Winboard Forum

I am having some difficulty accessing a Linux engine from Windows.

If I try this in a command window:

"plink bunny -l jdart /home/jdart/chess/engines/arasan/arasanx-64-popcnt"

After I type in the password, the engine starts on machine "bunny" and I am able to type commands to it and get a response ("plink" is the ssh client that comes with "putty").

But I tried the winboard command (4.7.2):

winboard -debugMode true -mode MachineWhite -rsh plink -ruser jdart -fh bunny -fcp "/home/jdart/chess/engines/arasan/arasanx-64-
popcnt" -fd "/home/jdart/chess/engines/arasan"

and this fails. After the startup screen a window just comes up briefly and then closes. The debug log follows:

recognized 'normal' (-1) as variant normal
recognized 'normal' (-1) as variant normal
shuffleOpenings = 0
Version: WinBoard 4.7.2 + arasanx-64-popcnt@bunny
Reset(1, 0) from gameMode 0
recognized 'normal' (-1) as variant normal
GameEnds(0, (null), 2)
shuffleOpenings = 0
StartChildProcess (dir="") plink bunny -l jdart /home/jdart/chess/engines/arasan/arasanx-64-popcnt
Fatal Error: MachineWhite mode requires a chess engine
GameEnds(28, xboard exit, 2)
name = '%APPDATA%\winboard47.ini', expanded name = 'C:\Users\Jon Dart\AppData\Roaming\winboard47.ini'

The command line to access the remote machine looks fine. But apparently it is not executing.

--Jon

Sorry I did not see this before the CSVN tourney. I think the problem is that you need an extra argument -cp to tell WinBoard that it must run in chess-program mode. Unlike XBoard, for WinBoard this is not the default, and even when you specify an -fcp and -scp given it would still invoke the startup dialog to allow you to tick the required mode (which is incompatible with specifying a Machine White starting mode). To suppress the startup dialog it always needs one of -cp, -ncp or -ics arguments. The only exception to this is -mm (-matchMode), which implies -cp.