Program in Bottle's missing runner

[HKaufmann2]

I created a complete backup on a Linux-Mint machine in bottles for a program. This transferred to another computer via a cloud. There I installed the backup for their bottles.
Now the program cannot be started there because the runner (caffe-10.0) has not come across.
How can I install the runner because the new bottle no longer offers that.

[0xshubhs]

Backups carry the bottle, not the runner. Caffe is retired so it's gone from Preferences > Runners, but the build is still up:

https://github.com/bottlesdevs/wine/releases/tag/caffe-10.0

# native
tar -xf caffe-10.0-x86_64.tar.xz -C ~/.local/share/bottles/runners/

# flatpak
tar -xf caffe-10.0-x86_64.tar.xz -C ~/.var/app/com.usebottles.bottles/data/bottles/runners/

Path is from globals.py:78. Restart Bottles and it shows up.

Runner is per-bottle though (Bottle > Settings > Runner). Unless the program actually broke on newer Wine, just point it at something current like soda-11.0-5 and you won't have to redo this on the next machine.

[HKaufmann2]

Thank you. Despite the Runner Caffe, the program does not start. The directory structure is identical.
Gets the error message "Path not found"

[0xshubhs]

That symptom fits, and it's not the runner. Backups don't carry your drive mappings.

backup.py:673:

@staticmethod
def exclude_filter(tarinfo: tarfile.TarInfo) -> tarfile.TarInfo | None:
    """
    Filter which excludes some unwanted files from the backup.
    """
    if "dosdevices" in tarinfo.name:
        return None

That applies to full backups too, not just config ones. Same exclusion shows up in diff.py:11 and versioning.py:52, so it's deliberate throughout, the assumption being those symlinks are host-specific and get regenerated.

dosdevices is where Wine keeps the drive letters, as symlinks. Every Windows path goes through it, winepath.py:46:

path = path.replace(
    path[0:2], f"{bottle_path}/dosdevices/{path[0:2].lower()}"
)

So drive_c coming across intact is exactly what you'd expect, which is why the structure looks right. What didn't come across is the letter that points at it. Wine will recreate c: and z: on its own, but any drive you had mapped on the old machine, a d: pointing at a data folder or an install dir outside the bottle, is just gone. Program asks for D:\something, path doesn't resolve, you get "Path not found".

Quick check:

ls -la ~/.local/share/bottles/bottles/<BottleName>/dosdevices/

flatpak:

ls -la ~/.var/app/com.usebottles.bottles/data/bottles/bottles/<BottleName>/dosdevices/

If all you see is c: and z:, that's the problem. Add the missing letter back under Bottle > Settings > Drives, or symlink it yourself, which is all Bottles does anyway (drives.py:48).

One thing that supports this reading: "Path not found" isn't a Bottles string, it doesn't exist anywhere in the source. It's coming from Wine or from the program. So the exe is being found and launched fine, and it's failing on a path lookup after it starts. If the runner were wrong you'd get a different failure well before that.

If dosdevices already has the right letters, then say what the program is and where it was installed, and check the path stored on the launcher entry in bottle.yml, since that's absolute and would still point at the old machine's layout.

[HKaufmann2]

The system simply can no longer find the paths. Have installed the main program DFend-Reloaded. That works. But if I want to install my Dos program in this program, where DOSBox is running in the background, the paths are no longer found. Only one directory games appears, the other paths are suppressed are not visible. That's why I can't access the exe file.
Could you copy the bottle directory from the one program into the new bottle?

[HKaufmann2]

When I get ls -la .var/app/com.usebottles.bottles/data/bottles/bottles/D-Fend-Reloaded>/dosdevices/ I get the following answer " bash: /dosdevices/: Is a directory ".
The drives are listed on the new computer..

[HKaufmann2]

Only started it immediately closes the DOSBOx window and reports serious errors.

backtrace2026-08-29.txt