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Hi.
I would like to make a virtual drive with as much components as possible. Sometimes a program doesn't work because is missing something. I would like to use this drive to make temporary installations. It would make it easier to check if the program can work, debug, etc in a drive with as much components as possible. I could then make a final drive with only the essential components and configurations.

Even if i don't install in it all components, it is a problem to download them. My Internet connection isn't very fast and have to wait until one download is finished and go to the next. Also, by then, i usualy forgot which ones i've downloaded.

Can the downloads be done, for example, by a bash script to a local directory and then i install them myself? I would do this, but i don't know where the component links are.

Thanks in advance,
Gabriel

Hi,
Your plan is flawed, because adding a component doesn't always help a program to run, all the contrary.

And second, PlayOnLinux already caches the resources it downloads (in ~/.PlayOnLinux/ressources/).
There are resources that it doesn't cache, sometimes it's an oversight, sometimes it's on purpose, because some ressources change too often to be validated by a hash, so it's not cached either (otherwise the risk is that you're left with a broken file in your cache and all installation attempts using this resource will fail until you manually remove the broken file).
If you have some examples in mind, we could check if it's an oversight or on purpuse.

(You could also install some web proxy cache, but I'm unsure of the efficiency of this approach).

Edited by petch

I thought about trying this at one point too.
Download all the Packages/Libraries/DLL's in the default Virtual Drive so I wouldn't have to install them later.

But I agree with petch, you really don't want to use programs in a virtual drive that has ALL of the packages installed.

Feel free to download them in a new Virtual Drive and all the d3dx9's, dotnet's, vcrun's, etc will reside in your: /home/username/.PlayOnLinux/resources folder

Note: username is where you put your login

All of these packages will amount to 3+ Gigs of data.
I back them all up on my server so I never have to download them again...
The downside is that if a package is updated, I won't get the new version.

More often than not, just installing things willy-nilly will cause more headache then happiness. The less components, the better. It just means that Wine is doing its job. ;)

Yeah, I forgot to add that!
The newer versions of Wine have been amazing and require less and less intervention.
I tested Mass Effect this weekend and only needed d3dx9 & vcrun2005.
Ran perfectly

Really? Niccccceeee... Thats excellent. ME is probably my fav series ever. Ill have to bust out my old PC copy and try it. 1.5.28, right?

I used 1.5.25

Ok. Ill try both. :D

given the frequent issues with downloads,  maybe a better solution is needed. Debian Linux uses Apt and hundreds of mirrored repositories around the world (some packages can even de obtained from archive.org archives!)--why not follow that model?you could the mirror the files (reduce load on the server here), eliminate the need to repeatedly download the same 500mb sp2, over and over again, etc. you could use p2p file sharing like .torrents, and so on. just host a control file here that lists what files are still available and needed, and which can be retired. that way end users can cache files as well.we can also pre-load large files we know we will need... i am trying  to reinstall my debian machine which has playonlinux, but  pol is stopping me from getting things done, mainly because i have to micro-manage and babysit it's installation. i forgot what i need to install next (on debian, not POL) because *all* my work and energy is going to POL right now. it's almost time for me to start callling it shove-wine-up-linux's-butt--sideways, because *play* is not happening here.

 

Edited by Casteele