newsbin.com

I have a problem with a virgin install of NB on wine, and I'm thinking a simple link might solve a lot of problems in this scenario.

In wine, I have my filters.xml, settings.db3, etc. all living in:

$HOME/.wine/drive_c/windows/profiles/user/Application Data/Newsbin


Now I can change all sorts of things: font selections, column widths in panes, adding filters - and none of them are saved between sessions - and none of the files in here have their datestamp altered either. Obviously no coincidence!

I'm wondering if on windows there's internal links to locations that aren't being mirrored on wine - and perhaps NB can't access these files for that reason? I'm getting no errors in either wine or NB - just nothing gets saved. Don't ask me why groups and servers works - no idea.

Just wondering if you had any thoughts, Quade.

Also - minor thing - NB always insists on creating a firectory "Newsbin Download" in my $HOME whenever I start it. I have a different download location set, and it works fine, but still NB keeps creating this(and not using it).

DT

Addendum: just noticed these files(plus spools and chunks) are also in:

$HOME/.wine/drive_c/windows/profiles/user/My Documents/Newsbin

and these ones *do* get datestamped. Why would they be in two locations? I've only started with a very recent beta, so I doubt this is a remnant from an old version. Which of the two directories are relevant to NB? I'm going to fiddle with links in the meantime...

Why not try changing the NB DATA path to a better location? That way you get all the files away from that location.

I've just tried setting up links, linking the two sets of files together, and it works! I may also look at that suggestion too, itimpi, but I'd be concerned about some sort of file munging happening.

It may be that those two locations are links in windows already, in which case this is a wine issue and makes a great Linux FAQ entry, but otherwise it seems NB saves to one location, but reads from another for some settings.

DT

If you remember early on there was a switch from "Application Data" to "My Documents" for some files. I can try to put some logging in there.

Yup, that did the trick, itimpi - and is much more elegant than links. Essentially the lesson here is:

Install Newsbin.
Change Data Path to:
$HOME/.wine/drive_c/windows/profiles/user/Application Data/Newsbin
...proceed with setup

where "user" is your windows user account, usually just your linux id by default.

I'm not going to put this in the Linux FAQ just yet until Quade weighs in. Seems odd to me that NB would be writing to one location but reading from another.

DT

Yah, could be a version change thing, Quade, in which case this probably shouldn't be a FAQ entry, just hoary old beta's causing me grief. I'm going to do another virgin install from the latest just to verify.

DT

[EDIT] Yup - it's an old beta issue. New install, from scratch, and everything goes into, and points to, the Application Data/Newsbin directory. At worse, this should be a warning FAQ entry for those using NB for a while. I find it odd this never seemed to cause any problems when beta-testing on Windows, but there yah go.

I don't actually think it looks in two places for those files.

I somehow got into a state where it seemed that way, at least for servers and groups vs the other config files, but best to let it lie. A clean install of a new version and all is well.

DT

The config file is found via the registry entry (which is probably where the legacy bit comes from), and the remaining files via the DATA path setting in the config file. I guess there is absolutely no reason why these need to point to the same place.

Good point - betcha that was it...

DT