Description of problem: Starting xboard appears not to load the gnuchess opening book. Oopening with 1 e4 always results with the computer thinking for several seconds and then replying 1... Nf6. It's just not configured right. Version-Release number of selected component (if applicable): It's the default "everything" install with red hat 9. How reproducible: Start xboard and play 1 e4 (sometimes called "pawn to king four") Steps to Reproduce: 1. start xboard 2. put cursor on pawn directly in front of white king 3. drag pawn forward two squares and drop it Actual results: Computer thinks for several seconds and plays 1... Nf6 (Alekhine defense, an ok move but not played very often in real games). Expected results: Computer should choose a reply from opening book and play it immediately without thinking. The reply should vary from game to game. Additional info:
gnuchess opens the book as soon as you kame the first move: >gnuchess GNU Chess 5.07 Adjusting HashSize to 1024 slots Transposition table: Entries=1K Size=40K Pawn hash table: Entries=0K Size=28K White (1) : e4 1. e4 black KQkq e3 r n b q k b n r p p p p p p p p . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . P . . . . . . . . . . . P P P P . P P P R N B Q K B N R Thinking... Looking for opening book in book.dat... Looking for opening book in /var/lib/games/gnuchess/book.dat... Read opening book (/var/lib/games/gnuchess/book.dat)... Loading book from /var/lib/games/gnuchess/book.dat. 40304 hash collisions... Opening database: 265053 book positions. In this position, there are 11 book moves: Nc6(71/77/22/32) Nf6(54/113/88/113) a6(75/3/1/0) b6(67/11/3/9) c6(52/451/376/743) d6(52/178/153/229) e6(52/651/582/970) g6(59/155/88/117) c5(56/2535/1691/2912) d5(54/47/38/35) e5(54/2518/1938/3369) c5(1322) e5(1312) e6(376) c6(277) d6(141) g6(136) Nf6(109) Nc6(108) a6(76) d5(76) b6(70) .... Same is valid for xboard, but only noticable with strace: >strace -e open -f -F xboard ... first move: [pid 25653] open("book.dat", O_RDONLY) = -1 ENOENT (No such file or directory) [pid 25653] open("/var/lib/games/gnuchess/book.dat", O_RDONLY) = 3 It first looks for a book.dat file in the current directory and then opens the system book,dat.