[gentoo-user] Re: Flashing hardware via WINE ?

[Kai Krakow]

Am Sun, 19 Mar 2017 09:57:22 +0100
schrieb tuxic@××××××.de:

> On 03/19 09:37, Kai Krakow wrote:
> > Am Sun, 19 Mar 2017 09:09:51 +0100
> > schrieb tuxic@××××××.de:
> >
> > > Hi,
> > >
> > > I have a smart NiMH-charger with serial port (normally used to
> > > dump chargeing curves to the PC).
> > > The chargers firmware can bei flashed with a flashtool provided
> > > by the vendor. The communication is via serial port. I have
> > > a PCI=>serial.ports-card installed in my PC.
> > >
> > > The command
> > >
> > >     file <flashing tool>
> > >
> > > results in this information
> > >
> > >     PE32 executable (GUI) Intel 80386, for MS Windows
> > >
> > > . As Linux user by heart I have no Windows.
> > >
> > > May the attempt to install wine and use it for this purpose
> > > a thinkable way or are the precoditions that way, that it
> > > is due to those a NO-NO...?
> >
> > Flashing via serial port should be no problem from within Wine. It
> > requires no special driver implementation.
> >
> > However, if the hardware implements its own driver behind the serial
> > port, it won't work anyways because on the Wine side there will be
> > no such driver.
> >
> > So I think, it should either work or fail early without doing
> > damage.
> >
> >
> > > Does anyone have experience with such an attempt?
> >
> > I'm usually doing such things from VirtualBox by passing through the
> > hardware (usually USB, that's easily done from within the GUI).
> >
> > VirtualBox can also pass COM ports to the VM. You may want to try
> > that as a second chance.
> >
> >
> > --
> > Regards,
> > Kai
> >
> > Replies to list-only preferred.
>
> Hi Kai (that's a rhyme! :)

Yeah, I know that one... If you are from Germany, you'll also get why
my former nick (some years ago) was "Shark" :-)

> I have installed Virtualbox already and use the Linux Image I
> installed there for banking purposes only. Feels more secure.

So something like application virtualization... You could maybe run in
an isolated container, only exposing the xserver or run inside a nested
xserver. It would probably greatly reduce startup times and not waste a
complete image.

> I would prefer the WIndows-in-a-(virtual)box-solution) as you
> do -- if I would own a Windows installation disc. But do not.

Well, you can easily get an image from MS using a Linux browser. Just
go to the Windows 10 download page. It will show a selection form to
choose the ISO instead of the nasty downloader they present to Windows
browsers. Then install this inside the VM. Even if not activated, it
runs for 1-2 hours before shutting down which should be enough for most
purposes you'll need it for.

If you already activated a Windows installation with your MS account,
with some luck your Win10 VM may even become digitally activated (this
happened to me). No cracks involved. Should be legal enough. ;-)

> But it is good to know, that the wine-workaround would either
> work or fail too early to damage anything.

I tried some, and all failed because they didn't even find the device.
The ones that worked where either network based (flashing via IP
protocol) or using other simple interfaces (COM or LPT).

> Is there anything important to know before doing an emerge
> of wine (need I more than app-emulation/wine?) -- I have
> literally no experience with this emulator - the flashing
> tool is a 32bit gui application...) ???

Wine = wine is no emulater ;-)

Actually, it's the Windows API implemented as .so files plus an EXE
loader to enable the kernel to run PE binaries (instead of ELF). So
nothing is emulated, it's running native. There's also a thin layer of
drivers implemented to transform API calls to native kernel interfaces,
like HID (for input devices). So everything connecting to simple
HID-USB should also work (some custom USB hardware just implement a HID
interface, it's simple and cheap).

If your applications work depends on if the required parts of the API
had been implemented (including the bugs that exists between different
versions of Windows).

So, with this knowledge, you simply emerge wine with the useflags that
look useful to you. If you don't need graphics (DirectX) or don't want
to apply your linux GUI theme to Windows apps, you can ignore the
staging useflag. Wine can be compiled with both 64bit and 32bit support.

After installation, get familiar with the winecfg utility. It allows
mapping unix path to Windows drive letters. And it allows to set
Windows version per EXE you run (to expose different API bugs and
behavior to your application). Also, you can set DDL overrides (which
is what Windows itself uses when you run applications in compatibility
mode, or when you put DLL overrides manually in the registry). Tho,
here you can decide between native (native DLL on filesystem) or builtin
(*.dll.so file from Wine), and the order in which they are tried.

You may also run with different WINEDEBUG settings if you want to work
out problems. There are fixme lines which usually show stub
implementations of API calls (functions that do nothing, and are there
just to return success or fail). You can use it like this:

# WINEDEBUG=-all wine your-exe-file.exe

If you'd like to easily manage different Wine prefixes, I'd recommend
using PlayOnLinux - it's not only useful to games. It also has a long
list of scripted installers for installing popular Windows extensions
that you may need (fonts, VB runtimes, C runtimes) in different
versions.

And then, maybe you want to use winetricks, tho it may be a bit tricky
to run this with PlayOnLinux because it will default to the
non-PlayOnLinux wine prefix. Easy work-around: Launch a commandline
shell from within PlayOnLinux and run winetricks there.

With PlayOnLinux you can easily reset or discard wine prefixes if you
messed up. Also, you can see each prefix as some sort of compatibility
profile you individually crafted per Windows application you are
running.

-- 
Regards,
Kai

Replies to list-only preferred.