Will Rescan soft work on Wine/Linux?

[larry63]

I do have an old Win XP machine that keep disconnected from my internet router that I can use,
but I'm just wondering if the Resmed rescan software could run under wine on Linux? That would be so much easier - in my experience the Microsoft OS is to fragile for practical use. If not, I guess I'll just install rescan on my on my old desktop machine which still has a Win XP partition.

Has anyone tried this? I'm using Ubuntu 10.4 but I'm by no means tied to that distro - I can easily install some other linux distro on a different partition...

An other alternative would be to use a VM machine running windows (I think I have a Win XP CD somewhere) but that seems like a lot of work...

Looking forward to suggestions...

[jmelby]

I don't know about running under Wine, but I am successfully running in a VM (Parallels on a Mac)--I would think VMWare on linux would also work.

[Blrfl]

That may be a problem because ResScan wants to see the card reader as a "real" device, and WINE doesn't support USB quite the same way a real instance of the OS would. No reason not to give it a shot, though.

I just started running it under VirtualBox. It's not a screamer, but it works. I had initially tried serving the card up from Linux as a SMB share and mounting it as a drive on the XP VM, but ResScan didn't see it as a device. I then enabled my card reader, plugged in the card and it worked like a champ.

If you're going to go the VM route, you can save yourself a bunch of time by doing the XP install once, getting everything set up as you want it and building VMs that use that drive and keep their own changes. For example, I have a VM called "Clean XP" that I cloned into one called "ResMed" that has the CPAP software on it. My plan is to dump the VM onto a USB drive and run it on my netbook when I'm traveling.

--Mark

[larry63]

That may be a problem because ResScan wants to see the card reader as a "real" device, and WINE doesn't support USB quite the same way a real instance of the OS would. No reason not to give it a shot, though.

I just started running it under VirtualBox. It's not a screamer, but it works. I had initially tried serving the card up from Linux as a SMB share and mounting it as a drive on the XP VM, but ResScan didn't see it as a device. I then enabled my card reader, plugged in the card and it worked like a champ.

If you're going to go the VM route, you can save yourself a bunch of time by doing the XP install once, getting everything set up as you want it and building VMs that use that drive and keep their own changes. For example, I have a VM called "Clean XP" that I cloned into one called "ResMed" that has the CPAP software on it. My plan is to dump the VM onto a USB drive and run it on my netbook when I'm traveling.

--Mark

Ok my hunch is (like yours) is that there will the some snag using Wine.

That really sucks. So you're saying that you can't just point ResScan to where your data actually is? So it uses the MS registry or something to find a device that must be an SD-card??? That is quite weird. I can see that being the default, but forgive me if I'm some how having a brain-damaged episode... is there not at least a dialog where you can point to the data source directory?


Ok, well I do have an ancient Windows desktop that I can use. Sounds like less work - I'll just plug it into the cloud (hehe how the terminoligy has changed), have it grab all the updates, and then try it. (Well, after buying a freaking SD-USB adapter!!)

There is someone (I don't remember which of these forums he is on) posted something about developing a Python EDF library (Which is supposedly a standard medical file format that Resmed uses). He's got a Python library under development apparently.

[Blrfl]

So you're saying that you can't just point ResScan to where your data actually is?

Ha, nope. Can't even fake it out by mapping a drive. I guess I can see why they did it the way they did, though, because it clinician-proofs the operation. (Sorry, clinicians. )

I've only been on my S9 for three days and can already see some things I'd like to do with the data that ResScan doesn't.

(Well, after buying a freaking SD-USB adapter!!)

On the plus side, those are now dirt cheap and they all look like USB storage devices.

There is someone (I don't remember which of these forums he is on) posted something about developing a Python EDF library (Which is supposedly a standard medical file format that Resmed uses). He's got a Python library under development apparently.

I found that thread and a couple of other recent ones about what's in the files. EDF wasn't difficult to pick apart; it took me about 20 minutes to figure out and write a quick Perl script to dump it out.

--Mark

[BanjoPaterson]

Hi - I run the Resmed software in Ubuntu, but had to do the following:

1. Use VirtualBox (download from Web site http://www.virtualbox.org/wiki/Linux_Downloads to use close source version on a PUEL licence. This one is free for personal use. Don't use the synaptic manager as it uses the OSE version which doesn't link to the USB ports. Sux, I know...). You may have to chmod the USB port in the /dev directory to 777 ... seem to recall doing this as a once off. Dr Google is your friend here.
2. On your old XP box you'll have a valid Win XP licence
3. Create a virtual Windows XP box using your valid Win XP licence.

Then install the resmed software and Robert's your mother's brother, as they say. Of course, you'll be hit with about 10 years' worth of XP updates, so get a book, a cup of coffee, and relax as windows makes itself "more secure" and all that.

[BanjoPaterson]

Following up my own post. The reasons you may want to do it this way, rather than run it on your old XP box, are:

1. Run XP inside a secure environment. You've know you've sandpitted XP.
2. Backup XP easily since it's just a file in Linux. Get a virus, cp your backup file back. You can even cron the backups.
3. Get to use your faster box. I found my newer Linux box runs a virtual box copy of XP at a decent speed.

I know it's 2nd best to getting it to work in WINE, but thems the breaks.

[larry63]

Hi - I run the Resmed software in Ubuntu, but had to do the following:

1. Use VirtualBox (download from Web site http://www.virtualbox.org/wiki/Linux_Downloads to use close source version on a PUEL licence. This one is free for personal use. Don't use the synaptic manager as it uses the OSE version which doesn't link to the USB ports. Sux, I know...). You may have to chmod the USB port in the /dev directory to 777 ... seem to recall doing this as a once off. Dr Google is your friend here.
2. On your old XP box you'll have a valid Win XP licence
3. Create a virtual Windows XP box using your valid Win XP licence.

Then install the resmed software and Robert's your mother's brother, as they say. Of course, you'll be hit with about 10 years' worth of XP updates, so get a book, a cup of coffee, and relax as windows makes itself "more secure" and all that.

Hmmm, tried installing virtualbox and it couldn't read the CD once the windows install went to graphics mode. well, pm if you want on this, or I'll look around on the w^3. Because that's getting OT here.

Someone on one of these forums has made a Python module that parses EDF, so I might check that out instead. That would be more powerful in the end anyway, because you could do correlations, etc, gnuplots or CSV plots however you want, or right a script that simply tells you if the leakage suddenly jumped during the night, etc. keep backups however you want, not worry about learning the rescan software, etc...

Of course, I really would like to figure out how to get a win XP working inside a VM on Linux, because there's other Windows software that I would like to be able to run. Of course, simply buying a cheap Windows desktop would be more economical then spending several hours sorting the VM situation out, but I really like the idea of being able to easily backup and restore installations just by using the magic letters "cp"!

Where I work we use VM-ware, but I think that you can only "play" an image for free - to create on you gotta pay - could be wrong.

[physicsbob]

I have been running VB 3.2.10 on SuSE 11.2 . It took me a couple of hours to setup I did some reading and followed some scripts that some people provided. You have to have your correct Kernel source and gcc make and a few other things installed before compiling VB. But it is well worth the effort.

[larry63]

I have been running VB 3.2.10 on SuSE 11.2 . It took me a couple of hours to setup I did some reading and followed some scripts that some people provided. You have to have your correct Kernel source and gcc make and a few other things installed before compiling VB. But it is well worth the effort.

Ah, see, I didn't even even compile it - just downloaded a binary (?). Well this may end up being more than a one hour project....

But I agree in the long run it's going to be worth the effort to get some sort of VM going,