Z: drive folder contents and location

[Robomikel]

I installed a application that used Z:/Games as default. I didn't think it would be a problem at the time. although, when I deleted the bottle and installed application again. I was able to find the folder and contents in that location again using the applications install "windows" file explorer. From what I understand its supposed to be a virtual drive attached to the bottle. confused why it didn't delete the folder with the bottle. I used find command to search for "Games" on the host system, it found some other folders with the name but not the one in the wine window explorer. so, I searched online and it said it should be in .var.......dosdevices. I went to the location found the z: drive but when I checked using cosmic file explorer no folder named "Games" exsisted. At this point I deleted all the bottles folders and deleted the cache and anything I could find in the bottles settings. Then, I rechecked and the bottles installer shows the Games folder but its lightened and doesn't have contents. this has me stumped with what the Z drive is and its contents and locations to the host system.

[Graham--M]

The Z: drive is just a symlink to the path /. However Bottles is usually run as a Flatpak application and so is sandboxed. Each Flatpak application gets its own temporary root directory which disappears when the last process associated with the application exits. Here's an excerpt from the manpage for the Bubblewrap sandbox which Flatpak uses:

   bwrap is a privileged helper for container setup. You are unlikely to use it directly from the
   commandline, although that is possible.

   It works by creating a new, completely empty, filesystem namespace where the root is on a tmpfs that is
   invisible from the host, and which will be automatically cleaned up when the last process exists. You can
   then use commandline options to construct the root filesystem and process environment for the command to
   run in the namespace.

If /Games is not a writeable bind mount to a directory on the host filesystem, then the changes are only visible to the Bottles application and any applications running under Wine that it starts. It can look like the files are persisted if you create a new Bottle, but when you close the Bottles application, the tmpfs containing them is cleaned up.