gnuchess tries to store its gained knowledge into book.dat. Because book.dat is not writable for common users and is located in a potential read-only directory, gnuchess will not have a chance to evolute. I suggest to - move book.dat into /var/lib/games/gnuchess which is writable by group 'games' and - set the SGID bit on the gnuchess executable and make its group 'games' In the current manner, the book.dat is completely senseless because gnuchess does not use it: -------- $ strace -eopen gnuchess ... White (1) : go Thinking... open("/usr/share/gnuchess/book.dat", O_RDWR) = -1 EACCES (Permission denied) no book (/usr/share/gnuchess/book.dat). ... --------- With my suggestion you'll get --------- $ gnuchess ## strace not applicable because it resets SGID ... White (1) : go Thinking... Read opening book (/usr/share/gnuchess/book.dat)... Opening database: 5872 book positions. In this position, 2 moves are book moves: ---------
Forgot to mention: $ rpm -q gnuchess gnuchess-5.02-1