Games running under Wine are unable to reach auth servers

[DeadTOm76]

I've seen this with Ultima Online, and now on The Sims 4. Both games are able to contact servers to download game content, but when it comes to authenticating, or activating the game in the case of The Sims 4, they both complain about not being able to reach the servers.

This is on my PC, I do not have this problem on my laptop. Both games work flawlessly on my laptop. I copied the .wine64 folder from my laptop to my PC, and the problem is still there.

I've verified that gnutls, and winbind is installed, which is where internet searches have pointed me, but the problem persists.

I have no proxy running on either system, iptables is wide open, and both are using the same DNS servers.

Both systems are Debian 10, fully up to date, and wine-5.0.1 installed from WineHQ and running in a 64bit environment.

If it is at all helpful, here is the output from wine on my PC, when trying to start The Sims 4: https://paste.debian.net/1156731
And here is the output on my laptop, where it works flawlessly: https://paste.debian.net/1156732

Any suggestions are appreciated.

[Mr. Lumbergh]

Have you tried more than once? I had a similar problem last night installing a commercial synthesizer plugin intended for Windows installation, though on wine staging 5.11. It barked a couple times about not being able to reach the server for the authorization file, but third time was the charm.

[DeadTOm76]

Have you tried more than once? I had a similar problem last night installing a commercial synthesizer plugin intended for Windows installation, though on wine staging 5.11. It barked a couple times about not being able to reach the server for the authorization file, but third time was the charm.

Yeah, I was hoping, but no. Been trying for days.

[DeadTOm76]

I'm sure it has something to do with gnutls, maybe wine isn't utilizing it, or doesn't know how. I don't know.

[Mr. Lumbergh]

I'm curious if staging would work for you, it has the latest features of wine whereas stable is much slower to receive new features since it's primarily focused on stability.

[DeadTOm76]

I'm curious if staging would work for you, it has the latest features of wine whereas stable is much slower to receive new features since it's primarily focused on stability.

I may give it a try, but I'm not convinced the problem is with wine. I think it has something to do with gnutls being misconfigured, don't know though. I've purged and reinstalled Wine and gnutls, to no avail.

[DeadTOm76]

I'm curious if staging would work for you, it has the latest features of wine whereas stable is much slower to receive new features since it's primarily focused on stability.

Nope, same problem. I'm sure that this is something else on my system that is not setting up a proper encrypted connection to EA servers. I just don't know how to begin troubleshooting that.

[MagicPoulp]

Maybe the Debian default firewall blocks wine?
Maybe a socket is created and debian blocks it
How would EA send data to sims4? It cannot be via http. Since it only works in one direction. Maybe it uses a socket.

THen try to find the sockets ports opened by wine from before and after you start the game.
THen configure iptables to enable the ports.

ON debian you enable a port on debian. I am not sure how the forwarding back and forth to wine works.
Maybe someone knows?

[DeadTOm76]

How would EA send data to sims4? It cannot be via http.

It's done via https, and the connection is timing out, which is what makes me think this is an SSL/TLS issue.

There is no firewall active on this PC.

[Mr. Lumbergh]

How would EA send data to sims4? It cannot be via http.

It's done via https, and the connection is timing out, which is what makes me think this is an SSL/TLS issue.

There is no firewall active on this PC.

Not even iptables?

[DeadTOm76]

Not even iptables?

Code: Select all

#iptables -L
Chain INPUT (policy ACCEPT)
target     prot opt source               destination         

Chain FORWARD (policy ACCEPT)
target     prot opt source               destination         

Chain OUTPUT (policy ACCEPT)
target     prot opt source               destination

[Mr. Lumbergh]

Not even iptables?

Code: Select all

#iptables -L
Chain INPUT (policy ACCEPT)
target     prot opt source               destination         

Chain FORWARD (policy ACCEPT)
target     prot opt source               destination         

Chain OUTPUT (policy ACCEPT)
target     prot opt source               destination

Is that your entire output? I haven't done anything particular to mine except connect with a VPN, but it's over 30 lines.

[DeadTOm76]

Is that your entire output?

Yes. As I said, no firewall.

[Mr. Lumbergh]

Download and install WINEtricks and Lutris if you haven't already, then hit winetricks under the list on the right for the game in lutris, and install wininet and winhttp, and see if that helps.

[MagicPoulp]

EDIT: I am probably wrong in the later since it works on your laptop but not your PC.
Maybe the Hardware network card is special on your PC.

I have used wine a lot. And this is a very interesting question.

Lots of text, but I think this post here on Stack Overflow is core to your problem.
It even says not to run wine as root, and that ports are restricted, and that the collaboration of wine with the network card is very primitive.
https://unix.stackexchange.com/question ... plications

But before you debug the network, you should try to know what actually happens and if possible do you get an error message. the actual command opening a socket on a certain port can be detected with wine debug flags, see below.

What do you mean you do not have a firewall? If you use debian, there is a firewall active by default.

Concerning HTTPS, it is your PC that performs requests to EA via HTTPS. EA cannot send a request to your computer. That is because the routing context to your IP is too complex (even with IP v6). For known servers, the domains are registered. It does not seem good if the game would just pick your local IP address and try to dig out your place in the network.

Moreover, HTTP is a slow protocol with lots of latency compared to a direct multi-directional socket.

Maybe I am wrong, but I think there is a socket opened on your PC for sending data directly via TCP or UDP.

If it was only your computer sending data via https, then there should not be a problem to reach internet. But it can be interesting for you to use a browser inside wine and see if it works.

However, with only the client asking requests to EA, lots of data exchange can be done.

It really seems the answer has to do with networks. Find how the data is sent between the client and EA. How does it map outside wine, and does the firewall allow traffic?

In the wine FAQ they say certain types of sockets, like certain ports below a certain range, requires root privileges. And the say that win should not be run as root but there is an alternative. TO use granular permissions on files, or to use a chroot.
https://wiki.winehq.org/FAQ

YOu can also run wine with debugging flags active, but be ready to have a very verbose output and there are lots of flags.
https://wiki.winehq.org/Wine_Developer% ... gging_Wine

wine WINEDEBUG=+all
wine WINEDEBUG=+relay

You must be ready that it is time consuming, but it can be interesting to understand networks.