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Preloader Page Zero Problem

Last edited by Alexandre Julliard

Running Wine on recent versions of Linux (in particular Ubuntu 8.04, Hardy Heron, and Fedora 9) may generate errors or warnings such as

preloader: Warning: failed to reserve range 00000000-60000000
err:dosmem:setup_dos_mem Cannot use first megabyte for DOS address space, please report

or

winevdm: unable to exec 'Z:\tmp\CONFIG.EXE': DOS memory range unavailable

and may refuse to run Wine applications, especially ones that use DOS calls. For instance, Microsoft Word 2000 will crash after a few seconds (does this still happen in rc1?)

This is due to a Linux security patch.

One bad workaround is to run as root. Don't do that. If you do this, your .wine directory will be screwed up, and can't be used anymore without running as root. (To recover from this, either delete your .wine directory as root, or maybe use chown -R $LOGNAME .wine to fix ownership.)

The right workaround is to give the command:

sudo sysctl -w vm.mmap_min_addr=0

This fixes the problem until the next time you reboot. (It also reduces security slightly.)

To avoid having to give that same command every time you reboot, also edit the file `/etc/sysctl.conf`, e.g. with the command

sudo gedit /etc/sysctl.conf

and change the line that reads:

vm.mmap_min_addr = 65536

to:

vm.mmap_min_addr = 0

That will apply the workaround for you when the system starts.

On Ubuntu 8.10 (Intrepid) and later, the workaround is different: the line needs to go in /etc/sysctl.d/wine.conf. e.g. with the command

sudo gedit /etc/sysctl.d/wine.conf

add the single line

vm.mmap_min_addr = 0

The budgetdedicated.com packages for Intrepid, as well as those shipped with Intrepid, already have this workaround included.

Related bugs:

  • Wine bug #7848 ("unable to run DOS programs")
  • Wine bug #12516 ("err:dosmem:setup_dos_mem error report on every run of Wine")
  • Wine bug #19732 ("Security: use CAP_SYS_RAWIO during start up to map the memory below mmap_min_addr instead of permanently lowering it at install time")
  • Wine bug #20578 ("Debian/Ubuntu packages do not follow proper format for /etc/sysctl.d")

For more info, see