu entry for SumatraPDF had changed from:

‘Wine’ > ‘Programs’ > ‘SumatraPDF’

where the second-level entry in the ‘Wine’ menu has a folder icon,

to:

‘Wine’ > ‘Programs’ > ‘SumatraPDF’ > ‘SumatraPDF’

where the second-level and third-level entries in the ‘Wine’ menu have folder icons. The other Windows applications in my user account are at the fourth level of the WINE menu, so the Wine menu for SumatraPDF is now consistent with the other Windows applications.

Modified application menu entry for Windows application SumatraPDF installed via WINE

By the way, the Desktop Configuration File ~/Desktop/SumatraPDF.desktop created by WINE contains the following:

[Desktop Entry]
Name=SumatraPDF
Exec=env WINEPREFIX="/home/fitzcarraldo/.wine-sumatra" wine-stable C:\\\\users\\\\fitzcarraldo\\\\Local\\ Settings\\\\Application\\ Data\\\\SumatraPDF\\\\SumatraPDF.exe 
Type=Application
StartupNotify=true
Path=/home/fitzcarraldo/.wine-sumatra/dosdevices/c:/users/fitzcarraldo/Local Settings/Application Data/SumatraPDF
Icon=3EBA_SumatraPDF.0
StartupWMClass=sumatrapdf.exe

and the Desktop Configuration File ~/.local/share/applications/wine/Programs/SumatraPDF.desktop created by WINE contains the following:

[Desktop Entry]
Name=SumatraPDF
Exec=env WINEPREFIX="/home/fitzcarraldo/.wine-sumatra" wine-stable C:\\\\windows\\\\command\\\\start.exe /Unix /home/fitzcarraldo/.wine-sumatra/dosdevices/c:/users/fitzcarraldo/Start\\ Menu/Programs/SumatraPDF.lnk
Type=Application
StartupNotify=true
Path=/home/fitzcarraldo/.wine-sumatra/dosdevices/c:/users/fitzcarraldo/Local Settings/Application Data/SumatraPDF
Icon=3EBA_SumatraPDF.0
StartupWMClass=sumatrapdf.exe

I am not sure why there is a difference in the Exec command in the two files, but that is an investigation for another day.

Addendum (13 March 2021): KDE in Gentoo Linux on my laptops has essentially the same menu structure and files for Windows applications installed via WINE. However, unlike LXQt in Lubuntu 20.10, in addition to the individual .menu file per Windows application KDE has a file (~/.config/menus/applications-kmenuedit.menu) that defines the entire KDE applications menu, not just the Windows applications under ‘Wine’ in the applications menu. To make changes to the menu structure of Windows applications in KDE I therefore have to perform a further step; I have to edit the file ~/.config/menus/applications-kmenuedit.menu, which I have found to be a hassle. The file seems to collect cruft every time a menu entry is created, moved, changed, or deleted. Over time the file can become very large and confusing to read, and it can still contain entries for applications removed years ago. Also, some of the edits I make in the file are not accepted and KDE either reverts the contents or alters the contents in a way I do not want. Therefore I make a copy of the file before editing it, just in case I make a mistake and have to put things back to the way they were.

How to enable a Windows application in WINE to access a Samba share on a NAS (continued)

In a 2016 post ‘How to enable a Windows application in WINE to access a Samba share on a NAS‘ I explained how to mount in Linux a networked SMB shared folder so that a Windows application running via WINE could access the folder as Drive Y: in order to open and save files in it. In that blog post I also listed a couple of Bash scripts to facilitate the mounting and unmounting of the SMB share for the WINEPREFIX used for the Windows application (~/.wine-pdfxve6 in the example I gave for PDF-XChange Editor, Version 6). However, as I have several Windows applications running via WINE on my machines, and I have used a different WINEPREFIX for each of them, I wanted to be able to mount the SMB share for whichever of those applications I happen to be using at the time. Therefore I modified the original Bash scripts as shown below. The Desktop Configuration files (.desktop files) to launch the scripts are essentially the same as in my earlier blog post; I have just removed the references to the specific Windows application. The four modified files are listed below. Obviously change the username, SMB share name and SMB server name to suit your own situation.

1. Bash script ~/mount_bsfnas1_brianfolder_share.sh

#!/bin/bash
mount_share () {
    echo
    echo "Enter your Linux account password below..."
    echo
    sudo ln -s /media/bsfnas1/brianfolder ~/$PREFIX/dosdevices/y:
    sudo mount.cifs //bsfnas1/brianfolder/ -o user=brianfolder,pass=enricocaruso,uid=$(id -u),gid=$(id -g) ~/$PREFIX/dosdevices/y:
}
echo
echo "This will mount the Samba share folder brianfolder on the bsfnas1 machine."
echo
echo
echo "== Select which WINEPREFIX you wish to use =="
echo
ls ~/.wine-* | grep .wine | awk -F'/' '{print NR " " substr($4, 1, length($4)-1)}'
NUMPREFIXES=$(ls ~/.wine-* | grep .wine | wc -l)
echo
read -p "Enter number (q to abort) and press ENTER: " CHOICE
if [ "$CHOICE" != "q" ] && [ "$CHOICE" -gt 0 ] && [ "$CHOICE" -le $NUMPREFIXES ]; then
    PREFIX=$(ls ~/.wine-* | grep .wine | awk -F'/' '{print NR " " substr($4, 1, length($4)-1)}' | grep "$CHOICE " | awk -F' ' '{print $2}')
    echo
    if [ ! -e ~/$PREFIX/dosdevices/y: ]; then
        mount_share
    else
        echo -n "~/$PREFIX/dosdevices/y: already exists. Is it OK to proceed anyway (y/n)? "
        read ANSWER
        if [ $ANSWER = "y" ]; then
            rm ~/$PREFIX/dosdevices/y:
            mount_share
        fi
    fi
    echo
fi
if grep -q "/media/bsfnas1/brianfolder" /proc/mounts; then
    echo "Samba share //bsfnas1/brianfolder is mounted for WINEPREFIX ~/$PREFIX ."
else
    echo "Samba share //bsfnas1/brianfolder is not mounted."
fi
echo
echo "You may now close this window."
read ANSWER
exit

2. Bash script ~/umount_bsfnas1_brianfolder_share.sh

#!/bin/bash
echo
echo "This will unmount the Samba share folder brianfolder on the bsfnas1 machine."
echo
echo "Enter your Linux account password below..."
echo
sudo umount ~/.wine-*/dosdevices/y: 2>/dev/null
echo
if grep -q "/media/bsfnas1/brianfolder" /proc/mounts; then
  echo "Samba share //bsfnas1/brianfolder is mounted."
else
  echo "Samba share //bsfnas1/brianfolder is not mounted."
fi
echo
echo "You may now close this window."
exit

3. Desktop Configuration file ~/Desktop/mount_bsfnas1_brianfolder_share.desktop

[Desktop Entry]
Comment[en_GB]=Mount bsfnas1 brianfolder share for current WINEPREFIX
Comment=Mount bsfnas1 brianfolder share for current WINEPREFIX
Exec=sh /home/fitzcarraldo/mount_bsfnas1_brianfolder_share.sh
GenericName[en_GB]=Mount bsfnas1 brianfolder share for current WINEPREFIX
GenericName=Mount bsfnas1 brianfolder share for current WINEPREFIX
Icon=media-mount
MimeType=
Name[en_GB]=mount_bsfnas1_brianfolder_share
Name=mount_bsfnas1_brianfolder_share
Path=
StartupNotify=true
Terminal=true
TerminalOptions=\s--noclose
Type=Application
X-DBUS-ServiceName=
X-DBUS-StartupType=none
X-KDE-SubstituteUID=false
X-KDE-Username=fitzcarraldo

4. Desktop Configuration file ~/Desktop/umount_bsfnas1_brianfolder_share.desktop

[Desktop Entry]
Comment[en_GB]=Unmount bsfnas1 brianfolder share for current WINEPREFIX
Comment=Unmount bsfnas1 brianfolder share for current WINEPREFIX
Exec=sh /home/fitzcarraldo/umount_bsfnas1_brianfolder_share.sh
GenericName[en_GB]=Unmount bsfnas1 brianfolder share for current WINEPREFIX
GenericName=Unmount bsfnas1 brianfolder share for current WINEPREFIX
Icon=media-eject
MimeType=
Name[en_GB]=umount_bsfnas1_brianfolder_share
Name=umount_bsfnas1_brianfolder_share
Path=
StartupNotify=true
Terminal=true
TerminalOptions=\s--noclose
Type=Application
X-DBUS-ServiceName=
X-DBUS-StartupType=none
X-KDE-SubstituteUID=false
X-KDE-Username=fitzcarraldo

Now when I double-click on the icon to mount the SMB share for a Windows application running via WINE, a terminal window pops up displaying the WINEPREFIXs currently installed on my machine:

This will mount the Samba share folder brianfolder on the bsfnas1 machine.


== Select which WINEPREFIX you wish to use ==

1 .wine-3dimviewer
2 .wine-myphoneexplorer
3 .wine-nbtscan
4 .wine-pdfxve6
5 .wine-PortableApps
6 .wine-radiant
7 .wine-symmetry
8 .wine-visio
9 .wine-xnviewmp

Enter number (q to abort) and press ENTER: 

Let’s say I want to use the Windows application XnViewMP. I would enter ‘9’ and press ‘Enter’. The rest of the interaction should be obvious:

This will mount the Samba share folder brianfolder on the bsfnas1 machine.


== Select which WINEPREFIX you wish to use ==

1 .wine-3dimviewer
2 .wine-myphoneexplorer
3 .wine-nbtscan
4 .wine-pdfxve6
5 .wine-PortableApps
6 .wine-radiant
7 .wine-symmetry
8 .wine-visio
9 .wine-xnviewmp

Enter number (q to abort) and press ENTER: 9

~/.wine-xnviewmp/dosdevices/y: already exists. Is it OK to proceed anyway (y/n)? y

Enter your Linux account password below...

[sudo] password for fitzcarraldo: 

Samba share //bsfnas1/brianfolder is mounted for WINEPREFIX ~/.wine-xnviewmp .

You may now close this window.

Henceforth the Windows application XnViewMP will be able to access the Y: drive which is actually the SMB share //bsfnas1/brianfolder.

Once I have finished using the application, I just double-click on the the icon to unmount the SMB share, and a terminal window pops up displaying the following:

This will unmount the Samba share folder brianfolder on the bsfnas1 machine.

Enter your Linux account password below...

[sudo] password for fitzcarraldo: 

Samba share //bsfnas1/brianfolder is not mounted.

You may now close this window.

Once I have entered my Linux password for the local machine, the script will unmount the SMB share and the terminal window will close automatically if you have configured the Desktop Configuration file by right-clicking on the icon and unticking ‘Do not close when command exits’ in KDE, ‘Keep terminal window open after command execution’ in LXDE, or similar in other desktop environments.

Note: If you use Microsoft Office via WINE, you also might be interested in a comment on my earlier blog post about a Microsoft Office problem in saving files to a remote SMB share.

Moving to the slotted WINE package system in Gentoo Linux

Earlier this year the Gentoo Linux developers responsible for maintaining the package app-emulation/wine decided to split it and slot it so that different versions of WINE can be installed and co-exist simultaneously:

clevow230ss fitzcarraldo # eselect news read 34
2017-04-10-split-and-slotted-wine
  Title                     app-emulation/wine split and slotting
  Author                    NP-Hardass 
  Posted                    2017-04-10
  Revision                  1

Starting with Wine 2.0, Wine in Gentoo is transitioning away from its
traditional packaging and toward a new, split and slotted, Wine.

As many Wine users know, there are often regressions or an application
works better on one version of wine than another.  Going forward, 
packaging in Gentoo will allow simultaneous installation of multiple
versions of Wine.

Additionally, to expedite vanilla releases as well as permit multiple
configurations for each Wine installation, the major patchsets have
been split out into separate packages.

Going forward, app-emulation/wine will transition to:
app-emulation/wine-vanilla: upstream Wine with no external patchsets
             (like if the old packaging forced USE="-staging -d3d9")
app-emulation/wine-staging: Wine with Wine-Staging's patchset
             (like if the old packaging forced USE="+staging -d3d9")
app-emulation/wine-d3d9: Wine with Ixit's Gallium Nine patchset
             (like if the old packaging forced USE="-staging +d3d9")
app-emulation/wine-any: Wine with any of the patchsets or flags
             (exactly like the old packaging regarding USE flags)

wine-any exists to allow the user to build any combination that they'd
like (like the old packaging).  This means the user could use wine-any
to use both Wine-Staging and Gallium Nine.  Alternatively, the user
could use wine-any to try out another configuration from other
packages.  For example, the user could build wine-vanilla without
PulseAudio, and could build wine-any with PulseAudio.  The sky is the
limit on how a user may choose to use app-emulation/wine-any.

Users may opt for any specific package, or may emerge virtual/wine,
which is provided for dependency resolution.
Maintainers: Please note, app-emulation/wine will be dropped, so
please use virtual/wine going forward.

Users may call each version specifically, or may call a symlink based
on their installed patchset, for example wine-2.1, wine-staging-2.2,
or wine-d3d9.

Symlinks for wine are managed with app-eselect/eselect-wine.
# eselect wine set wine-vanilla-2.0
/usr/bin/wine -> /usr/bin/wine-vanilla-2.0
# eselect wine set --staging wine-staging-2.4
/usr/bin/wine-staging -> /usr/bin/wine-staging-2.4

Earlier this year the Gentoo Linux Forums thread ‘wine: questions on recent changes‘ discussed the new system and how to use it. Several users, myself included, posted questions in that thread asking how to go about the change. I received differing advice and remained uncertain about what to do. At the time, the slotted packages for the new system had not yet been unmasked, so I left my installation as it was and decided to put off making the change for as long as possible. Today when I synchronised my installation with the Portage tree there was a Gentoo Linux news item ‘2017-11-21 Old Wine versions moving to wine-overlay’. So the time had come for me to make the switch from app-emulation/wine-2.3 to the new slotted WINE package system. Here is what I did…

Previous situation

I had been using WINE Staging:

clevow230ss fitzcarraldo # eix -I wine
[?] app-emulation/wine
     Available versions:  [M]2.0^t [M](~)2.1^t [M](~)2.2^t [M](~)2.3^t [M]**9999^t {+X +alsa capi cups custom-cflags d3d9 dos +fontconfig +gecko gphoto2 gsm gstreamer +jpeg +lcms ldap +mono mp3 ncurses netapi nls odbc openal opencl +opengl osmesa oss pcap +perl pipelight +png prelink pulseaudio +realtime +run-exes s3tc samba scanner selinux +ssl staging test themes +threads +truetype udev +udisks v4l vaapi +xcomposite xinerama +xml ABI_MIPS="n32 n64 o32" ABI_PPC="32 64" ABI_S390="32 64" ABI_X86="(+)32 (+)64 x32" ELIBC="glibc" KERNEL="FreeBSD" LINGUAS="ar bg ca cs da de el en en_US eo es fa fi fr he hi hr hu it ja ko lt ml nb_NO nl or pa pl pt_BR pt_PT rm ro ru sk sl sr_RS@cyrillic sr_RS@latin sv te th tr uk wa zh_CN zh_TW"}
     Installed versions:  2.3^t(19:16:31 20/05/17)(X alsa cups fontconfig gecko gphoto2 gsm jpeg lcms mp3 ncurses nls openal opengl perl png pulseaudio realtime run-exes scanner ssl staging threads truetype udev udisks v4l xcomposite xml -capi -custom-cflags -d3d9 -dos -gstreamer -ldap -mono -netapi -odbc -opencl -osmesa -oss -pcap -pipelight -prelink -s3tc -samba -selinux -test -themes -vaapi -xinerama ABI_MIPS="-n32 -n64 -o32" ABI_PPC="-32 -64" ABI_S390="-32 -64" ABI_X86="32 64 -x32" ELIBC="glibc" KERNEL="-FreeBSD" LINGUAS="en pt_BR -ar -bg -ca -cs -da -de -el -en_US -eo -es -fa -fi -fr -he -hi -hr -hu -it -ja -ko -lt -ml -nb_NO -nl -or -pa -pl -pt_PT -rm -ro -ru -sk -sl -sr_RS@cyrillic -sr_RS@latin -sv -te -th -tr -uk -wa -zh_CN -zh_TW")
     Homepage:            https://www.winehq.org/
     Description:         Free implementation of Windows(tm) on Unix

[I] app-emulation/winetricks
     Available versions:  20170823^t **99999999^t {gtk kde rar}
     Installed versions:  20170823^t(02:50:56 06/09/17)(gtk kde -rar)
     Homepage:            https://github.com/Winetricks/winetricks https://wiki.winehq.org/Winetricks
     Description:         Easy way to install DLLs needed to work around problems in Wine

Found 2 matches

The file /etc/portage/package.accept_keywords/wine in my installation included the following line:

app-emulation/wine ~amd64

The file /etc/portage/package.use/wine in my installation included the following line:

app-emulation/wine -ldap -pipelight staging abi_x86_32

New situation

The file /etc/portage/package.accept_keywords/wine in my installation now includes the lines listed below. The reason why I had to include app-emulation/wine-vanilla is explained further on.

virtual/wine ~amd64
app-emulation/wine-staging ~amd64
app-emulation/wine-vanilla ~amd64

The file /etc/portage/package.use/wine in my installation now includes the lines listed below. The reason why I had to include app-emulation/wine-vanilla is explained further on.

virtual/wine -d3d9 staging abi_x86_32
app-emulation/wine-staging X alsa cups fontconfig gecko gphoto2 gsm jpeg lcms mp3 ncurses nls openal opengl perl png pulseaudio realtime run-exes scanner ssl staging threads truetype udev udisks v4l xcomposite xml -capi -custom-cflags -d3d9 -dos -gstreamer -ldap -mono -netapi -odbc -opencl -osmesa -oss -pcap -pipelight -prelink -s3tc -samba -selinux -test -themes -vaapi -xinerama abi_x86_32
app-emulation/wine-vanilla X alsa cups fontconfig gecko gphoto2 gsm jpeg lcms mp3 ncurses nls openal opengl perl png pulseaudio realtime run-exes scanner ssl staging threads truetype udev udisks v4l xcomposite xml -capi -custom-cflags -d3d9 -dos -gstreamer -ldap -mono -netapi -odbc -opencl -osmesa -oss -pcap -pipelight -prelink -s3tc -samba -selinux -test -themes -vaapi -xinerama abi_x86_32

(Note that e.g. the pipelight USE flag does not actually exist in the package app-emulation/wine-vanilla, but it does no harm to include “-pipelight” in the line for app-emulation/wine-vanilla in the file package.use.)

After adding the above-mentioned lines to the two files, I then had to uninstall the masked package app-emulation/wine-2.3 and the package app-emulation/winetricks-20170823 that depended on it:

clevow230ss fitzcarraldo # emerge -aC app-emulation/wine app-emulation/winetricks

Then I had to install the package virtual/wine, which pulled in the package app-emulation/wine-staging as I wanted, but also pulled in the package app-emulation/vanilla:

clevow230ss fitzcarraldo # emerge -a virtual/wine

Then I had to select wine-staging:

clevow230ss fitzcarraldo # eselect wine list
clevow230ss fitzcarraldo # eselect wine set

Finally, I had to install winetricks, which would now use the selected slotted package:

clevow230ss fitzcarraldo # emerge winetricks

How I arrived at the contents of package.accept_keywords and package.use

Note that, before I added the line for app-emulation/wine-vanilla to /etc/portage/package.use/wine and /etc/portage/package.accept_keywords/wine, this is what Portage wanted to install:

clevow230ss fitzcarraldo # emerge -p virtual/wine

These are the packages that would be merged, in order:

Calculating dependencies... done!
[ebuild  N     ] app-emulation/wine-gecko-2.47-r1  ABI_X86="32 (64)" 
[ebuild  N     ] app-emulation/wine-desktop-common-20150204 
[ebuild  N     ] app-eselect/eselect-wine-1.2.2 
[ebuild   R    ] net-nds/openldap-2.4.44  ABI_X86="32*" 
[ebuild  N     ] app-emulation/wine-vanilla-2.0.2  USE="X alsa cups fontconfig gecko gphoto2 gsm jpeg lcms ldap mp3 ncurses nls openal opengl perl png pulseaudio realtime run-exes scanner ssl threads truetype udev udisks v4l xcomposite xml -capi -custom-cflags -dos -gstreamer -mono -netapi -odbc -opencl -osmesa -oss -pcap -prelink -samba (-selinux) {-test} -xinerama" ABI_X86="32 64 (-x32)" LINGUAS="en pt_BR -ar -bg -ca -cs -da -de -el -en_US -eo -es -fa -fi -fr -he -hi -hr -hu -it -ja -ko -lt -ml -nb_NO -nl -or -pa -pl -pt_PT -rm -ro -ru -sk -sl -sr_RS@cyrillic -sr_RS@latin -sv -te -th -tr -uk -wa -zh_CN -zh_TW" 
[ebuild  N    ~] app-emulation/wine-staging-2.19  USE="X alsa cups fontconfig gecko gphoto2 gsm jpeg lcms mp3 ncurses nls openal opengl perl png pulseaudio realtime run-exes scanner ssl (staging) threads truetype udev udisks v4l xcomposite xml -capi -custom-cflags -dos -gstreamer -ldap -mono -netapi -odbc -opencl -osmesa -oss -pcap -pipelight -prelink -s3tc -samba (-selinux) {-test} -themes -vaapi -xinerama" ABI_X86="32 64 (-x32)" LINGUAS="en pt_BR -ar -bg -ca -cs -da -de -el -en_US -eo -es -fa -fi -fr -he -hi -hr -hu -it -ja -ko -lt -ml -nb_NO -nl -or -pa -pl -pt_PT -rm -ro -ru -sk -sl -sr_RS@cyrillic -sr_RS@latin -sv -te -th -tr -uk -wa -zh_CN -zh_TW" 
[ebuild  N    ~] virtual/wine-0-r6  USE="staging -d3d9" ABI_X86="32 64" 

The following USE changes are necessary to proceed:
 (see "package.use" in the portage(5) man page for more details)
# required by app-emulation/wine-vanilla-2.0.2::gentoo[ldap]
# required by virtual/wine-0-r6::gentoo
# required by virtual/wine (argument)
>=net-nds/openldap-2.4.44 abi_x86_32
# required by app-emulation/wine-vanilla-2.0.2::gentoo[gecko]
# required by virtual/wine-0-r6::gentoo
# required by virtual/wine (argument)
>=app-emulation/wine-gecko-2.47-r1 abi_x86_32

!!! The following installed packages are masked:
- dev-qt/qtwebkit-4.8.7::gentoo (masked by: package.mask)
/usr/portage/profiles/package.mask:
# Andreas Sturmlechner  (16 Nov 2017)
# Qt4WebKit is ancient and full of security holes.
# Masked for removal in 30 days. Bug #620684

For more information, see the MASKED PACKAGES section in the emerge
man page or refer to the Gentoo Handbook.

clevow230ss fitzcarraldo #

After I added a line for app-emulation/wine-vanilla to /etc/portage/package.use/wine and /etc/portage/package.accept_keywords/wine, this is what Portage wanted to do:

clevow230ss fitzcarraldo # emerge -p virtual/wine                        

These are the packages that would be merged, in order:

Calculating dependencies... done!
[ebuild  N     ] app-emulation/wine-gecko-2.47-r1  ABI_X86="32 (64)" 
[ebuild  N     ] app-eselect/eselect-wine-1.2.2 
[ebuild  N     ] app-emulation/wine-desktop-common-20150204 
[ebuild  N    ~] app-emulation/wine-vanilla-2.20  USE="X alsa cups fontconfig gecko gphoto2 gsm jpeg lcms mp3 ncurses nls openal opengl perl png pulseaudio realtime run-exes scanner ssl threads truetype udev udisks v4l xcomposite xml -capi -custom-cflags -dos -gstreamer -kerberos -ldap -mono -netapi -odbc -opencl -osmesa -oss -pcap -prelink -samba (-selinux) {-test} -xinerama" ABI_X86="32 64 (-x32)" LINGUAS="en pt_BR -ar -bg -ca -cs -da -de -el -en_US -eo -es -fa -fi -fr -he -hi -hr -hu -it -ja -ko -lt -ml -nb_NO -nl -or -pa -pl -pt_PT -rm -ro -ru -sk -sl -sr_RS@cyrillic -sr_RS@latin -sv -te -th -tr -uk -wa -zh_CN -zh_TW" 
[ebuild  N    ~] app-emulation/wine-staging-2.19  USE="X alsa cups fontconfig gecko gphoto2 gsm jpeg lcms mp3 ncurses nls openal opengl perl png pulseaudio realtime run-exes scanner ssl (staging) threads truetype udev udisks v4l xcomposite xml -capi -custom-cflags -dos -gstreamer -ldap -mono -netapi -odbc -opencl -osmesa -oss -pcap -pipelight -prelink -s3tc -samba (-selinux) {-test} -themes -vaapi -xinerama" ABI_X86="32 64 (-x32)" LINGUAS="en pt_BR -ar -bg -ca -cs -da -de -el -en_US -eo -es -fa -fi -fr -he -hi -hr -hu -it -ja -ko -lt -ml -nb_NO -nl -or -pa -pl -pt_PT -rm -ro -ru -sk -sl -sr_RS@cyrillic -sr_RS@latin -sv -te -th -tr -uk -wa -zh_CN -zh_TW" 
[ebuild  N    ~] virtual/wine-0-r6  USE="staging -d3d9" ABI_X86="32 64" 

The following USE changes are necessary to proceed:
 (see "package.use" in the portage(5) man page for more details)
# required by app-emulation/wine-vanilla-2.20::gentoo[gecko]
# required by virtual/wine-0-r6::gentoo
# required by virtual/wine (argument)
>=app-emulation/wine-gecko-2.47-r1 abi_x86_32
clevow230ss fitzcarraldo #

So I added the above-mentioned USE change for app-emulation/wine-gecko to /etc/portage/package.use/wine, and then Portage wanted to do the following:

clevow230ss fitzcarraldo # emerge -p virtual/wine

These are the packages that would be merged, in order:

Calculating dependencies... done!
[ebuild  N     ] app-emulation/wine-gecko-2.47-r1  ABI_X86="32 (64)" 
[ebuild  N     ] app-eselect/eselect-wine-1.2.2 
[ebuild  N     ] app-emulation/wine-desktop-common-20150204 
[ebuild  N    ~] app-emulation/wine-vanilla-2.20  USE="X alsa cups fontconfig gecko gphoto2 gsm jpeg lcms mp3 ncurses nls openal opengl perl png pulseaudio realtime run-exes scanner ssl threads truetype udev udisks v4l xcomposite xml -capi -custom-cflags -dos -gstreamer -kerberos -ldap -mono -netapi -odbc -opencl -osmesa -oss -pcap -prelink -samba (-selinux) {-test} -xinerama" ABI_X86="32 64 (-x32)" LINGUAS="en pt_BR -ar -bg -ca -cs -da -de -el -en_US -eo -es -fa -fi -fr -he -hi -hr -hu -it -ja -ko -lt -ml -nb_NO -nl -or -pa -pl -pt_PT -rm -ro -ru -sk -sl -sr_RS@cyrillic -sr_RS@latin -sv -te -th -tr -uk -wa -zh_CN -zh_TW" 
[ebuild  N    ~] app-emulation/wine-staging-2.19  USE="X alsa cups fontconfig gecko gphoto2 gsm jpeg lcms mp3 ncurses nls openal opengl perl png pulseaudio realtime run-exes scanner ssl (staging) threads truetype udev udisks v4l xcomposite xml -capi -custom-cflags -dos -gstreamer -ldap -mono -netapi -odbc -opencl -osmesa -oss -pcap -pipelight -prelink -s3tc -samba (-selinux) {-test} -themes -vaapi -xinerama" ABI_X86="32 64 (-x32)" LINGUAS="en pt_BR -ar -bg -ca -cs -da -de -el -en_US -eo -es -fa -fi -fr -he -hi -hr -hu -it -ja -ko -lt -ml -nb_NO -nl -or -pa -pl -pt_PT -rm -ro -ru -sk -sl -sr_RS@cyrillic -sr_RS@latin -sv -te -th -tr -uk -wa -zh_CN -zh_TW" 
[ebuild  N    ~] virtual/wine-0-r6  USE="staging -d3d9" ABI_X86="32 64" 
clevow230ss fitzcarraldo #

I was happy with that, so I went ahead without the --pretend option:

clevow230ss fitzcarraldo # emerge -a virtual/wine

These are the packages that would be merged, in order:

Calculating dependencies... done!
[ebuild  N     ] app-emulation/wine-gecko-2.47-r1  ABI_X86="32 (64)" 
[ebuild  N     ] app-eselect/eselect-wine-1.2.2 
[ebuild  N     ] app-emulation/wine-desktop-common-20150204 
[ebuild  N    ~] app-emulation/wine-vanilla-2.20  USE="X alsa cups fontconfig gecko gphoto2 gsm jpeg lcms mp3 ncurses nls openal opengl perl png pulseaudio realtime run-exes scanner ssl threads truetype udev udisks v4l xcomposite xml -capi -custom-cflags -dos -gstreamer -kerberos -ldap -mono -netapi -odbc -opencl -osmesa -oss -pcap -prelink -samba (-selinux) {-test} -xinerama" ABI_X86="32 64 (-x32)" LINGUAS="en pt_BR -ar -bg -ca -cs -da -de -el -en_US -eo -es -fa -fi -fr -he -hi -hr -hu -it -ja -ko -lt -ml -nb_NO -nl -or -pa -pl -pt_PT -rm -ro -ru -sk -sl -sr_RS@cyrillic -sr_RS@latin -sv -te -th -tr -uk -wa -zh_CN -zh_TW" 
[ebuild  N    ~] app-emulation/wine-staging-2.19  USE="X alsa cups fontconfig gecko gphoto2 gsm jpeg lcms mp3 ncurses nls openal opengl perl png pulseaudio realtime run-exes scanner ssl (staging) threads truetype udev udisks v4l xcomposite xml -capi -custom-cflags -dos -gstreamer -ldap -mono -netapi -odbc -opencl -osmesa -oss -pcap -pipelight -prelink -s3tc -samba (-selinux) {-test} -themes -vaapi -xinerama" ABI_X86="32 64 (-x32)" LINGUAS="en pt_BR -ar -bg -ca -cs -da -de -el -en_US -eo -es -fa -fi -fr -he -hi -hr -hu -it -ja -ko -lt -ml -nb_NO -nl -or -pa -pl -pt_PT -rm -ro -ru -sk -sl -sr_RS@cyrillic -sr_RS@latin -sv -te -th -tr -uk -wa -zh_CN -zh_TW" 
[ebuild  N    ~] virtual/wine-0-r6  USE="staging -d3d9" ABI_X86="32 64" 

Would you like to merge these packages? [Yes/No] Yes
>>> Verifying ebuild manifests
>>> Running pre-merge checks for app-emulation/wine-vanilla-2.20
>>> Running pre-merge checks for app-emulation/wine-staging-2.19
>>> Emerging (1 of 6) app-emulation/wine-gecko-2.47-r1::gentoo
>>> Emerging (2 of 6) app-eselect/eselect-wine-1.2.2::gentoo
>>> Installing (1 of 6) app-emulation/wine-gecko-2.47-r1::gentoo
>>> Installing (2 of 6) app-eselect/eselect-wine-1.2.2::gentoo
>>> Emerging (3 of 6) app-emulation/wine-desktop-common-20150204::gentoo
>>> Installing (3 of 6) app-emulation/wine-desktop-common-20150204::gentoo
>>> Emerging (4 of 6) app-emulation/wine-vanilla-2.20::gentoo
>>> Emerging (5 of 6) app-emulation/wine-staging-2.19::gentoo
>>> Installing (4 of 6) app-emulation/wine-vanilla-2.20::gentoo
>>> Installing (5 of 6) app-emulation/wine-staging-2.19::gentoo
>>> Emerging (6 of 6) virtual/wine-0-r6::gentoo
>>> Installing (6 of 6) virtual/wine-0-r6::gentoo
>>> Recording virtual/wine in "world" favorites file...
>>> Jobs: 6 of 6 complete                           Load avg: 6.80, 7.34, 7.06
>>> Auto-cleaning packages...

>>> No outdated packages were found on your system.

 * GNU info directory index is up-to-date.
clevow230ss fitzcarraldo # eselect wine list
Available wine versions:
  [1]   wine-staging-2.19
  [2]   wine-vanilla-2.20 *
clevow230ss fitzcarraldo # eselect wine set 1
clevow230ss fitzcarraldo # eselect wine list
Available wine versions:
  [1]   wine-staging-2.19 *
  [2]   wine-vanilla-2.20
clevow230ss fitzcarraldo # emerge app-emulation/winetricks
Calculating dependencies... done!
>>> Verifying ebuild manifests
>>> Emerging (1 of 1) app-emulation/winetricks-20170823::gentoo
>>> Installing (1 of 1) app-emulation/winetricks-20170823::gentoo
>>> Recording app-emulation/winetricks in "world" favorites file...
>>> Jobs: 1 of 1 complete                           Load avg: 0.51, 2.78, 5.09
>>> Auto-cleaning packages...

>>> No outdated packages were found on your system.

 * GNU info directory index is up-to-date.
clevow230ss fitzcarraldo #

Summary

So, in summary, this is what I did in order to install and use app-emulation/wine-staging:

1. Add the following lines to /etc/portage/package.accept_keywords/wine:

virtual/wine ~amd64
app-emulation/wine-staging ~amd64
app-emulation/wine-vanilla ~amd64

2. Add the following lines to /etc/portage/package.use/wine:

virtual/wine -d3d9 staging abi_x86_32
app-emulation/wine-staging X alsa cups fontconfig gecko gphoto2 gsm jpeg lcms mp3 ncurses nls openal opengl perl png pulseaudio realtime run-exes scanner ssl staging threads truetype udev udisks v4l xcomposite xml -capi -custom-cflags -d3d9 -dos -gstreamer -ldap -mono -netapi -odbc -opencl -osmesa -oss -pcap -pipelight -prelink -s3tc -samba -selinux -test -themes -vaapi -xinerama abi_x86_32
app-emulation/wine-vanilla X alsa cups fontconfig gecko gphoto2 gsm jpeg lcms mp3 ncurses nls openal opengl perl png pulseaudio realtime run-exes scanner ssl staging threads truetype udev udisks v4l xcomposite xml -capi -custom-cflags -d3d9 -dos -gstreamer -ldap -mono -netapi -odbc -opencl -osmesa -oss -pcap -pipelight -prelink -s3tc -samba -selinux -test -themes -vaapi -xinerama abi_x86_32
# required by app-emulation/wine-vanilla-2.20::gentoo[gecko]
# required by virtual/wine-0-r6::gentoo
>=app-emulation/wine-gecko-2.47-r1 abi_x86_32

3. Uninstall the old, un-slotted WINE packages:

root # emerge -aC app-emulation/wine app-emulation/winetricks

4. Merge the new virtual WINE package:

root # emerge -a virtual/wine

5. Select the slotted WINE package I wish to use (WINE Staging):

root # eselect wine list
root # eselect wine set wine-staging-2.19

6. Merge the winetricks package, which will now recognise the slotted WINE package selected:

root # emerge app-emulation/winetricks

After completing the above process, I was still able to launch as before the various Microsoft Windows applications installed on my laptop under WINE.

UPDATE (December 1, 2017): As explained by user Chiltoo in a new post in the Gentoo Linux Forums thread mentioned earlier in the above post, a bug in Portage Version 2.3.13-r1 results in app-emulation/wine-vanilla being installed unnecessarily, as borne out in my post above.

The work-around he proposed does indeed work for me. Below are the commands I have just used for the work-around (I have left the new entries I made in package.accept_keywords and package.use in those files):

clevow230ss fitzcarraldo # emerge -aC app-emulation/wine-vanilla app-emulation/wine-staging virtual/wine app-emulation/wine-desktop-common app-emulation/wine-gecko app-eselect/eselect-wine app-emulation/winetricks
clevow230ss fitzcarraldo # emerge -1 app-emulation/wine-staging && emerge virtual/wine && emerge winetricks

The outcome of the above two commands in my case is:

clevow230ss fitzcarraldo # eix --installed --compact wine
[I] app-emulation/wine-desktop-common (20150204@01/12/17): Various desktop menu items and icons for wine
[I] app-emulation/wine-gecko (2.47-r1(2.47)@01/12/17): A Mozilla Gecko based version of Internet Explorer for Wine
[I] app-emulation/wine-staging (2.19(2.19)@01/12/17): Free implementation of Windows(tm) on Unix, with Wine-Staging patchset
[I] app-emulation/winetricks (20170823@01/12/17): Easy way to install DLLs needed to work around problems in Wine
[I] app-eselect/eselect-wine (1.2.2@01/12/17): Manage active wine version
[I] virtual/wine (0-r6@01/12/17): Virtual for Wine that supports multiple variants and slotting
Found 6 matches
clevow230ss fitzcarraldo # eselect wine list
Available wine versions:
  [1]   wine-staging-2.19 *
clevow230ss fitzcarraldo #

The superfluous app-emulation/wine-vanilla is no longer installed, which is a cleaner outcome.

Using the ClamAV daemon to scan files placed in my Downloads directory in Gentoo Linux

In a previous post I explained how to automatically detect files placed in my Downloads directory in Linux and scan them for viruses. The method I described in that post used clamscan, the command-line anti-virus scanner of ClamAV. Now, in addition ClamAV has a daemon (a program that runs continuously in the background), clamdscan, that you can enable. So I decided to switch to using clamdscan, as its response to downloaded files is much faster because the process waiting for new files to appear in ~/Downloads/ does not have to load clamscan from disk each time a new file arrives. Anyway, if you want to monitor a download directory in Gentoo Linux (running OpenRC) by using the ClamAV daemon — which will also download virus signature database updates automatically — then the procedure to set this up is given below.

1. Install clamav if it is not installed already:

root # emerge clamav

2. Add the service to the default runlevel:

root # rc-update add clamd default

The daemon will be launched automatically next time the computer boots.

3. The first download of the virus database has to be done manually:

root # freshclam

4. Start the daemon now:

root # rc-service clamd start

5. Create the Bash script ~/monitorDownloadsGUI with the following contents:

#!/bin/bash

DIR=$HOME/Downloads

# Get rid of old log file, if any
rm $HOME/virus-scan.log 2> /dev/null

IFS=$(echo -en "\n\b")

# Optionally, you can use shopt to avoid creating two processes due to the pipe
shopt -s lastpipe
inotifywait --quiet --monitor --event close_write,moved_to --recursive --format '%w%f' $DIR | while read FILE
# Added '--recursive' so that a directory copied into $DIR also triggers clamscan/clamdscan, although downloads
# from the Web would just be files, not directories.
do
# Have to check file length is nonzero otherwise commands may be repeated
if [ -s $FILE ]; then
# Replace 'date >' with 'date >>' if you want to keep log file entries for previous scans.
date > $HOME/virus-scan.log
clamdscan --fdpass --move=$HOME/virus-quarantine $FILE >> $HOME/virus-scan.log
kdialog --title "Virus scan of $FILE" --msgbox "$(cat $HOME/virus-scan.log)"
fi
done

Make it executable:

user $ chmod +x ~/monitorDownloadsGUI

6. Create the directory ~/virus-quarantine/ to store infected files pending investigation/deletion:

user $ mkdir ~/virus-quarantine

7. Install kdialog if it is not already installed:

root # emerge kdialog

8. Use ‘System Settings’ > ‘Startup and Shutdown’ > ‘Autostart’ to add the script ~/monitorDownloadsGUI to the list of script files that are automatically started each time you log in to KDE.

9. Log out then back in again, and you should see that everything is running as expected:

user $ rc-status | grep clam
 clamd                                                             [  started  ]

user $ ps -ef | grep clam | grep -v grep
clamav    1920     1  0 01:48 ?        00:00:00 /usr/sbin/clamd
clamav    1929     1  0 01:48 ?        00:00:00 /usr/bin/freshclam -d

user $ ps -ef | grep GUI | grep -v grep
fitzcarraldo      9143  8971  0 13:56 ?        00:00:00 /bin/bash /home/fitzcarraldo/.config/autostart-scripts/monitorDownloadsGUI.sh

10. To test, surf to http://www.eicar.org/ and download one of the EICAR test files into your ~/Downloads/ directory. You should see a pop-up KDialog window with a message similar to the following:

Virus scan of /home/fitzcarraldo/Downloads/eicarcom2.zip — KDialog

Mon 27 Feb 14:05:26 GMT 2017
/home/fitzcarraldo/Downloads/eicarcom2.zip: Eicar-Test-Signature FOUND
/home/fitzcarraldo/Downloads/eicarcom2.zip: moved to ‘/home/fitzcarraldo/virus-quarantine/eicarcom2.zip’

———– SCAN SUMMARY ———–
Infected files: 1
Time: 0.001 sec (0 m 0 s)

Note that the above-mentioned pop-up window may be preceded by one or more pop-up windows with an error message. I’m using the Chrome browser at the moment, but you may get a similar message if you are using another browser. Here is an example:

Virus scan of /home/fitzcarraldo/Downloads/.com.google.Chrome.Uh3oGm — KDialog ?

Mon 27 Feb 14:16:30 GMT 2017
/home/fitzcarraldo/Downloads/.com.google.Chrome.Uh3oGm: Access denied. ERROR

———– SCAN SUMMARY ———–
Infected files: 0
Total errors: 1
Time: 0.000 sec (0 m 0 s)

Read the error message and click ‘OK’, as this is not an actual problem; it is inotifywait detecting temporary files in the ~/Downloads/ directory during the download process. With larger files sometimes several such messages are displayed, presumably because the file being downloaded is being opened and closed more than once during the downloading process. This issue does not occur if you copy or move a file into ~/Downloads/ from another directory in your installation; try it and see for yourself. Then you only get the one pop-up window with the scan result for the file you put in ~/Downloads/.

Also have a look in ~/virus-quarantine/ and you will see the EICAR test file in that directory. You can delete it if you want (it is not infected with a real virus, so does no harm).

In future be sure to read the messages in the pop-up windows before clicking ‘OK’, as they will inform you that an infected file has been moved to the quarantine directory.

That’s all there is to it. Very simple, and quite handy if you want to check quickly that files you download don’t have a malware payload. Just make sure you download all files into ~/Downloads/ or they will not be checked automatically. Also, if you are given e.g. a USB pen drive with a file on it, you can copy the file to ~/Downloads/ if you want it to be scanned for malware.

Completing PDF forms and adding your signature without having to print the form

A recent post in the Gentoo Forums made me interested to find out what is actually achievable with fillable PDF forms in Gentoo Linux and Windows 10 without being required to purchase a software licence, be it for personal or professional use, in order to be able to complete PDF forms (including forms that have automatically-updating bar codes).

Designing PDF Forms

It is possible to create PDF forms with LibreOffice, although LibreOffice cannot create a form containing bar codes that get updated automatically with the information entered in fields on the form. In order to create PDF forms that contain automatically-updating bar codes it is necessary to purchase Adobe Acrobat DC or Adobe LiveCycle Designer, which are Windows-only applications. As forms usually have several fields, 2D bar code symbologies are used in order to be able to encode the amount of data in a practical way. See the Adobe demonstration video Capture electronic data from printed forms.

Using PDF Forms

However, the enquiry in the above-mentioned forum thread was not about designing PDF forms, it was about being able to complete existing PDF forms (including forms that have automatically-updating bar codes, and including being able to add a written signature to the form without printing it out):

Hi,

I need to sign pdfs, and sometimes fill out pdf forms which also need to be signed. At the moment I get them, print them, sign them and scan them back in to return to the sender. I’d like to simplify that.

I know that on Windows and Mac OS your adobe software can sign the pdf, but I don’t even know how that works exactly.

It would be really neat if there were an app which could handle all that.

Oh yeah, another thing. Some forms (all?) when you fill them out and print them have a bar of machine-readable gobbledygook on the page which lets the recipient of a printed pdf scan the data back in with 100% accuracy. That would be neat too.

Thanks.

Although I have sometimes added my signature to a PDF form before printing it out — more on that later — I had never come across PDF forms with automatically-updating bar codes, so my curiosity was piqued. I decided to investigate if free applications could be used to complete PDF forms (including those with automatically-updating bar codes) and add a written signature. My investigations were carried out in Linux and Windows 10, and my findings are given below. In summary, I discovered that I could do all these things in Linux as well as in Windows 10, although in Linux I had to resort to running a Windows application under WINE if a PDF form contained automatically-updating bar codes. I did not bother trying the GNOME document viewer Evince, as I could find no evidence on the Web of it having the capability of updating bar codes automatically, and I use KDE.

For my tests I used the following four PDF forms I found on the Web:

1. acrobat8_barcodedforms.pdf, an October 2006 PDF article from Adobe containing three sample form fields and an associated automatically-updating bar code (PDF417 symbology).
2. barcode_field.pdf, a February 2013 sample PDF form with three fields and three associated bar codes of different symbologies (PDF417, Data Matrix and QR Code).
3. PdfFormExample.pdf, a June 2013 sample PDF form created using LibreOffice (and therefore not containing automatically-updating bar codes).
4. sample_barcoded_demo.pdf, a December 2005 sample PDF form from Adobe with an automatically-updating bar code (PDF417 symbology).

1. Windows 10

1.1 Acrobat Reader DC

This is the ubiquitous ‘free’ closed-source application you can download from Adobe.

Below are screenshots of the four sample PDF forms opened in Acrobat Reader DC…

1.1.1 I could enter text in the three fields in acrobat8_barcodedforms.pdf, and the bar code was updated accordingly:

Acrobat Reader DC - acrobat8_barcodedforms.pdf

I used my smartphone’s Barcode Scanner app to read the bar code on the hard-copy form printed by Acrobat Reader DC:

Text1Text2Text3I am able to change the text in these fields of this form to see how 2D barcodes work.

1.1.2 I could enter text in the three fields in barcode_field.pdf, but the three bar codes were not visible:

Acrobat Reader DC - barcode_field.pdf

1.1.3 I could enter text in the fields in PdfFormExample.pdf:

Acrobat Reader DC - PdfFormExample.pdf

1.1.4 I could enter text in all fields of sample_barcoded_demo.pdf and the field contents were echoed in the box ‘Barcode Contents’ but the bar code itself was not visible:

Acrobat Reader DC - sample_barcoded_demo.pdf

So, in summary, Acrobat Reader DC is not a viable option if you have to deal with forms that include automatically-updating bar codes.

1.2 PDF-XChange Editor

This application from Canadian company Tracker Software Products supersedes their deprecated PDF-XChange Viewer and has additional features. Neither application is open-source, though. Some features only work fully if you purchase a software licence and enter the licence key. For example, if you add a signature to a PDF form (‘Document’ > ‘Signatures and Initials’) and then save it, DEMO stamps are added to the new PDF file (which still has editable fields). However, if you print the PDF form (either to a PDF file or to paper) then DEMO stamps are not added (but the new PDF file is not fillable/editable). Click on the two links below to view the sample PDF file PdfFormExample.pdf signed and saved to a new PDF file, and the sample PDF file PdfFormExample.pdf signed and printed to a new PDF file:

PdfFormExample_with_signature_added_then_Saved.pdf

PdfFormExample_with_signature_added_then_Printed_to_PDF.pdf

If you save them to disk and open them in PDF-XChange Editor, you will see the distinction.

As stated on the company’s Web site, the free application can be used for private and work purposes:

The FREE download of the PDF-XChange Editor may be used without limitation for Private, Commercial, Government and all uses, provided it is not: incorporated or distributed for profit/commercial gain with other software or media distribution of any type – without first gaining permission.

Below are screenshots of the four sample PDF forms opened in PDF-XChange Editor…

1.2.1 I could enter text in the three fields in acrobat8_barcodedforms.pdf, and the bar code was updated accordingly:

PDF-XChange Editor - acrobat8_barcodedforms.pdf

I used my smartphone’s Barcode Scanner app to read the bar code on the hard-copy form printed by PDF-XChange Editor:

Text1Text2Text3
I am able to change the text in these fields of this formto see how 2D barcodes work.

Notice that the layout of the encoded text is slightly different to the bar code generated by Adobe Acrobat Reader DC.

1.2.2 I could enter text in the three fields in barcode_field.pdf, and the three bar codes were visible:

PDF-XChange Editor - barcode_field.pdf

I used my smartphone’s Barcode Scanner app to read the three bar codes on the hard-copy form printed by PDF-XChange Editor:

The PDF417 bar code was read as follows:

text_0:PDF417 barcode:I can enter text in these fields of this form and can see the three barcodes to the right of these fields in PDF-XChange Editor.

The Data Matrix bar code was read as follows:

text_1:Data Matrix barcode:
To change the barcode field to the right, type in this box. The barcode field to the right will reflect the contents of the text field as barcode after the text field lost the focus. To reset the contents of all barcode fields, cick the ‘Rset’ button.

Notice that the words ‘click’ and ‘Reset’ in the field were apparently not encoded correctly.

The QR Code bar code was read as a meaningless apparently random bunch of characters.

The PDF file and the three bar codes were generated on the fly by PHP code calling the pdflib library produced by the company PDFlib GmbH. I do not know how accurate this particular PDF file is, or how accurate is the Bar Code Scanner app on my smartphone.

1.2.3 I could enter text in the fields in PdfFormExample.pdf:

PDF-XChange Editor - PdfFormExample.pdf

1.2.4 I could enter text in all fields of sample_barcoded_demo.pdf, and the field contents were echoed in the box ‘Barcode Contents’ and the bar code itself was visible:

PDF-XChange Editor - sample_barcoded_demo.pdf

I used my smartphone’s Barcode Scanner app to read the PDF417 bar code on the hard-copy form printed by PDF-XChange Editor:

Brian
S
Fitzgerald
Calle Fitzcarrald, 225
Iquitos

bsf@iquitos.nom.pe

So, in summary, PDF-XChange Editor appears to be a possible option in Windows 10, whether or not you have to deal with forms that include automatically-updating bar codes. I am quite impressed with the application.

2. Linux

2.1 Acrobat Reader 9

This is the free closed-source Linux application you can install via the Portage package manager (the package is app-text/acroread).

Below are screenshots of the four sample PDF forms opened in Acrobat Reader 9 for Linux.

2.1.1 I could enter text in the three fields in acrobat8_barcodedforms.pdf, and the bar code was updated accordingly:

Acrobat Reader 9 Linux - acrobat8_barcodedforms.pdf

I used my smartphone’s Barcode Scanner app to read the bar code on the hard-copy form printed by Acrobat Reader 9 for Linux:

Text1Text2Text3I am able to change the text in these fields of this form to see how 2D barcodes work.

2.1.2 I could enter text in the three fields in barcode_field.pdf, but the three bar codes were not visible:

Acrobat Reader 9 Linux - barcode_field.pdf

2.1.3 I could enter text in the fields in PdfFormExample.pdf:

Acrobat Reader 9 Linux - PdfFormExample.pdf

2.1.4 I could enter text in all fields of sample_barcoded_demo.pdf, and the field contents were echoed in the box ‘Barcode Contents’ but the bar code itself was not visible:

Acrobat Reader 9 Linux - sample_barcoded_demo.pdf

So, in summary, Acrobat Reader 9 for Linux is not a viable option if you have to deal with forms that include automatically-updating bar codes.

2.2 Okular

This is the well-known KDE document viewer application.

Below are screenshots of the four sample PDF forms opened in Okular.

2.2.1 I could enter text in the three fields in acrobat8_barcodedforms.pdf but the bar code was not visible:

Okular - acrobat8_barcodedforms.pdf

2.2.2 I could enter text in the three fields in barcode_field.pdf but the three bar codes were not visible:

Okular - barcode_field.pdf

2.2.3 I could enter text in the fields in PdfFormExample.pdf:

Okular - PdfFormExample.pdf

2.2.4 I could enter text in all fields of sample_barcoded_demo.pdf but the field contents were not echoed in the box ‘Barcode Contents’ and the bar code itself was not visible:

Okular - sample_barcoded_demo.pdf

So, in summary, Okular is not a viable option if you have to deal with forms that include automatically-updating bar codes. In fact, Okular was the worst of the bunch.

2.3 PDF-XChange Editor

To install this Windows application under WINE in Linux:

$ export WINEPREFIX=$HOME/.wine-pdfxve6
$ export WINEARCH="win32"
$ winecfg # Select Windows 10.
$ cd .wine-pdfxve6/drive_c/
$ # Copy downloaded installer to C: drive:
$ cp ~/Downloads/PDFXVE6.zip .
$ unzip PDFXVE6.zip
$ # Install PDF-XChange Editor:
$ wine PDFXVE6.exe

• Click ‘Install’.
• Click ‘Next’.
• Select ‘I accept the terms in the License Agreement’ and click ‘Next’.
• Click ‘Custom’.
• Click ‘Browsers Plugins’ and select ‘Don’t install’. Click ‘Next’.
• Leave ‘Create a Start Menu folder’ ticked. Untick ‘Create Desktop Icons.’ Untick ‘Set PDF-XChange Editor as default application for PDF files’. Untick ‘Set Printer “PDF-XChange Lite V6” As Default’. Click ‘Next’.
• Select ‘Free Version’ and click ‘Next’.
• Click ‘Install’.
• Untick ‘Launch PDF-XChange Editor’ and click ‘Finish’.
• Click ‘Close’.

KDE Plasma 5 then has an entry for PDF-XChange Editor in the Application Launcher under ‘Applications’ > ‘Wine’ > ‘Programs’ > ‘Tracker Software’. Alternatively, to launch PDF-XChange Editor from the command line, you should enter:

$ WINEPREFIX="$HOME/.wine-pdfxve6" && WINEARCH="win32" && wine $WINEPREFIX/drive_c/Program\ Files/Tracker\ Software/PDF\ Editor/PDFXEdit.exe

If you also want the Windows application running under WINE to be able to access PDF files on a NAS, i.e. to be able to open Samba shares, see my previous post How to enable a Windows application in WINE to access a Samba share on a NAS.

I will not bother showing screenshots of the four sample PDF files open in PDF-XChange Editor running under WINE in Linux, as the application’s behaviour is the same as in Windows (see the screenshots in sections 1.2.1 to 1.2.4 above). So, in summary, PDF-XChange Editor appears to be a viable option in Linux (albeit running under WINE), irrespective of whether or not you have to deal with forms that include automatically-updating bar codes.

3. Adding a signature to a soft copy of the PDF form

I am referring to a person’s written signature here, not to a digital signature. Rather than having to print the completed form on paper in order to sign it with a pen, then scan the fully-completed form in order to send it via e-mail, fax or whatever, many people wish to add their signature directly to the PDF form without having to print it. Below I explain the method I use to do this in both Linux and Windows.

3.1 Create a PNG file with your signature (one-time operation)

1. Get a blank white piece of paper.
2. Sign your name on the page.
3. Scan the page with your scanner and save the image as a PNG file.
4. Open the image with GIMP.
5. Crop the image around the signature.
6. Select ‘Layer’ > ‘Transparency’ > ‘Add Alpha Channel’.
7. Select the Fuzzy Select Tool from the toolbox.
8. Click on each white area and press the Delete key. Do this for the area around the signature and inside any loops. Obviously don’t click on the signature itself.
9. Select ‘File’ > ‘Export’.
10. Save the image as a PNG file.

3.2 Signing PDF documents

1. Launch LibreOffice Draw and open the PDF file you wish to sign.
2. Select ‘Insert’ > ‘Image…’ and select the PNG file of your signature. The image will be inserted.
3. To move the signature around on the page, hover the mouse cursor over the image until the cursor changes to a red dot with four arrowheads, then click-and-hold to grab the image drag it.
4. To reduce the size of the signature, hover the mouse cursor over the image until the cursor changes to a red dot with four arrowheads, then click and release. You will then see small blue ‘handles’ on the outline of the image. Hover the mouse cursor over a handle at one of the four corners of the image until the cursor changes to a Resize cursor. Click-and-hold and move the cursor to increase or decrease the size of the signature whilst maintaining the ratio of width to height.
5. To save the completed and signed PDF form, select ‘File’ > ‘Export as PDF…’, click on ‘Export’ and give the file a name of your choice.

The new PDF file will contain all the information visible on the previous PDF file plus your written signature. However, unlike the original PDF file, you will not be able to modify any of the data. Therefore I recommend you retain a copy of the original PDF file before you added the signature, in case you wish to change any of field entries in future.

Note that the free PDF-XChange Editor can be used instead of LibreOffice Draw providing the PDF form is not secured or restricted, and providing you print it to a new PDF file using a virtual PDF printer driver. If the PDF form is secured or changes restricted, then use LibreOffice Draw as described above.

If you are using a PDF viewer that refuses to save your completed form as a PDF file after you have entered data in the fields (notice the message in the purple bar in the screenshots of Acrobat Reader 9 for Linux, for example), print the page to a PDF file instead by using the virtual PDF printer (‘Microsoft Print to PDF’ in Windows; CUPS ‘Virtual PDF Printer’ in Linux) at a resolution of e.g. 600 dpi (if possible). You should then be able to open that PDF file in LibreOffice Draw or PDF-XChange Editor to add your signature as explained above and print the signed form to a new PDF file.

How to enable a Windows application in WINE to access a Samba share on a NAS

I recently installed the Windows application PDF-XChange Editor under WINE in Gentoo Linux on one of my laptops. The application works fine but it could not detect the SMB/CIFS (Samba) share folder on my NAS. When I clicked on ‘File‘ > ‘Open...‘ in the application, the left pane of the ‘Open Files‘ dialogue window displayed the following options:

+ Favourites
– Desktop
  + My Computer
  + My Documents
    Trash
  + /

If I clicked on ‘My Computer‘, the right pane of the dialogue window then displayed the following options:

Control Panel
(C:)
(D:)
(E:)
(F:)
(G:)
(Z:)

None of the entries in either pane enabled me to get to the Samba shares on my NAS. Anyway, it turned out to be relatively easy to configure the installation on my laptop to enable the Windows application to access the Samba shared folder on the NAS, and the basic procedure was as follows:

1. Create a mountpoint.
2. In the directory $WINEPREFIX/dosdevices/ create a symbolic link to the mountpoint.
3. Mount the network share on the mountpoint.

Let’s look in detail at the procedure…

My Clevo W230SS laptop running Gentoo Linux Stable Branch amd64 currently has KDE Plasma 5.6.5 and WINE 1.9.18 installed. I had used a WINE prefix of ~/.wine-pdfxve6 to install the Windows application in the fitzcarraldo user account. Let us say that the hostname of my Linux NAS is ‘bsfnas1‘, the name of the Samba shared folder on the NAS is ‘brianfolder‘, the Samba username for that shared folder on the NAS is ‘brian‘ and the Samba share password on the NAS is ‘enricocaruso‘.

First I checked which drive letters were already being used by WINE:

$ ls -la ~/.wine-pdfxve6/dosdevices/
total 8
drwxr-xr-x 2 fitzcarraldo fitzcarraldo 4096 Sep 16 23:18 .
drwxr-xr-x 4 fitzcarraldo fitzcarraldo 4096 Sep 17 04:03 ..
lrwxrwxrwx 1 fitzcarraldo fitzcarraldo   10 Sep 16 23:18 c: -> ../drive_c
lrwxrwxrwx 1 fitzcarraldo fitzcarraldo    9 Sep 16 23:18 d:: -> /dev/sdb1
lrwxrwxrwx 1 fitzcarraldo fitzcarraldo    8 Sep 16 23:18 e:: -> /dev/sdc
lrwxrwxrwx 1 fitzcarraldo fitzcarraldo    9 Sep 16 23:18 f:: -> /dev/sdc1
lrwxrwxrwx 1 fitzcarraldo fitzcarraldo    8 Sep 16 23:18 g:: -> /dev/sdb
lrwxrwxrwx 1 fitzcarraldo fitzcarraldo    1 Sep 16 23:18 z: -> /

As no Windows Y: drive was listed, I decided to use that drive letter for my network Samba share as shown in the steps below.

I created a mountpoint for the share:

$ sudo mkdir -p /media/bsfnas1/brianfolder

Then I created the symlink:

$ ln -s /media/bsfnas1/brianfolder ~/.wine-pdfxve6/dosdevices/y:
$ ls -la ~/.wine-pdfxve6/dosdevices/
total 8
drwxr-xr-x 2 fitzcarraldo fitzcarraldo 4096 Sep 17 15:38 .
drwxr-xr-x 4 fitzcarraldo fitzcarraldo 4096 Sep 17 15:39 ..
lrwxrwxrwx 1 fitzcarraldo fitzcarraldo   10 Sep 16 23:18 c: -> ../drive_c
lrwxrwxrwx 1 fitzcarraldo fitzcarraldo    9 Sep 16 23:18 d:: -> /dev/sdb1
lrwxrwxrwx 1 fitzcarraldo fitzcarraldo    8 Sep 16 23:18 e:: -> /dev/sdc
lrwxrwxrwx 1 fitzcarraldo fitzcarraldo    9 Sep 16 23:18 f:: -> /dev/sdc1
lrwxrwxrwx 1 fitzcarraldo fitzcarraldo    8 Sep 16 23:18 g:: -> /dev/sdb
lrwxrwxrwx 1 fitzcarraldo fitzcarraldo   11 Sep 17 15:37 y: -> /media/bsfnas1/brianfolder
lrwxrwxrwx 1 fitzcarraldo fitzcarraldo    1 Sep 16 23:18 z: -> /

Finally, I mounted the network share onto the symlink:

$ sudo mount.cifs //bsfnas1/brianfolder/ -o user=brian,pass=enricocarusou,id=$(id -u),gid=$(id -g) ~/.wine-pdfxve6/dosdevices/y:

As before, I see the following when I click on ‘File‘ > ‘Open...‘ in the Windows application running under WINE:

+ Favourites
– Desktop
  + My Computer
  + My Documents
    Trash
  + /

If I click on ‘My Computer‘ in the ‘Open File‘ dialogue window, the following items are displayed in the right pane of the window:

Control Panel
(C:)
(D:)
(E:)
(F:)
(G:)
(Y:)
(Z:)

and I can select the ‘(Y:)‘ and browse the contents of the shared folder brianfolder on the NAS drive.

Although I found it was unnecessary to do it for PDF-XChange Editor, apparently some Windows applications require the use of Windows UNC syntax, so I also did the following:

$ mkdir -p ~/.wine-pdfxve6/dosdevices/unc/bsfnas1
$ ln -s /media/bsfnas1/brianfolder ~/.wine-pdfxve6/dosdevices/unc/bsfnas1/brianfolder

If I wanted to unmount the Samba share explicitly, rather than leaving it to be unmounted automatically when I shutdown the laptop, I would enter the following command:

$ sudo umount ~/.wine-pdfxve6/dosdevices/y\:/

Then the Windows application on my laptop would no longer be able to browse the unmounted network share:

$ ls ~/.wine-pdfxve6/dosdevices/
c:  d::  e::  f::  g::  unc  y:  z:
$ ls -la /media/bsfnas1/brianfolder
total 8
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 4096 Sep 17 15:35 .
drwxr-xr-x 4 root root 4096 Sep 17 15:35 ..
$

You may be wondering why I did not add an entry in the file /etc/fstab on my laptop, to mount the Samba share automatically when I boot the laptop. The reason I didn’t is because I often use the laptop away from home and the NAS on my home network is then inaccessible in any case. However, to save myself the hassle of having to enter the mount command manually when I am at home and want to use the Windows application to open a file that is in the NAS shared folder, I created two Desktop Configuration files named mount_bsfnas1_brianfolder_share.desktop and umount_bsfnas1_brianfolder_share.desktop with nice icons in my ~/Desktop directory on the laptop:

[Desktop Entry]
Comment[en_GB]=Mount bsfnas1 brianfolder share for PDF-XChange Editor
Comment=Mount bsfnas1 brianfolder share for PDF-XChange Editor
Exec=sh /home/fitzcarraldo/mount_bsfnas1_brianfolder_share.sh
GenericName[en_GB]=Mount bsfnas1 brianfolder share for PDF-XChange Editor
GenericName=Mount bsfnas1 brianfolder share for PDF-XChange Editor
Icon=media-mount
MimeType=
Name[en_GB]=mount_bsfnas1_brianfolder_share
Name=mount_bsfnas1_brianfolder_share
Path=
StartupNotify=true
Terminal=true
TerminalOptions=\s--noclose
Type=Application
X-DBUS-ServiceName=
X-DBUS-StartupType=none
X-KDE-SubstituteUID=false
X-KDE-Username=fitzcarraldo

[Desktop Entry]
Comment[en_GB]=Unmount bsfnas1 brianfolder share for PDF-XChange Editor
Comment=Unmount bsfnas1 brianfolder share for PDF-XChange Editor
Exec=sh /home/fitzcarraldo/umount_bsfnas1_brianfolder_share.sh
GenericName[en_GB]=Unmount bsfnas1 brianfolder share for PDF-XChange Editor
GenericName=Unmount bsfnas1 brianfolder share for PDF-XChange Editor
Icon=media-eject
MimeType=
Name[en_GB]=umount_bsfnas1_brianfolder_share
Name=umount_bsfnas1_brianfolder_share
Path=
StartupNotify=true
Terminal=true
TerminalOptions=\s--noclose
Type=Application
X-DBUS-ServiceName=
X-DBUS-StartupType=none
X-KDE-SubstituteUID=false
X-KDE-Username=fitzcarraldo

and the Bash scripts mount_bsfnas1_brianfolder_share.sh and umount_bsfnas1_brianfolder_share.sh launched by the above two Desktop Configuration files are, respectively:

#!/bin/bash
echo "This will mount the Samba share folder brianfolder on the bsfnas1 machine."
echo
echo "Enter your Linux account password below..."
echo
sudo mount.cifs //bsfnas1/brianfolder/ -o user=brian,pass=enricocaruso,uid=$(id -u),gid=$(id -g) ~/.wine-pdfxve6/dosdevices/y:
echo
if grep -q "/media/bsfnas1/brianfolder" /proc/mounts; then
  echo "Samba share //bsfnas1/brianfolder is mounted."
else
  echo "Samba share //bsfnas1/brianfolder is not mounted."
fi
echo
echo "You may now close this window."

#!/bin/bash
echo "This will unmount the Samba share folder brianfolder on the bsfnas1 machine."
echo
echo "Enter your Linux account password below..."
echo
sudo umount ~/.wine-pdfxve6/dosdevices/y:
echo
if grep -q "/media/bsfnas1/brianfolder" /proc/mounts; then
  echo "Samba share //bsfnas1/brianfolder is mounted."
else
  echo "Samba share //bsfnas1/brianfolder is not mounted."
fi
echo
echo "You may now close this window."

Don’t forget to make the two shell scripts executable:

$ chmod +x /home/fitzcarraldo/mount_bsfnas1_brianfolder_share.sh
$ chmod +x /home/fitzcarraldo/umount_bsfnas1_brianfolder_share.sh

If I was doing this on a desktop PC instead of a laptop, instead of creating the above-mentioned .desktop files and Bash scripts I would have added the following line in the file /etc/fstab to mount the NAS Samba shared folder automatically at boot:

//bsfnas1/brianfolder  /media/bsfnas1/brianfolder  cifs  rw,iocharset=utf8,user=brian,pass=enricocaruso  0   0

It works (I’ve tried it).

Further reading
WineHQ Forums – Mapped network drive in wine.
Estendendo suporte a UNC no Wine.

Office 2007 mime-type problem in KDE Plasma 5

Further to my 2015 post Office 2007 mime-type problem in KDE, another problem opening Excel .xlsm files in Office 2007 with WINE in Gentoo Linux Stable happened to me recently, this time in KDE Plasma 5.5.5. Whenever I clicked on an Excel macro-enabled spreadsheet file myspreadsheet.xlsm in Dolphin, a pop-up window titled ‘Choose Application – Dolphin’ would prompt me to ‘Select the program you want to use to open the file myspreadsheet.xlsm’. When I selected Microsoft Excel 2007 from the ‘Known Applications’ list and ticked ‘Remember application association for all files of type “Excel macro-enabled spreadsheet” (application/vnd.ms-excel.sheet.macroEnabled.12)’, Excel would launch and load the spreadsheet. However, the next time I double-clicked the file, the pop-up window would prompt me again. So I tried setting the file association via ‘System Settings’ > ‘Applications’ > ‘File Associations’. Now, there are three entries under ‘Known Types’: vnd.ms-excel.sheet.macroEnabled.12, vnd.ms-excel.sheet.macroenabled.12 and x-wine-extension-xlsmhtml. However, there was no application listed in the box ‘Application Preference Order’ for vnd.ms-excel.sheet.macroEnabled.12, and, if I added Microsoft Excel 2007 to the list and clicked ‘Apply’, the new entry would disappear immediately.

Unlike the situation described in the above-mentioned post, the mime type for the .xlsm file appeared correct:

$ file myspreadsheet.xlsm
myspreadsheet.xlsm: Microsoft Excel 2007+
$ xdg-mime query filetype myspreadsheet.xlsm
application/vnd.ms-excel.sheet.macroEnabled.12

The file /usr/share/mime/subclasses contains ‘macroEnabled‘ rather than ‘macroenabled‘:

$ grep macroenabled /usr/share/mime/subclasses
$ grep macroEnabled /usr/share/mime/subclasses
application/vnd.ms-excel.sheet.binary.macroEnabled.12 application/vnd.openxmlformats-officedocument.spreadsheetml.sheet
application/vnd.ms-excel.addin.macroEnabled.12 application/vnd.openxmlformats-officedocument.spreadsheetml.sheet
application/vnd.ms-powerpoint.slideshow.macroEnabled.12 application/vnd.openxmlformats-officedocument.presentationml.slideshow
application/vnd.ms-excel.sheet.macroEnabled.12 application/vnd.openxmlformats-officedocument.spreadsheetml.sheet
application/vnd.ms-powerpoint.presentation.macroEnabled.12 application/vnd.openxmlformats-officedocument.presentationml.presentation
application/vnd.ms-word.template.macroEnabled.12 application/vnd.openxmlformats-officedocument.wordprocessingml.template
application/vnd.ms-excel.template.macroEnabled.12 application/vnd.openxmlformats-officedocument.spreadsheetml.template
application/vnd.ms-powerpoint.template.macroEnabled.12 application/vnd.openxmlformats-officedocument.presentationml.template
application/vnd.ms-word.document.macroEnabled.12 application/vnd.openxmlformats-officedocument.wordprocessingml.document
application/vnd.ms-powerpoint.slide.macroEnabled.12 application/vnd.openxmlformats-officedocument.presentationml.slide

but the work-around mentioned in my 2015 post (i.e. replacing ‘macroEnabled‘ with ‘macroenabled‘ in the file /usr/share/mime/subclasses) did not fix the latest problem: I was still prompted to choose an application every time I double-clicked on a .xlsm file. So I reverted to the original contents of /usr/share/mime/subclasses (i.e. back to ‘macroEnabled‘) and looked in the directory /usr/share/mime/application/ to see what it contained for Excel spreadsheets:

$ ls -1 /usr/share/mime/application/vnd.ms-excel.sheet.*
/usr/share/mime/application/vnd.ms-excel.sheet.binary.macroenabled.12.xml
/usr/share/mime/application/vnd.ms-excel.sheet.macroenabled.12.xml

As there was no file for vnd.ms-excel.sheet.macroEnabled.12.xml I decided to create one to see if that would solve the problem:

$ sudo cp /usr/share/mime/application/vnd.ms-excel.sheet.macroenabled.12.xml /usr/share/mime/application/vnd.ms-excel.sheet.macroEnabled.12.xml

It did! If I click on a .xlsm file now, Excel 2007 launches and opens the spreadsheet.

Automatically detecting files placed in my Downloads directory in Gentoo Linux and scanning them for viruses

I have been using Linux for almost a decade and have never been unduly concerned about viruses on my machines running Linux. However, I do receive files from people who use Windows and Mac OS, and some of those files might contain Windows or Mac OS viruses, so, as a matter of courtesy and assistance to others, it would make some sense to scan those files before passing them on. Furthermore, as I use some Windows applications under WINE, it would also make sense to scan received files for Windows viruses if I am going to use those files with a Windows application running under WINE.

External files could get into my Gentoo Linux installations via pen drives, memory cards, optical discs, e-mails, my Dropbox directory and downloads from Web sites. In this post I am going to concentrate on the last of these. All the various e-mail account providers I use already scan e-mails for viruses on their e-mail servers before I even download e-mail into the e-mail client on my laptop (standard practice these days), so e-mail is not a particular worry.

I have had ClamAV and its GUI, ClamTk, installed for a long time. Whilst ClamTk can be used to schedule a daily update of virus signatures and a daily scan of one’s home directory by ClamAV, I normally run ClamTk and ClamAV ad hoc. However, I can see some benefit in launching ClamAV automatically when I download a file from the Internet, so I decided to do the following …

Automatically scan a file downloaded via a Web browser

I use Firefox to browse the Web, and had configured it to download files to the directory /home/fitzcarraldo/Downloads/. I decided to monitor automatically the Downloads directory for the addition of any file. As I use the ext4 file system, the method I opted to use is inotify, specifically the inotifywait command which is available once you install the package sys-fs/inotify-tools.

It is surprisingly easy to create a shell script to detect files downloaded into a directory. The following script, running continuously in a terminal, would detect any files created in my /home/fitzcarraldo/Downloads directory, scan the new files with ClamAV and display a report in the terminal window:

#!/bin/bash

echo
DIR=$HOME/Downloads

inotifywait -q -m -e create --format '%w%f' $DIR | while read FILE
do
     date
     echo "File $FILE has been detected. Scanning it for viruses now ..."
     clamscan $FILE
     echo
done

A usable script would need to be a bit more sophisticated than the one shown above, because an existing file in the directory could be overwritten by one with the same name, or opened and amended. Furthermore, the script above would need a permanently open terminal window. Therefore I created a script to run in the background and use a GUI dialogue tool to pop up a window with the virus scanner’s report when the script detects a new or changed file in the Downloads directory. As this laptop has KDE 4 installed I opted to use KDialog to display the pop-up window, but I could instead have used Zenity. The final script is shown below.

#!/bin/bash

DIR=$HOME/Downloads

# Get rid of old log file
rm $HOME/virus-scan.log 2> /dev/null

inotifywait -q -m -e close_write,moved_to --format '%w%f' $DIR | while read FILE
do
     # Have to check file length is nonzero otherwise commands may be repeated
     if [ -s $FILE ]; then
          date > $HOME/virus-scan.log
          clamscan $FILE >> $HOME/virus-scan.log
          kdialog --title "Virus scan of $FILE" --msgbox "$(cat $HOME/virus-scan.log)"
     fi
done

Now when I download a file in Firefox, a window pops up, displaying a message similar to the following:

Virus scan of /home/fitzcarraldo/Downloads/eicar_com.zip – KDialog

Fri 19 Feb 23:42:02 GMT 2016
/home/fitzcarraldo/Downloads/eicar_com.zip: Eicar-Test-Signature FOUND

———– SCAN SUMMARY ———–
Known viruses: 4259980
Engine version: 0.98.7
Scanned directories: 0
Scanned files: 1
Infected files: 1
Data scanned: 0.00 MB
Data read: 0.00 MB (ratio 0.00:1)
Time: 4.595 sec (0 m 4 s)

Notice in the above message that ClamAV detected a virus in a file eicar_com.zip that I downloaded from the European Expert Group for IT Security Web site (originally ‘European Institute for Computer Antivirus Research’). In fact the executable eicar.com does not contain a real virus; it was designed to contain a known signature that virus scanner creators and users can use in checking anti-virus software. You can find out more about the virus test files on the EICAR Web site.

Of course, if I use applications other than Firefox to download files, I need to make sure they download the files into the applicable directory so that the script can detect and scan the files:

fitzcarraldo@clevow230ss ~ $ cd Downloads/
fitzcarraldo@clevow230ss ~/Downloads $ youtube-dl -o Carnavalito.mp4 -f 18 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZDUL3w7zFD4
ZDUL3w7zFD4: Downloading webpage
ZDUL3w7zFD4: Downloading video info webpage
ZDUL3w7zFD4: Extracting video information
ZDUL3w7zFD4: Downloading MPD manifest
[download] Destination: Carnavalito.mp4
[download] 100% of 16.61MiB in 00:05

So, now I have a shell script that pops up a window informing me whether or not any file I put in $HOME/Downloads/ contains a virus. But I would like the script to be launched automatically when I login to the Desktop Environment. Therefore, as I use KDE 4, I selected ‘System Settings’ > ‘Startup and Shutdown’ and, in the ‘Autostart’ pane, clicked on ‘Add Script…’ and entered the path to my shell script (I left ‘create as symlink’ ticked). Now, every time I use KDE, any file placed (automatically or manually) into $HOME/Downloads/ is scanned for viruses automatically and a window pops up giving the result.

As my laptop is not always connected to the Internet, I prefer to update the ClamAV virus signatures database manually, which I do either using the ClamTk GUI or via the command line using the freshclam command:

fitzcarraldo@clevow230ss ~ $ su
Password:
clevow230ss fitzcarraldo # freshclam
ClamAV update process started at Sat Feb 20 10:51:01 2016
WARNING: Your ClamAV installation is OUTDATED!
WARNING: Local version: 0.98.7 Recommended version: 0.99
DON'T PANIC! Read http://www.clamav.net/support/faq
main.cvd is up to date (version: 55, sigs: 2424225, f-level: 60, builder: neo)
Downloading daily-21375.cdiff [100%]
Downloading daily-21376.cdiff [100%]
Downloading daily-21377.cdiff [100%]
Downloading daily-21378.cdiff [100%]
Downloading daily-21379.cdiff [100%]
Downloading daily-21380.cdiff [100%]
Downloading daily-21381.cdiff [100%]
Downloading daily-21382.cdiff [100%]
Downloading daily-21383.cdiff [100%]
Downloading daily-21384.cdiff [100%]
Downloading daily-21385.cdiff [100%]
Downloading daily-21386.cdiff [100%]
Downloading daily-21387.cdiff [100%]
Downloading daily-21388.cdiff [100%]
Downloading daily-21389.cdiff [100%]
Downloading daily-21390.cdiff [100%]
Downloading daily-21391.cdiff [100%]
daily.cld updated (version: 21391, sigs: 1850214, f-level: 63, builder: neo)
bytecode.cld is up to date (version: 271, sigs: 47, f-level: 63, builder: anvilleg)
Database updated (4274486 signatures) from db.UK.clamav.net (IP: 129.67.1.218)
WARNING: Clamd was NOT notified: Can't connect to clamd through /var/run/clamav/clamd.sock: No such file or directory

WINE tips: File associations for Windows applications in Linux (continued)

There is a downside to the approach described in my previous post regarding file associations for Windows applications run via WINE, at least in the case of KDE.

By using KDE’s ‘System Settings’ > ‘File Associations’ to change the application launch command from:

env WINEPREFIX="/home/fitzcarraldo/.wine-visio5" WINEARCH="win32" wine /home/fitzcarraldo/.wine-visio5/drive_c/Program\ Files/Visio/Visio32.EXE

to:

env WINEPREFIX="/home/fitzcarraldo/.wine-visio5" WINEARCH="win32" wine C:\\windows\\command\\start.exe /Unix %U

the launch command in KDE’s Kicker application launcher menu is also changed to the latter. Trying to launch the Windows application from the Kicker menu (Wine > Programs > a_Windows_application) then fails. Presumably this is because the wine command expects a filename (the %U in the command string) but that is not being provided.

Alternative 1

One solution is to use a shell script as described in my earlier post: WINE tips: How to associate IrfanView with an image file type in Linux. Kicker can still be used to launch the application (e.g. Wine > Programs > IrfanView) when the menu command is of the following form but no filename is provided (even though the %f is left in the command string):

/home/fitzcarraldo/launch_IrfanView.sh %f

Alternative 2

Another solution – well, really a work-around – is to accept that the Windows application cannot be launched from the Kicker menu and to create a separate Desktop Configuration File in /home/fitzcarraldo/Desktop/ which uses a different command to launch the application. For example, in my previous post the file association I configured via ‘System Settings’ > ‘File Associations’ for Visio was:

env WINEPREFIX="/home/fitzcarraldo/.wine-visio5" WINEARCH="win32" wine C:\\windows\\command\\start.exe /Unix %U

and therefore the command in the Kicker menu entry is the same, but I created a Desktop Configuration File which I named ‘/home/fitzcarraldo/Desktop/Visio 5 Professional‘ which contains the command:

env WINEPREFIX="/home/fitzcarraldo/.wine-visio5" WINEARCH="win32" wine /home/fitzcarraldo/.wine-visio5/drive_c/Program\ Files/Visio/Visio32.EXE

$ ls -la ~/Desktop/Visio*
-rwxrwxrwx 1 fitzcarraldo users 562 Aug 26 17:42 /home/fitzcarraldo/Desktop/Visio 5 Professional

Notice that the command to launch the Windows application does not contain a filename parameter (%U), so when I double-click on the icon on the Desktop it launches Visio.

Summary

Ideally, KDE should be changed to allow the application launching command in ‘System Settings’ > ‘File Associations’ to be edited to be different to the application launching command in the Kicker menu. In the absence of that, you have two alternatives in the case of WINE:

1. Create a shell script to launch the application. This allows you to launch the Windows application via Kicker and by double-clicking on a file of the applicable type.

   or

2. Create a separate Desktop Configuration File in e.g. the ~/Desktop/ directory. This allows you to launch the Windows application by double-clicking on a Desktop Configuration File for the application and by double-clicking on a file of the applicable type. However you cannot launch the application from its entry in the Kicker menu.

WINE tips: File associations of Windows applications in Linux

I have several applications for Windows installed under WINE in Linux. These applications launch correctly if I double-click on a file for that application, but, in the case of some of these applications, the file itself is not opened. Therefore I first have to launch the application and then load the file from within the application (File > Open, or whatever). Some time ago I explained how to fix this in the case of IrfanView by creating a shell script – see my post WINE tips: How to associate IrfanView with an image file type in Linux – but there is an easier way to do it in many cases, as illustrated by the example below for another Windows application I use regularly in Linux. I finally got fed up with not being able to open .vsd (Visio drawing) files by double-clicking on them in Linux, and decided to fix this. The same procedure applies, whatever the Windows application.

I use KDE, but the principle applies whatever Desktop Environment you are using. Just use the relevant File Association configuration tool for that Desktop Environment.

1. I selected ‘System Settings’ > ‘File Associations’ from the KDE Kickoff menu launcher.

2. I entered ‘vsd’ (without the quotes) in the search field in order to find the application associated with that file type.

   The ‘Known Types’ box then displayed the following:

   >- application

3. When I expanded that by clicking on it, the ‘Known Types’ box displayed the following two application file types:

   v- application
           vnd.ms-visio.viewer
           vnd.visio

4. Clicking on either displayed ‘Visio 5.0 Professional’ in the ‘Application Preference Order’ box. I selected it and clicked on ‘Edit…’, which opened a Properties window for the application’s desktop configuration file.

5. I clicked on the ‘Application’ tab. The ‘Command’ box contained the following command:

   env WINEPREFIX="/home/fitzcarraldo/.wine-visio5" WINEARCH="win32" wine /home/fitzcarraldo/.wine-visio5/drive_c/Program\ Files/Visio/Visio32.EXE

   (The wine command itself has to be preceded by the definition of the WINEPREFIX and WINEARCH environment variables because I specified those environment variables originally when I installed the application via WINE.)

   I changed the command to be the following:

   env WINEPREFIX="/home/fitzcarraldo/.wine-visio5" WINEARCH="win32" wine C:\\windows\\command\\start.exe /Unix %U

   for both vnd.ms-viso.viewer and vnd.visio application file types, and clicked on ‘OK’ and ‘Apply’.

That’s all there was to it. Now when I double-click on any file ending with ‘.vsd’, Visio launches as before but the actual file is opened in the application. Very straightforward, and I really should have made the effort to fix it sooner. 🙂