Not sure how many others are using Mac OS with Wine to run Winbox, however with Catalina (next Mac OS) around the corner with 32bit support removed, this puts me in a real bind
A simple answer is run qemu/vmware to power winbox, however this drains significant resources for such a little program
CLI/Web are also not always good answers as they do not allow for MAC telnet/discovery etc
Does anyone know if there is any plans to recompile the winbox.exe for 64bit? I suspect it would be a simple job to recompile but has not been completed as there was no good reason previously
PS. I hear Linux distros are also planning on removing 32bit support as well, doubt Windows will any time however
Sadly the mac-telnet client can not authenticate with new authentication mechanism.
Mikrotik does not give details what is required for encryption. Compatibility with RouterOS 6.43
With macOS Catalina and Apples Catalyst it would be an easy step to port the newly introduced iOS Version of Winbox to macOS.
Even if the GUI Concept of the iOS Version is much different it would offer 64Bit Support and a native Application for macOS.
I hope MT will use this opportunity.
I would really need a 64-bit version of Winbox as well, to run on macOS 10.15 Catalina once it is released in around two months.
I actually think Winbox is the only 32-bit software that I rely on at this point, but without Winbox in a 64-bit version (or some sort of good work around) I would be stuck on 10.14 Mojave until that is solved.
I tried to run other 64-bit Windows software on Wine on the macOS Catalina Beta and it works perfectly as long as it is purely 64-bit, so if Mikrotik would just release a 64-bit version of Winbox for Windows, it would continue to run really well on macOS Catalina, just as it has for several years on macOS.
(Is anyone actually still running 32-bit Windows versions anymore by the way? Maybe it’s even better to replace the 32-bit version entirely with a 64-bit version?)
If you need beta testers, Mikrotik, I would be happy to help with testing the 64-bit version, and report any bugs or problems with running it on Mac/Wine!
It’s not hard to run Windows in a virtual machine, but it’s just far less convenient to run a software that I use all the time, like Winbox, that way than the almost-native way I (and probably most other Mikrotik users on Mac) am running it right now on top of Wine, and that we will be able to continue doing if Mikrotik releases a 64-bit version of Winbox with no other changes.
As andrewlp said, the Linux world is moving in the same direction of slowly removing 32-bit support, so us Mac users are not alone in this problem, and this seems like a good time to do something about it and release a 64-bit version that solves all this for everyone.
Is it really so hard for MikroTik to reply and advise why such horrible solutions must be used instead of a simple recompile?
The primary reason this is not really an option is its alot of unnessary overhead for an app that I run daily, the overhead causes significant power consumption on a laptop compared to a effectively native appliation
Another option would be for MikroTik to simply open up about how certain systems work and allow open source projects that aimed to build MAC-Telnet CLI programs for Linux etc, which worked great until MikroTik changed the code and refused to provide information on the authentication method
As mentioned here the problem is that wine itself won’t run because of missing 32bit support in OS. In this situation, it doesn’t matter if Winbox is 32bit or 64bit, WINE won’t run at all.
We are currently looking into possible solutions for this issue and will update accordingly.
For information though, Wine does actually run on Catalina if you use the wine64 version of it. As I said, I have tried to run 64-bit Windows software on top of Wine in the Catalina Beta, and it works perfectly fine as long as it is pure 64-bit software.
You can try it by installing the Catalina Beta and install wine with homebrew (which works just like on Mojave and previous macOS versions), and then make sure to start it with the “wine64” command instead of just “wine”. If you try to start it with the “wine” command it gives an error about bad CPU type, but the “wine64” command works just like before when launching 64-bit Windows software.
Same concern here, I use Mac and rely heavily on two 32bit applications, Winbox and Google Earth. Both of them will not work with the next update for Macs, therefore upgrading my machine is not possible for me at this moment. I really hope that Mikrotik will eventually make an UNIX based Winbox that would run on Linux and MacOS, the only systems that I actually use.
I fully agree on the need of either a native macOS-winbox or at least a 64-bit-compatible winbox-environment to run under macOS cataline. DEARLY waiting for it. running a full VM “just” to start winbox is not a nice option…
Let’s not leave this post to die. I’m pretty sure that a lot of us use either MAC or Linux, and a “MACbox” or “Linuxbox” would be of great use for lots of us. I don’t think that it’s too much to ask for our dear developers.
Maybe I am too dumb but the latest Google Earth Pro seems to be 64bit and I am running Wine 4.0 stable on MacOS 10.14.6 and if I start winbox.exe with “wine64” I get the following in Activity Monitor:
So, that would not be enough in 10.15 ?
Please make native OSX Winbox. There are not downloaded DLL libraries since RouterOS v6, so it shouldn’t be problem. Or release Winbox protocol description (it seems it is similar to API protocol). I will code it myself and will release it as GPL. RouterOS have huge community. Use it.
No, when you run it with wine64 you run the wine process itself in 64-bit, but it can still run 32-bit code from the Windows application you launched when run that way under Mojave if i’m not mistaken.
Under Catalina you need both the Wine process to be 64-bit (which is solved with wine64), and the Windows application itself too, which is the problem with Winbox but works well with applications that is actually fully 64-bit. I tried it with a 64-bit build of Notepad++ for example, and that works as expected under Wine on Catalina as long as I launch it with the wine64 command.
On some level I would also want a Mac native client, but if the iOS client is simply ported over with the help of Catalyst, it would probably mean that we would lack important features like having several windows with different functions on the same router open at the same time (which is one of the awsome features that makes Winbox soo good, even if it looks 90s-like ).
At the moment the iOS client is great for being a mobile client, but far from as good as Winbox is on the desktop, and it would need to become better before a desktop version of it would be able to replace Winbox on Mac for most of us.
So at the moment we simply really need to have a 64-bit build of Winbox, and at least to me it would only be a nice bonus if Mikrotik is actually working on making a good Mac native client in one or the other way.
Ok, I fully agree. Haven’t tested Catalina. Although it would be the easiest way for Mikrotik to just use the code of the iOS client for a native MacOC client, I hope that they release a 64Bit winbox.exe. I have configured a couple of sessions to different routers with hotspot, log, resources, interface and queue windows open at the same time. Great for monitoring and not possible with the iOS client.
I am also hoping for a Winbox64 version. I am not sure how reasonable it is to ask for it, since it will only be needed by macOS users. I am currently running Windows 10 in Parallels Desktop just to run Winbox (I upgraded to Catalina Beta pretty early on). This is a solution that works, but feels like a bit of an overkill for just one small application. I haven’t looked at the iOS app yet. From what I am hearing it doesn’t have all the features Winbox has.
Recently I started doing a lot on the CLI, so I don’t have to start up a VM to run Winbox.
Perhaps the fine folks at MikroTik should consider doing a native macOS app and sell it through the Apple Store. I am in the market for a native app and would pay for it. Just don’t make a subscription please
).