Multiboxing in Linux

[ShadowBumble]

I would like some feedback about multiboxing in Linux i know it can be done by running Keyclone in Wine but for some reason my X keeps crashing then.

I know some people are running boxing on Linux so i wonder what they are using

ISboxer in Wine ?
Synergy2 ?
Keyclone in Wine ?

I am using Ubuntu Lucid 10.04 LTS and running Twinview.

[Daeri]

Hi,
My first advice would be to make sure you're running the latest version of wine. Some distributions ship an outdated one, so that's the first thing to check.

I used to use keyclone and it basically all worked out of the box. The only issue I have is capital characters not properly duplicated across all accounts but it seems an issue with wine so there's nothing to be done about it. I recently switched to another software (see my sig) but it's still beta and not internationalized yet so I won't recommand giving it a try unless you understand French :P

[ShadowBumble]

MoW seems promising but my french is just too rusty, so i will wait for the "english" version when it comes out.

Yeah problem isn't with keyclone nor Wine i think my setup just is crappy since when i launch multiple instances in Wine it always show me as 2880x900 desktop ( i run 2x 1440x900 LCD panels ), so it's probebly nvidia screwing up on the twinview.

And running 3+ makes the Xserver crash as it seems.

[Daeri]

My bad, I missed the part about twinview :/ Maybe you could try disabling twinview and see if X still keep crashing so as to make sure the issue really comes from there ? My computer only has one screen and I know almost nothing about twinview, sorry. But I fail to see what's wrong with having the two screens merged into a single 2880x900 desktop ? I thought that creating an extended desktop was the whole point of twinview ?

[zenga]

But I fail to see what's wrong with having the two screens merged into a single 2880x900 desktop ? I thought that creating an extended desktop was the whole point of twinview ?

Correct

I run all my wow clients in windowed mode so i can resize/drag them where i want. Simply putting the resolution in each respective wtf is all i need to do.

[ShadowBumble]

Correct

I run all my wow clients in windowed mode so i can resize/drag them where i want. Simply putting the resolution in each respective wtf is all i need to do.


Well i got this in my Main wtf file :



SET gxResolution "1280x768"
SET gxWindow "1"
and this in my slaves



SET gxResolution "800x600"
SET gxWindow "1"
So basically the WTF files are set to windowed mode and a fixed resolution but when i launch them in keyclone they end up at a max monitor size of 2880x900 for every client which clutters my Videocard and in the end will crash it ( 5x 2880x900 clients might be a little overkill ), and i cannot seem to get how i can override those settings :S.

I can ofcourse make launchers for them like this

wine explorer /desktop=Main,1024x768 /MultiBox/Main/Wow.exe -opengl
wine explorer /desktop=Slave1,800x600 /MultiBox/Slave1/Wow.exe -opengl
wine explorer /desktop=Slave2,800x600 /MultiBox/Slave2/Wow.exe -opengl
wine explorer /desktop=Slave3,800x600 /MultiBox/Slave3/Wow.exe -opengl
wine explorer /desktop=Slave4,800x600 /MultiBox/Slave4/Wow.exe -opengl

But this defeats the purpose of having keyclone since i won't be able to send my keys from one window to the other, then again i fixed the resolution issue then

[Daeri]

Under keyclone settings, general tab, you can check "auto-add windows titled 'world of warcraft'" and it will send keystrokes to any wow client you ran manually.

You can also disable the maximizer (maximizer tab, uncheck "enablle maximizer" and keyclone shouldn't try to resize windows anymore.

[ShadowBumble]

Under keyclone settings, general tab, you can check "auto-add windows titled 'world of warcraft'" and it will send keystrokes to any wow client you ran manually.

You can also disable the maximizer (maximizer tab, uncheck "enablle maximizer" and keyclone shouldn't try to resize windows anymore.

Maximizer is disabled and adding wow clients is not working since every wine started program runs in it own sandbox so basically that means that Wine Keyclone and Wine World of Warcraft are running on 2 different virtual desktops and cannot communicate with eachother.

[Daeri]

Well I don't see why you run them in separate desktops ? I just tested running a client this way and indeed keyclone failed to auto-add the window. Is that for a performance gain ? I would just run all my wow clients directly :

wine /MultiBox/Main/Wow.exe -opengl
wine /MultiBox/Slave1/Wow.exe -opengl
and so on

[ShadowBumble]

Well I don't see why you run them in separate desktops ? I just tested running a client this way and indeed keyclone failed to auto-add the window. Is that for a performance gain ? I would just run all my wow clients directly :

wine /MultiBox/Main/Wow.exe -opengl
wine /MultiBox/Slave1/Wow.exe -opengl
and so on

No if keyclone doesn't reconizes the windows ( so starting them straight like you suggested ) the keys aren't broadcasted over the different slaves. basically leaving you with a 4x follow only on your main.

That the reason why i am using keyclone to broadcast the keys, if i start the WoW clients from the keyclone launcher it pumps up the screensize even with maximizer disabled.

And gives the performances issues it almost has to be twinview, running in seperate X windows works fine and running single screen runs fine also. and that kinda defeats the purpose of running 2 monitors.

[zenga]

Not entirely sure what you mean, and only did (quite a while ago) a brief test with keyclone. What i did was fire up the wow clients one by one, then run keyclone in wine, and basically everything worked out of the box. I don't really saw a need to start wow from inside keyclone, unless u want to do PiP.

That being said i see little to no use for using keyclone under linux, since hotkeynet, autohotkey (compile exe, then run) and even isboxer are supposed to work with wine. Not to mention that there are some native linux tools that can accomplish the same.

[ShadowBumble]

Not entirely sure what you mean, and only did (quite a while ago) a brief test with keyclone. What i did was fire up the wow clients one by one, then run keyclone in wine, and basically everything worked out of the box. I don't really saw a need to start wow from inside keyclone, unless u want to do PiP.

That being said i see little to no use for using keyclone under linux, since hotkeynet, autohotkey (compile exe, then run) and even isboxer are supposed to work with wine. Not to mention that there are some native linux tools that can accomplish the same.

If there is a native alternative i absolutely have no use to use keyclone i presume you are talking about xdotool that is in your signature ?

[Daeri]

so you mean keyclone won't auto add windows if you run wow clients like I and Zenga said ?

[ShadowBumble]

so you mean keyclone won't auto add windows if you run wow clients like I and Zenga said ?

Nope that is correct i did find out after playing around with some switches that if i create the launchers like this

wine "D:\Multibox\Main\Wow.exe"
wine "D:\Multibox\Slave1\Wow.exe"
wine "D:\Multibox\Slave2\Wow.exe"
wine "D:\Multibox\Slave3\Wow.exe"
wine "D:\Multibox\Slave4\Wow.exe"

instead of

wine explorer /desktop=Main,1024x768 /MultiBox/Main/Wow.exe -opengl
wine explorer /desktop=Slave1,800x600 /MultiBox/Slave1/Wow.exe -opengl
wine explorer /desktop=Slave2,800x600 /MultiBox/Slave2/Wow.exe -opengl
wine explorer /desktop=Slave3,800x600 /MultiBox/Slave3/Wow.exe -opengl
wine explorer /desktop=Slave4,800x600 /MultiBox/Slave4/Wow.exe -opengl

that keyclone is auto adding them, and it brings a lot more stability altho the windows are now actually 1024x768 and 800x600 for the slaves if i go to video options ingame it still claims to be on 2880x900, yet it doesn't burden my Videocard anymore since my memory use went down a lot.

So basically it comes down that if you use the native dir structure of Linux in wine to boot it like this

wine "/Multibox/Main/Wow.exe" -opengl

it doesn't show but if you use the wine dir structure ( with mapping drive letters to dirs/drives ) it does work.

[Daeri]

Glad to read things are starting to work on your end ;)

The strange part is that I've no trouble running a Windows program using a linux native dir structure. Maybe this is something that depends on configuration specific to the distribution ?!

[ShadowBumble]

Glad to read things are starting to work on your end ;)

The strange part is that I've no trouble running a Windows program using a linux native dir structure. Maybe this is something that depends on configuration specific to the distribution ?!


I am using a quite Mainstream ( well MS in Linux terms that is ) distrobution ( ubuntu ) so i have no clue but since it all works i am just happy :D Just hope this info might be handy for other people later on.