Wine needs to disable the mmap_min_addr setting silently and automatically

[Scott Ritchie]

Steve Langasek wrote:
> On Fri, Jul 11, 2008 at 02:27:06PM -0700, Scott Ritchie wrote:
>> A change to the kernel in Hardy has completely broken Wine's support for
>> 16 bit applications (as well as DOS ones).
> 
>> Right now, users have to manually modify /etc/sysctl.conf and change
>> vm.mmap_min_addr = 65536  to vm.mmap_min_addr = 0.  Otherwise, some of
>> their programs refuse to launch and others may start crashing.  This is
>> obviously unworkable, so I've been thinking of various fixes.
> 
> For intrepid and beyond, the procps package supports loading sysctl settings
> not only from /etc/sysctl.conf, but also from /etc/sysctl.d.  So the obvious
> solution is for each of dosemu and wine to ship a file of their own under
> /etc/sysctl.d/ that disables this setting.  (Though I would question how
> appropriate it is these days to enable that by default for wine, if only
> 16-bit programs need it.)
> 
> Ideally you would also re-process the sysctl settings on package install,
> probably by calling "invoke-rc.d procps start".
> 
This is good, and the Wine package now does this, however see
https://bugs.edge.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/procps/+bug/256025

I couldn't find an upstream bugtracker for procps, so hopefully whomever
can fix it is looking at launchpad.

Additionally, this new change to sysctl is completely undocumented (the
manpage still only mentions the old file).  There's also no established
standard for naming files that will go in /etc/sysctl.d/  -- I chose
wine.sysctl.conf, since it seemed reasonable, however I'm not sure where
to start documenting such a thing either.  Maybe the same manpage should
have it.


Thanks,
Scott Ritchie