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Running Radio Mobile on Linux with Wine
This page is a summary of our (mostly successful) attempt to run Radio Mobile, the freeware RF propagation prediction software written by Roger Coudé VE2DBE, on the Linux operating system by utilising the Wine Windows API Emulator. Roger was able to overcome some problems by utilising different function calls that are better implemented by Wine. These fixes are all included in version 7.3.5 of Radio Mobile.

The page is intended for those already familiar with running Radio Mobile on a Windows system. Those installing Radio Mobile for the first time would be well advised to read Greg Bur's excellent Radio Mobile tutorial

Mark A. Dods VK3XMU 13-07-2006.

  • The Linux Setups

    Roger and I ran two quite different Linux systems, but despite that we didn't notice any difference in the way Radio Mobile behaved.
    • Roger ran Ubuntu 6.06 with Gnome and Wine 0.9.9 (Synaptic Update). He later upgraded Wine to 0.9.16 with no change in Radio Mobile's performance.
    • I ran the pre-release version of SLED 10 (Novell's packaging of SuSE 10.1) with KDE and Wine 0.9.16. I also tried upgrading Wine but noticed no difference in performance with version 0.9.17. Considering the modest hadware (a 333 MHz Celeron with 256 MB RAM) I was impressed with how well Radio Mobile ran.
      Update 18-08-2006 Still no change with Wine 0.9.19

  • What Works

    • Most local operations including . . .
      • Generating maps from local height data
      • Plotting unit locations and predicting propagation between them
      • Generating coverage plots
    • Merging map with data from from Toporama Canada
    • Monitoring an Internet APRS feed and plotting station locations
    • TX-RX Multicast transmission
    • Auto updates of Radio Mobile

  • What Doesn't

    • Retrieving data from the Internet via ftp. Notably SRTM files
    • Retrieving data from the internet via http and cgi scripts. Notably LANDSAT, MAPPOINT, MAPQUEST,and Terraserver USA data

    These problems appear to be due to the Wine version of wininet.dll behaving differently to the Windows version. Hopefully as Wine is developed, the problems will disappear . . .

  • Installation

    • Instructions for Installing Wine are available on the WineHQ website
    • You should end up with a .wine directory below your Linux home directory. IE /home/username/.wine
    • The .wine directory contains a subdirectory called drive_c. This is Wine's simulated C:\ so paths in Roger's instructions like c:\program files\radio mobile become /home/username/.wine/drive_c/program files/radio mobile on the Linux system
    • To install Radio Mobile itself, in general, follow the instructions at http://www.cplus.org/rmw/download.html
      • Download all the files and put them in the .../drive_c directory
      • To run a Windows executable using wine from the Linux shell, enter wine executable.exe
      • EG: To install the VB Runtime environment, enter wine c:\\vbrun60sp6.exe (back slashes need to be escaped, hence 2 instead of the usual 1).
      • Create the .../drive_c/program files/radio mobile directory and extract the files from all the .zips into it.

  • Configuration

    • Wine needs to be configured to utilise the 'Native' (windows) version of oleaut32.dll instead of the 'builtin' version supplied with Wine. This is done on the Libraries tab of the winecfg program like so:
      1. In winecfg select the Libraries tab, then select oleaut32 from the 'New overide for library' drop down list and click the 'Add' button.
      2. Click on oleaut32 in the Existing overrides list and click the 'Edit' button.
      3. In the resulting 'Edit Override' dialog box, select 'Native (Windows)' from the pick list and click 'OK', then OK again to exit winecfg.
      • The most obvious symptom of not making this change is that you will generate blank maps, but the Radio Link dialog shows the correct terrain cross section.
      • This technique sets Wine to use the native oleaut32.dll for all applications that don't have specific Wine settings configured. Refer to the Wine Documentation for how to set up settings that apply to only one application.
    • Radio Mobile itself doesn't need to be configured any differently to running it under Windows

  • Running Radio Mobile

    • Once you've installed it, you can run Radio Mobile with the shell command wine "c:\\program files\\radio mobile\\RMWDLX.exe" (The quotes are required because of the spaces in the path.)
    • You can run RMWDLX.exe from KDE by clicking on it, then selecting the Wine executable (/usr/bin/wine) as the program to open it with.
    • You can create a KDE desktop icon with the same string as used from the shell as the Command

  • Getting Height data

    • As the SRTM data retrieval is broken you'll need to manually download the data. For me, the easiest way to identify the files I needed was to just try to generate a map, and note down the files Radio Mobile complained it couldn't retrieve. I then downloaded them manually, and extracted the contents of the .zip files to the SRTM directory defined in the "Elevation data source" section of the "Map Properties" dialog.
    • Links to the various SRTM repositories are on Roger's page at http://www.cplus.org/rmw/dataen.html

  • Who's responsible for this stuff?

    • If any of the information on this page is wrong, then I'm to blame, but I'd appreciate it if you sent me the corrected information.
    • I intend to keep an eye on Wine to see if its wininet.dll replacement is developed to allow the retrieval of the SRTM data by FTP and merge data via http cgi scripts.
    • I tested the links when I wrote the page. If you find any are broken, please let me know.
    • If you have personal experience of how Radio Mobile runs in other Linux configurations (EG it would be good to have a Fedora report) and you're willing to share, send me the info and I'll incorporate it.