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, check notes)
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"
Autoplaylists (only basic tested)
Send to Virtual CD
Gold registration
Find from the same artist

Following items do not work:

Device synchronization, as I have deleted all synchronization plugins
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.
Because of previous point, any URL related operation fails (e.g. opening an external URL, opening Podcast directory node). MM opens a dialog and shows a WININET error.
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 on click, but they show if you browse node by node with the keyboard
Party mode is unusable and locks
Send to Email shows Thunderbird, songs are not attached

Apart from all this, please be aware that some skins modifications (mainly resizing of windows) are painful slow.

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 (beware of big files!):

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

If you resort to debugging why some feature does not work, please have a look at WINE documentation. It helps a lot.

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. Even in the case that the filetype .mmip is being registered correctly, WINE might not be able to translate UNIX paths (e.g. /usr/bin/) into Windows own format (unrelated example: C:\Program Files). At least that is something I read, although I do not remember where. What it means is that the argument passed to MM will be rubish, so MM will ignore it. As a workaround, you can copy your .mmip into MM install directory and run MediaMonkey.exe <myscript.mmip> from MM installation directory. This way no paths are being walked (pun intended).