WINESERVER(1)

✨ WINESERVER(1) ✨

okay bestie, welcome to the Windows on Unix corner of the manual, this one is literally all about wineserver and it's giving daemon-core 👑

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💖 NAME 💖

wineserver — the Wine server. that's it, that's the whole name, she's a simple queen 💅

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🦋 SYNOPSIS 🦋

/usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/wine/wineserver [options] (amd64)

or

/usr/lib/i386-linux-gnu/wine/wineserver [options] (i386)

or

/usr/lib/aarch64-linux-gnu/wine/wineserver [options] (arm64)

or

/usr/lib/arm-linux-gnueabihf/wine/wineserver [options] (armhf)

like, pick your architecture bestie, she's multi-platform and she ate 🌈

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🌸 DESCRIPTION 🌸

so wineserver is a daemon process 🧚 and what she does is provide Wine with roughly the same services that the Windows kernel provides on actual Windows. no cap. same energy, different OS.

normally she gets launched automatically when you start wine(1), so honestly you shouldn't have to worry about her at all. she just shows up, does her thing, main character behavior. 💅

but sometimes — and this is the iykyk part — it's actually useful to start wineserver explicitly with different options. that's what all the stuff below is about. keep reading bestie 📖

also, on Debian specifically: the wineserver binaries are provided as internal details living in /usr/lib, rather than being exposed for you to call directly via /usr/bin. so she's a little bit hidden, a little bit mysterious, a little bit behind-the-scenes icon 🎀

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💅 OPTIONS 💅

• -d[n], --debug[=n] — sets the debug level to n. here's the vibe check: 0 means no debugging information at all, 1 is the normal level, and 2 is for extra verbose debugging (the messy, chaotic, show-everything level 💀). if n isn't specified, the default is 1. all that debug output gets sent to stderr. also cute detail: wine(1) will automatically enable normal level debugging when it starts wineserver if the +server option is set in the WINEDEBUG variable. teamwork fr fr 🫶
• -f, --foreground — makes the server stay in the foreground, which is way easier for debugging. perfect for when you're running her under a debugger and need to actually watch what's happening 👀
• -h, --help — displays a help message. the classic. she'll tell you about herself ✨
• -k[n], --kill[=n] — kills the currently running wineserver, optionally by sending signal n. if you don't specify a signal, she sends a SIGINT first and then a SIGKILL. dramatic? yes. effective? also yes 💀. heads up: the instance of wineserver that gets killed is selected based on the WINEPREFIX environment variable, so keep track of which one you're targeting bestie 👑
• -p[n], --persistent[=n] — specifies the wineserver persistence delay, aka the amount of time the server will keep running after all client processes have terminated. why? because it avoids the cost of shutting down and starting up again when programs are launched in quick succession. the timeout n is in seconds, and the default value is 0 seconds. but plot twist: if n is not specified, the server stays around forever. forever bestie. immortal 💖
• -v, --version — displays version information and exits. quick lil flex and she's gone 🌸
• -w, --wait — waits until the currently running wineserver terminates. patient queen, she'll just stand there until the job's done 🧚

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🌈 ENVIRONMENT 🌈

WINEPREFIX

if this is set, the content of the variable is taken as the name of the directory where wineserver stores its data. the default is $HOME/.wine. 🏠

so here's the lore: all wine processes using the same wineserver (i.e. the same user) share certain things — like the registry, shared memory, and kernel objects. one big happy shared household 💜

and by setting WINEPREFIX to different values for different Wine processes, you can run a whole bunch of truly independent Wine sessions. separate little worlds, no crossover episodes. iconic 🌟

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🎀 FILES 🎀

• ~/.wine — directory containing user specific data managed by wine. her personal closet basically 💅
• /tmp/.wine-uid — directory containing the server Unix socket and the lock file. these files are created in a subdirectory generated from the WINEPREFIX directory device and inode numbers. yes, numbers, math, she's smart like that 🧠✨

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👑 AUTHORS 👑

the original author of wineserver is Alexandre Julliard. and honestly? legend behavior. many other people have contributed new features and bug fixes too — for a complete list, see the git commit logs. it takes a village bestie 🫶

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💀 BUGS 💀

bugs can be reported on the Wine bug tracker. if you found one, go tell them, they wanna know, no gatekeeping 🐛

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⭐ AVAILABILITY ⭐

wineserver is part of the Wine distribution, which is available through WineHQ, the Wine development headquarters. that's where the whole squad lives 🏰

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🔥 SEE ALSO 🔥

• wine(1)
• Wine documentation and support.

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and that's the whole page bestie, you ate it up 💖 this was Wine 10.0, dated October 2005, and it's the WINESERVER(1) manual page — go forth and daemon responsibly, ily 🫶✨🌸