Fix for Picasa 3 Linux login problem

(Update: Just realized that this isn't a fix but a workaround. The fix would be for Google to bundle the working Wine binaries. (Then again, they most likely use the stable release, while Fedora uses the current development one. Oh well...))

Picasa 3 for Linux has this niggling* problem: you can't log on to Picasa Web. It appears that a Wine static binary bundled with it does not work well with Fedora.

* "Niggling", that is, if you consider not being able to sync your photos with Picasa a minor one.

The solution was to overwrite the offending binary with one from the "blessed" Wine package for Fedora. It presupposes that you have Wine already installed, which I don't.

So, I went through it in a run-about way: get the binary file and replace the bundled one.

Fedora's package manager, yum, doesn't let you just download a package without installing it. Good thing there's this little plugin called yum-downloadonly that let's you do just that.

Install the plugin, then grab the Wine package.

# yum install yum-downloadonly
# yum install wine-core --downloadonly

The package (specifically, wine-core, is placed in /var/cache/yum/updates/packages/. Use rpm2cpio to extract the file.

# mkdir /tmp/wine && cd /tmp/wine
# cp /var/cache/yum/updates/packages/wine-core-1.1.29-1.fc11.i586.rpm .
# rpm2cpio wine-core-1.1.29-1.fc11.i586.rpm | cpio -idmv
# find . -name 'wininet*'

Install Picasa from Google's test repository. Replace the bundled binary.

# yum install picasa
# cd /opt/google/picasa/3.0/
# find . -name 'wininet*' 
# cp ./wine/lib/wine/wininet.dll.so ~/.
# cp /tmp/wine/usr/lib/wine/wininet.dll.so wine/lib/wine/wininet.dll.so

Picasa for Linux will now be able to log you in.