Linux, Wine & MediaMonkey

Introduction

Can MediaMonkey 3 run on Linux via Wine?

This is a place where working notes about the attempt can be collected.

Inspired by botijo's original work via the forums.

Test Environment

Ubuntu Linux 8.04
MediaMonkey3 lastest beta v3.0.3.1164 for initial tests, debug version.
WINE version 0.9.60.

Adding Wine to Ubuntu

Please follow instructions at http://www.winehq.org/site/download-deb . Version tested here is 0.9.60.

Adding MediaMonkey + Wine

After installing Wine, MediaMonkey can be installed without any problems. If you run MM now, you will have lots of trouble.

MediaMonkey needs some libraries to run. Please use winetricks to install following items:

• gecko as an Internet Explorer alternative
• vb6run provides the OLE libraries
• vcrun6 provides the MFC42 libraries
• wsh56 provides support for VBScript, needed for scripts. vcrun6 and vbrun6 have to be installed before wsh56 or installation will fail.

A Linux package is also needed. It is called winbind. The synaptyc package manager should have this package. It provides ntlm_auth that is needed for OLE, I believe.

In order to reproduce MP3, the MAD plugin is needed. You should delete the file i_wmp3.dll in the Plugins directory. The reason is that i_wmp3.dll requires Windows Media Player, plus the MP3 codecs for WMP. It is simpler to install the MAD plugin.

In order to avoid "Player initialization errors", the files d_*.dll from the Plugins directory need to be deleted. No iPod integration for you! Other devices will also not be able to synchronize.

Wine needs a little bit of configuration before running. Go to Applications/Wine/Configuration and follow these steps:

• In the drive pane select Autodetect
• In the audio pane, select whatever creates some sound to you.

Function Tests

Botijo verified this to work with the settings set in this wiki.

Following items work:

• Tag support
• Database operations
• File operations
• Music output (my ears are itching for more music!)
• Skins (Graphical glitches while changing skins, press Enter after doing so)
• Scripts (some do, but auto scripts are not loaded after restart?)
• Plugins (Milkdrop shows! See screenshot section. Speed is good with MilkDrop)
• System tray icon
• Now playing window shows correctly
• Installation packages .mmip (Show errors, but install correctly)
• Playlist management, including saving
• Reports (Statistics fail due to some obscure SDBUI error, maybe opens a webpage; file based reports work)
• Auto DJ queues songs
• External browser is opened correctly for "Get Info/Buy"

Following items do not work:

• Device synchronization (is USB interface working?). iPod related plugins need to be deleted.
• Opening webpages inside MM (gecko interface does not show anything, does MM rely so much on IE?). This includes Auto tag from Web, and maybe Statistics report.
• CD Rom burning: If CD/DVD is not mounted, it does not show in MM. Blank CD/DVD cannot be mounted, so burning cannot be done. Strangely enough, the burner form shows correct data with a data DVD (see screenshots).
• Autoplaylists do not show
• Party mode is unusable and locks
• URL entry to remote playlist: Wininet error

Apart from all this, please be aware that some skins modifications (mainly resizing of windows) might take some time.

Misc notes and links

Debug version of MM works and can report errors to developers (I hope they see my email).

A way to know what MM is doing is catching all the KERNEL32 debug outputs. Of course you need the debug version of MM to do this. The usual Windows tool DebugView does not work. A crude way to do the same thing under WINE is:

WINEDEBUG=relay wine ./MediaMonkey.exe &> /tmp/MM.log 
grep Debug /tmp/MM.log > MM.log

There are lots of graphical glitches that hinder your progress. Also, whenever a serious error is found (most of the time due to missing DLLs), MM will hang. The only way to continue is to kill the process. This is done with

killall MediaMonkey.exe

Installation packages install correctly, but Xubuntu file manager (dunno if it happens with vanilla Ubuntu one) does not register the filetype with MM. There is also the question that WINE might not be able to translate Unix paths into Windows paths, so the only way to do this is to have the file in the same directory of MM (or in any child one) and execute MM directly from there.

Screenshots

MM on Wine!

Working script example

AlbumArt view

Extension management

Option window

Graphical glitch after skin change, press ENTER to close window

Script added a node to the tree, Album Art viewer

CD burner screen with CD drive being analyzed correctly

Milkdrop works too!