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Hi all,

This is rather a general cross over question. Is it possible to suspend bottles I have installed. I create a new bottle for every game I am going to install (this keeps things cleaner) and therefore have a lot of bottles at the moment. I know that there is a button there for 'quitting' the bottles. However it reinitializes the bottle at the moment after the quit. Is there a way to totally suspend a bottle (i.e., that it will not be reinitialized every time I open cross over games but will only be active again when I clear the suspension)?

Thanks a lot, regards,

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Hi,

No one has clearly explained to me exactly what 'initializing bottles' actually does.
I do know that after such initialization (the bottle displays as being 'ready'), there is
nothing to 'suspend' ...ie; the bottle is not actually running ; it's just 'ready for use'.
If you hit 'quit bottle' in this instance, all that will happen is cxsetup will reinitialize
the bottle again to it's 'ready' state once again...this is probably what you're seeing.

That said, you'll only notice this -if- you start cxsetup ('manage bottles') ; the rest of
the time (typical usage) you won't be using cxsetup -- you'll just be starting the game/app
from a desktop or menu shortcut, and (I believe..) in this case only the bottle that's about
to be used gets initialized. As I usually have upwards of 20 or so bottles installed at any
one time, believe me ... I know exactly what you're talking about here... 8)

The only way I know of to avoid this at present, is not to start cxsetup (manage bottles)
unless you really have to (or alternately, start it once and just leave it running as it uses
very very little system resources) -- be equally aware I'm speaking to the linux situation
here, I'm not real sure how the Mac version of CX is handling this.....

...hmmm....I do know I mentioned this in a beta report however, and one of the codeweavers
crew explained as much to me as I relate to you here above .... I'll see if I can track that
down further for you if I can ; ...ummm.....can you just answer a couple of small questions
in this regard?....how many bottles do you normally have installed? Do you have any bottles
installed with IE7 and/or emulated virtual desktop enabled? What exactly about this behavior
is troubling you?....I can ask one of the Supportive Ninjas about it...

Cheers!

Hi Don,

Thanks for the very detailed response.

20 bottles are quite a number, however I see that you are quite a senior member of cross over software. Though I have been using the software for about 2 weeks I have around 8 bottles for now. Furthermore as I have mentioned I have the inclination to install all of my games & software into different bottles, so this number in future will seem to get higher. I do this so that I can play with my installations without breaking the others, and so that I can advocate about my games better to the people (you probably know what I am talking about).

Actually before running the task manager of a particular bottle, I haven't noticed that this might create a problem (having too many bottles). However, if you run the task manager of any initialized bottle, you will see that some processes are loaded even if you haven't run anything with that bottle yet. These processes for mac are winewrapper.exe, services.exe, winedevice.exe, explorer.exe (I excluded taskmng.exe since I have run it and it might be the case that explorer.exe is also run at the moment I have run taskmng.exe). As you can see, I don't know how much system recourses cross over uses for these processes, however for every bottle initialized it runs at least 3 programs in the background always. As my bottles increasing in numbers I thought that this might create a problem in the future (when I have 20 bottles like you). I don't see that COG is using too much ram yet, however ram is not the only system resource I am afraid of and it just feels wrong to me that something is running even if you don't need it.

The other place I felt that initializing the bottles might create a problem is that when you have very high disc activity (try copying some HD movies to or from your disc :)), the initialization of the bottles start to take a looot of time. I haven't figured it out why yet, however I know it since I can track it from manage bottles or the game menus won't load at the main menu before the related bottle is initialized yet. This might create a problem since it takes more than a couple of minutes to initialize all of my bottles (8 of them) in this case and if the game I want to test/play is in the latest bottle then I have to wait until the end to start it. I don't know if this happens also in linux, but this is the case in mac.

Short answers to your questions: I have currently 7 bottles, which will increase quite a lot in near future. I have installed IE7 for none of them, however almost all of them are virtual desktop enabled (I don't see why this might create a problem) and I switch from full screen to virtual desktop quite a lot. What is troubling me is I just tried to explain :)

Cheers,

Hi,

 ...... actually, I'm just a senior advocate and helping crossover so that  

we can take over the microsoft software empire (and the world) by 2018 ....<grin>....

The behavior you describe is pretty much identical in the linux case - thanks
for the detail. I'm probably at the 'power user' end of the crossover users
scale, and thus tend to be a little more forgiving of some behavior just because
I'm doing things with the software your 'average everyday user' might not...it's
useful to have feedback such as yours here to better qualify my outlooks 8)

'Isolating' game installations into individual bottles is very sound practice
so do continue to do that -- I know there's a cxg-9 update 'in the wings' somewhere
but as always I've no idea when that'll make it's appearance....I'll have a chat
with one of the codeweavers Mighty Ninjas about where this is all headed...

Cheers!

Hi Don,

I too want to end the Microsoft empire as soon as possible, believe me :)
That said, I really didn't want to sound as this is very bad thing for cross over games, or a very bad defect, neither I wanted to offend anybody. I too, appreciate the things that COG gives to me and I am very grateful for this. I just thought naturally and since it can say a bottle is ready and each bottle is running at least some applications, I thought that I could just turn the ones off that I don't need for the moment. It should even be understood as a mere feature request for the next releases.

Again thank you very much for your detailed and knowledgable information.

Cheers,

Hi Kivanc,
No need to feel apologetic -- I too happen to believe this
behavior is somewhat anomalous ; that said I also expect the 'average
normal user' to have up to at least 10 bottles at any one time as well,
which is why I was after your feedback 8) ..ie; you shouldn't have to
wait as long as you currently have to, to do something with CX, when
you only have few/several bottles....

...I did have a chat with one of the Glorious Ninjas about this - that
entity did concur with my views on the matter, however could not tell
me exactly what the future is wrt to this behavior at present...I was
on the other hand bestowed with some Ninja Wisdom...

...apparently the initialization process only scans the $bottledir when
it's doing what it does -- ergo, if you move a (already installed and
working but not currently being used) bottle outside this scan path, it
won't be initialized. As bottles themselves are all self-contained, this
sort of operation will not damage the bottle in any way (and is lots quicker
than archiving/restoring bottles)...thus, the 'sane' workaround would be
something like;

archive the bottle first (std backup procedure)
make a directory somewhere in your $homedir .. ie; mkdir ~/bottlecooler
move the bottle not currently being used into that directory .. ie; mv ~/.cxgames/(bottle_name) ~/bottlecooler/
reverse the operation when you want to use that bottle .. ie; mv ~/bottlecooler/(bottle_name) ~/.cxgames/

I'm not sure what your WM might think about that wrt desktop icons/menu shortcuts,
but as a workaround it'd work...and if you use a shortcut and it doesn't work, your
own brain will have to inject it's own script of "Doh! I haven't moved the bottle back!"
or such and similar 8) I'll probably hoist a ticket on this today and see if I can
get a bit more feedback from one of the codeweavers devs as well...

..."On their great power, we do contemplate, herein this day!"....

Cheers!

Kivanc Muslu wrote:

However, if you run the task manager of any initialized bottle, you
will see that some processes are loaded even if you haven't run
anything with that bottle yet. These processes for mac are
winewrapper.exe, services.exe, winedevice.exe, explorer.exe (I
excluded taskmng.exe since I have run it and it might be the case
that explorer.exe is also run at the moment I have run taskmng.exe).

All of those processes are support overhead which need to run any time an app is running in that bottle. Since the taskmgr is itself a wine task, the act of running taskmgr spawns the family of support processes.

A few seconds after a bottle finishes initialization it stops incurring any process overhead. It's only when you look in the bottle using a wine process that the overhead appears. You can verify this by using ps or the OSX activity monitor rather than taskmgr.

-Andrew