I'm on Linux right now

[nxIsle]

Hi "Guyz" as friend Jak would say;

I'm on Knoppix 3.8.2 (live cd) and have Proxomitron 4.4 running with very few problems ... sweet! I have wine's .wine fake windows on a usb along with my mozilla program and profile, so it keeps it between reboots.

I can't get 4.5 running, though, and can't get ssl going with 4.4; of course, lots of filters (many of JD's Advanced, and Sidki's alt uopf filter) don't work with 4.4. Still, I can't complain (heck, I'm jubilant!). Lots of filters do work, including Scott's original ones. Prox is the one "windows-only" app I have to have.

Anyone have any luck getting 4.5j running under wine on Debian (or Knoppix)? I want to do a hd install and am thinking of going with Debian. I want to just install Knoppix ("omg, I love it"), but I've read you may have problems with upgrading later, so some have suggested going straight to Debian. (Info-overload has this liberal arts mind reeling .)

[sidki3003]

I would ask Paul Rupe, his old email is listed here, or try his sf.net one.

[nxIsle]

Thanks, Sidki. I'll do that if I can't get 4.5 working. His page was worth visiting just to grab a few filters I'd forgotten about.

I need to figure out the debugging stuff for wine; that may provide some clues. Re ssl in 4.4, I'm wondering if it's wine, or the 4.4 version can't handle the new ssl files: I remember Prox gave me an error message about them.

The wine app page for Proxo only lists 3, 4.1, and 4.3, but 4.4 works ok for me. Oddysey mentioned 4.5 worked for him on SUSE 9.0, and with openSUSE free arriving, that has possibilities. I can't recall anyone else mentioning 4.5, but maybe I haven't looked hard enough.

I'm sorta inundated with figuring stuff out at the moment. I've been wanting to go Linux for a while, and suddenly ... now is the time.

[sidki3003]

I've searched the prox-list archives, following quotes are a bit old, tho.

Paul Rupe Wrote:Try editing default.cfg and changing
Systray = TRUE
to FALSE and see if you get any further. If that doesn't help, try these
too:
NoTextures = TRUE
UseSSLeay = FALSE

I'm running Prox 4.5 right now on Red Hat 9 using the latest CVS version of
Wine.

Quote:Proxomitron works great under Wine (I've been running it that way for a
couple years now), but Wine itself can be tricky to set up sometimes.

HTH,
sidki

[Oddysey]

sidki3003 Wrote:

Paul Rupe Wrote:......
I'm running Prox 4.5 right now on Red Hat 9 using the latest CVS version of Wine.

Ah, I've been remiss in keeping up with the times..... sigh.

SuSE is a good, stable product, but I've been with RedHat (and it's offshoot, Mandrake) for so long, that I feel a bit "disloyal" whenever I fire up something else. I'll give this a try in the next few whiles.


Oddysey

[nxIsle]

Thanks for digging that up, sidki! 4.5 still didn't work for me, though. Not sure if it's 1) a problem with Knoppix-live and wine; 2) a misconfigured wine; or 3) a misconfigured chair to keyboard interface.

I didn't follow up too much on it, because I'm spending a lot of time reading up on Linux, especially Debian (just got through the first reading of the install manual for Debian sarge). I also want to check out SuSE, partially because of other comments on it, and partially because of Oddysey's earlier post. I see they have a 1.5 gig live-dvd available, so I think I'll boot back into win, dl, burn and try it.

[Oddysey]

besafe;

Bear in mind that I'm still more in the Windows world than linux, mainly due to having to deal with other folks who refuse to change. (Hey, I've got one old customer that's still running a network app that I wrote for MS-DOS 5!! According to him, "If it ain't broke, why fix it?" )

Wine is always tricky. After all, you're depending on an author who essentially sat down with a book of system commands for each OS, and wrote a translator/emulator on a one-to-one basis. Then there's the speed issue. That can be due to a given compiler, as much if not more than the app source code itself.

It's a never ending battle to make things work, and that's the one place where MS still outshines the vast majority of linux OS'es and apps. But I personally think that's due more to long-time familiarity and experience, rather than to a best-practices design paradigm. As usual, there are hungry people out there in linux-land, and they are not gonna rest until they've tamed the beast!

"Damn the torpedos! Full speed ahead!!"


Oddysey

[43unite]

Tried Privoxy but Proxo has much greater capabilities and IMHO is easier to use.

Win98SE dual boot w/simplyMepis Linux v3.3.1-1

Wine site:
http://www.winehq.com/

Documentation:
http://www.winehq.com/site/documentation

Don't be overwhelmed by docs.

Muddled through this yesterday and here's what I remember basically doing (you will need to be root to do many, if not all, of the following):

Used Synaptic to install 'Wine' package. Then ran 'wineinstall'.

I think that is was 'wineinstall' that created Windows emulation structure & folders in the home directory under '.wine' (DL the pdf). It is a hidden folder so needed to show all files.

DL'd ProxN45j.exe (not the zip) in Linux from:
http://www.proxomitron.info/files/index.html
http://www.proxomitron.info/files/download/ProxN45j.exe

Selected "Open with Wine" & installed normally. 'Wine'/Linux handled full install automatically. Rebooted. A Proxo icon was automatically placed on the desktop and Proxo app listed in KDE Wine 'start' directory.

Need to manually start Proxo each session by clicking desktop icon shortcut prior to opening browser. When running, an icon is opened in 'system tray'.

Anyone know how to autoload Proxo at Linux boot?

Needed to sync the proxy ports with Linux browsers, copy & substitute all of Sidki's config stuff from Windows to appropriate wine/Linux folder (don't forget certs, new zlib, dlls), etc. unless you want to use originals.

Also copied Tahoma.ttf and Andalemo.ttf fonts from Windows to /usr/share/fonts folder (main folder seems good enough). This makes Proxo's displays readable.

Tried running ProxoPatcher version but Linux didn't display it properly.

So far looks like Proxo's performing normally with latest Sidki config/updates and Kye-U security pack, all copied in full from Windows. With Firefox it runs fine but with Konqueror the browser 'loops' when accessing a site. It's probably a config issue somewhere (I'm a Linux newbie) but not a problem as I default to Firefox.

Sorry if I've forgotten something. Based on the 'Wine' docs I expected a nightmare process, it was a bit detailed but actually easy (looking back on it). Hope this helps.

[nxIsle]

Thanks, 43unite, and !

It definitely helps to know another person has got 4.5j working on wine! And ssl is working with that also?

I half-suspect that the version of wine I'm using may be the problem. I'm unable to install 4.5j at all, though I can unzip it into the correct location. I think that's how I installed 4.4 and 4.3 as well -- both of which work (except for ssl and more advanced filters).

I tried to sudo apt-get upgrade, but ran out of memory cache for apt-get, as I recall. I hope to get a hd install done soon, at which point I should be able to try another version of wine, and hopefully get 4.5j up.

For the record, I've got wine 0.0.20050310-1.1 which comes with Knoppix 3.8.2. Could you tell me the version you're using? It should be shown in Synaptic, I think - I checked mine in Kpackage.

Re: wine docs -- I also found the wine setup to be easier than it sounds - though it came with Knoppix so I didn't have to install. Knoppix has wine in the K-menu; I clicked on it, and it began the configuration, creating the fake_windows structure, etc.

Good question about having Proxo start up at boot -- I'm a Linux newbie but, I think you could start it from a shell script here: /etc/rc.d/rc.local . (Or Konqueror > Go > Autostart, which will show .kde/Autostart/ and in which you can put a link ( wine "path to Proxomitron.exe" ) ... sort of like windows startup folder.) More here - possibly outdated.

OT, here's a png for the desktop shortcut -- basically I opened a Proxomitron icon with Gimp, saved as png, did a minimal blur on it and made it semi-transparent, then merged the images. Makes it a little smoother than the ico!

Oddysey Wrote:Wine is always tricky. ...As usual, there are hungry people out there in linux-land, and they are not gonna rest until they've tamed the beast!

"Damn the torpedos! Full speed ahead!!"

"No retreat, no surrender!"

[43unite]

SSL is working.

Wine 0.0.20050725-1 (via Synaptic).

Thanks for the autostart link. Will read it again, but at this point it's over my head as a newbie.

Tried the .kde/Autostart/ thing but get error msgs. I think that's because Proxo runs via Wine, and it may be a problem to autostart such an app. Manual start is never a problem. Just need to remember to do it prior to browsing. So moved the Proxo shortcut from the desktop to the toolbar, next to Firefox, to remind me.

I've played with Ubuntu, Kubuntu, Knoppix, and settled on simplyMepis for now. A friend is trialing Mandrake. Many opinions, including ours, is that Mepis is superior in layout, ease of use, workability and system recognition. Suggest that you may want to give it a try. Live CD is also installable.

My objective is complete Linux migration before all MS support for Win98SE terminates in June 2006, and to take Proxo /home with me! LOL.

Had my fill of Windows, MS, and all their related vulnerabilites, spyware, adware, activeX, restrictive limitations & authorizations, untrusted computing, etc.!

Again, my Proxo install with the .exe version was easy because Mepis gave me the option of letting Wine install it from the site, rather than downloading, then installing myself.

Like you I'm planning a larger HDD purchase. I'll keep Win98SE and dual boot, like now. So will probably end up with a 120gig drive (so to avoid ANY possibility of problems with a larger capacity drive & Win98). Now leaning towards Western Digital. Read several negative test reviews re:Seagate firmware. Have a 5 yr. old 20gig Maxtor now and like it. WD seems to have good rep for reliability. Maxtor is ATA133, WD is ATA100. But think that is not critical.

[43unite]

When starting with .kde/autostart/ get the following error message:

"Proxomitron Application Error - Error Loading Default Configuration"

Evidently the default.cfg and lists are not able to load and the load process stops.

The folder set up is the same as under Windows, and manually loading Proxo is successful and error-free.

So, again, I think that this is somehow caused by attempting to run a Wine emulation app at autostart. Wine continues to run in background as long as Proxo is open.

[Oddysey]

43unite;

Quote:When starting with .kde/autostart/ get the following error message:

"Proxomitron Application Error - Error Loading Default Configuration"

Evidently the default.cfg and lists are not able to load and the load process stops.

The folder set up is the same as under Windows, and manually loading Proxo is successful and error-free.

So, again, I think that this is somehow caused by attempting to run a Wine emulation app at autostart. Wine continues to run in background as long as Proxo is open.

Yoiu guys do know that you can run a shell script at any time, right? Why not just set your 'browser start' icon to point to a script that starts Proxo first, then your browser?

Think of it as a batch file (which term was originally stolen from the OS/JCL world, which was the forerunner of Unix ).


Oddysey

[43unite]

Thanks for your suggestion. Sounds promising. I'd like to try it.

But I do not know how to do what you suggested, being new at Linux.

Could you provide details? How to point 'browser start' icon and what/where script that starts Proxo first? Etc.

[43unite]

Problem solved!

I merely dragged the Proxo shortcut icon from the taskbar to .kde/autostart/ and created a link.

That's it!!! Proxo now automatically (and successfully) system loads quickly at Mepis boot.

I realized that the Proxo shortcut already contained the necessary Wine linkage to proxomitron.exe. So rather than reinvent, I took the easy way.

[Oddysey]

43unite;

Good going! There's always more than one way to skin a cat. (Oh, wait..... Sorry, Sonny! (That's him in my avatar.))


Oddysey