MSMoney on a Chromebook's Debian Linux

[David Kimber]

I am in the process of getting MSMoney 2005 int to run on my Chromebook's Debian Linux subsystem, using three HD displays (two external).

I have made some progress using Microsoft Money Offline - Ameridan's Blog - Running Money on Linux OS or MacOS, but not being an expert, the installation is becoming a bit of a hack.

The status is that I can open Money 2005 files, import OFX bank transactions files (via import OFX), most reports seem to work, but "networth over time" freezes the app.

Still determining how to download currencies, stocks and funds (looking at PocketSense and MSMoney Quotes) and importing csv files for banks that don't support OFX (I have written some Python code to do this in Office 2003 - hopefully it will just work, although the PocketSense scrubber hopefully will help here as well) - (being in the UK, we can only manually download OFX or CSV statements)

The one change I needed to make was to make the install and run .sh scripts executable (via Chmod +x) - maybe the Debian install is structured that way by default.

• I am still getting many errors in the log files, which is worrying
• I am at a loss as to why I cannot get the start script to execute from the Chromebook application menu properly - probably something else needs permissions - it works by running the MSMoney.sh script from a terminal.
• Probably associated with the point above is to use a better icon file than ChromeOS's default penguin
• Not sure if I can access .mny files that are on my Google drive

Any help on any of these would be appreciated.

- David

[N G]

Hi David,

I don't have access to a Chromebook so this might take some back and forth. Can you go into your msmoneysetup/logs folder and upload the logs please? Also, It might be more helpful if you do a fresh install and then upload the logs so I'm not chasing through your edits. 

Please download the latest zip file I posted and extract that into your home folder. Also, in msmoneysetup, take a look at the quick start guide in the Guides folder.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1ytp2-XcfaFZ6JBnzJYVLbD91tmJOzEKB/view?usp=drive_link

Do a fresh Install.sh and run Money one time from MSMoney.sh and then upload the logs.

All reports for me work. The minor exception is the Monthly report gets stuck when scrolling. It might be Net Worth over time that gets stuck, but if you click in the white area and use your keyboard down arrow a couple of times scrolling works again. Or click the links in the left margin.

I don't know why you would have to chmod in ChromebookOS, that's interesting. This isn't necessary in the other Linux flavors we've tested or MacOS.

The application menu might work differently than the way Debian/Fedora/Mint/Ubuntu work. We'll have to investigate.

It's very promising that you have it running at all.

Nathan

[David Kimber]

Thanks for your guidance, Nathan.  I have attached the three log files of the existing environment from the "log" directory and also the run script file output (with a Gemini review for what its worth).  I will initiate the whole Linux subsystem on the Chromebook from scratch, so we begin from a known position, as I also have another Linux app (PyCharm for Python dev) running.

1. I have also encountered issues with importing the two PocketSense OFX files (via file import) for importing fund prices. They import without errors but when processing these leads to MSMoney app freezing (my banking OFX downloads work well). I'm yet to try MSMoney Quotes in a Linux environment.
2. I am also unable to load .mny files from Google Drive as I get a Money error "Money is not properly installed.  Please try setup again." (see pic below)

Just FYI, In ChromeOS one can share Google drive directories into the Linux environment (with offline access). See screen capture below, that shows one can get to the Google Drive files.  This is something that I have not been able to do in Ubuntu as I cannot properly directly access the Google Drive files, so I have ended up using RClone in the past which is a bit "clunky", but may also be necessary again as I do use Google Drive as a more secure (and backed up) environment for my data.  Why Google Drive does not support  Linux like it does in Windows and now ChromeOS has annoyed me for many years.

David

[N G]

Hi David,

I looked through your logs, standing by for logs from a fresh run.

I noticed in the wine-money.error log there was  RtlpWaitForCriticalSection error (this is the one I've been trying to solve in the non-US versions. Did you try to "Balance an Account" ? Or was this from importing fund prices from pocketsense? I haven't done any work on pocketsense in a while since my financial institutions aren't direct connect anymore. Could MSMoneyQuotes work for you?

I don't run my mny file from the cloud so I don't have experience with this, I do run it from my NAS though with a NFS mount. No problems so far in about six years, but not the same as running the mny file from the cloud.

[David Kimber]

New Linux install on Chromebook. Confirm I had to chmod +x  the files to get it to run.  I initially only changed the Install.sh.The sh file installs some files, but not Wine, so I then did a chmod +x on the whole msmoneysetup directory.  MSMoney runs - I will need to test more tomorrow, but I have included the latest log files below.  I think I will start again and chmod the directory from the start, and post the log files again.
David

[N G]

One thought: when you unzip the zip file,  is it by a "right-click, extract" on the desktop? 

But for sure, anything that is a script file (Install.sh, MSMoney.sh, winetricks.sh as well as winetricks-2026) all need to be executable.

I noticed at the bottom of the Install log it has X-Generic desktop environment, probably indicative of why the application menu stuff isn't working for you. The wine-money.error.log doesn't have much in it, I'll wait for your next one.

[David Kimber]

I did the following for the install

1. Downloaded zip into ChromeOS "Downloads"  to begin with
2. Extracted in ChromeOS "Downloads" area and moved the "msmoney" folder into Linux
3. Ran setup script in Linux environment - found I needed to chmod the setup script
4. Found Wine did not install
5. Did a chmod on the whole msmoney directory
6. Reran install script -> success to get MSMoney2005 int app opened

I reinitiated the Linux container, 

1. moved the zip into the Linux user home folder
2. $ unzip msmoneysetup_Linux_64bit_FullInstall_30Jan2026.zip
3. $ cd msmoneysetup 
4. $ ./Install.sh    #the Install.sh script ran without chmod, unlike before
5. # But still no Wine environment, see "wine-install (no chmod).log"
6. $ chmod -R +x ~/msmoneysetup #sledgehammer approach, not a smart security approach
7. # Rerun the install script
8. $ ./Install.sh
9. # Wine installed, see "wine-install.log"
10. # MSMoney froze after accepting the usual MS stuff, but at the MSMoney start script, before I could just open a file
11. $ Ctrl C in Install.sh script terminal - as I could not exit the MSMoney screen - I assume not much else happens in the install script after this point?
12. # This was unexpected, so I closed the bash terminal and opened it again on my other external monitor, trying to exactly reproduce what had worked before. 
13. # I realised that if I started the MSMoney.sh script from the other external monitor (I have two external monitors and a built-in display) MSMoney opened. 
14. # So, some issues managing multiple monitors in Wine?
15. $ ~/msmoneysetup/desktop/MSMoney.sh
16. # MSMoney2005int opened.

I will now try to get PocketSense to work

1. Tried to run the Setup.py script
2. Had to install $ sudo apt install python3-requests
3. Copied over a sites.dat file (I need the s: and m: options)
4. Ran setup.py
5. Successfully got the GBP quotes I was looking for (I had previously realised that I can only do one currency and will need a PocketSense instance for each currency -  a limitation on Money2005 that was not there on Money2003? I'll investigate this further as my 2003 OFX files don't work anymore for quotes.
6. Imported one of the OFX files from the PocketSense xfr directory
7. Assigned the import to an existing account
8. MSMoney2005 froze :-( no idea on how to fix
9.  -> CtrlC in terminal 

Try MSMoneyQuotes

1. I have a trial version MSMoneyQuotesTrial.exe that I copied as msmoneyquotes.exe for testing
2. Copied msmoneyquotes.exe and SymbolMap.csv to ~/.msmoneyprefix  (I had to develop the SymbolMap.csv file for my portfolio)
3. Works ! even does the auto conversions from GBX to GBP and multiple currencies 
4. Very Happy :-)

Last Check is to balance an account:

1. No joy - freezes on this screen   
2. 
    
3. Ran a selection through Gemini for analysis - see attached "Gemini ..."

[David Kimber]

Fix an error in last post in point 2 below -change is in bold

Try MSMoneyQuotes

1. I have a trial version MSMoneyQuotesTrial.exe that I copied as msmoneyquotes.exe for testing

1. Copied msmoneyquotes.exe and SymbolMap.csv to ~/.msmoneyprefix/drive_c  (I had to develop the SymbolMap.csv file for my portfolio)

1. Works ! even does the auto conversions from GBX to GBP and multiple currencies 
2. Very Happy :-)

[David Kimber]

With MSMoneyQuotes also working, I have effectively been able to move off my legacy Win10 laptop, whose purpose for several years was just to run MSMoney 2003.  There are still a few gremlins, but MSMoney has always had something not working perfectly.

It appears that even initially changing the entire msmoneysetup directory to chmod +x, it has to be done again after an initial install run, and the script has to be run again to get Wine to install.  It's not a big deal as it only has to be done once.

With MSMoneyQuotes also working, I have effectively been able to move off my legacy Win10 laptop, whose purpose for several years was just to run MSMoney 2003.  There are still a few gremlins, but MSMoney has always had something not working perfectly.

It's now just testing my own Python scripts to convert .csv files to OFX from the Starling UK and Chase UK, in case there are any impacts in moving from Money 2003 to 2005.

I will also start looking at CSV to OFX downloads for other investment account transactions.

(Doing a Nathan :-) Happy to help and share my experiences with any other Chromebook users wanting to embark on getting MSMoney to work on this platform, we all know Nathan is the man, and I have been fortunate to build on the excellent work already done for Linux

David

[N G]

Hi David,

Nice work on the troubleshooting!

The problem that I see in the wine-install-no-chmod is:

The following packages have unmet dependencies:
 wine-stable : Depends: wine-stable-i386 (= 11.0.0.0~bookworm-1) but it is not installable
E: Unable to correct problems, you have held broken packages.

So the rest of wine was uninstalled previously but the i386 package was not, and that was muddying the waters.

I can see in the wine-install-no-chmod that neither a wine prefix was created nor did winetricks run on the wine-install-no-chmod attempt. Effectively, the required pieces weren't in place yet to succeed. At the very bottom of the log file it says:

cp: target '/home/dmkimber/.msmoneyprefix/drive_c/windows/syswow64': No such file or directory
./Install.sh: line 533: wine: command not found


So if you look into the wine-install log that worked, you'll see that it installs the rest of the missing :i386 packages that didn't make it the first time around.

I think it was a lucky coincidence that running Install.sh a second time worked after the apt inconsistency resolved itself.

I don't think running Install.sh or MSMoney.sh in different displays should matter, maybe a spurious wine glitch?


So maybe if you want to give this another go, either run the Uninstall.sh in the msmoneysetup/.uninstall folder or run:

$ sudo apt uninstall winehq-stable wine-stable wine-stable-amd64 wine-stable-i386

and that will remove all 4 parts of wine.

Then do the chmod -R u+x ~/msmoneysetup and run Install.sh.

(I don't understand why the executable permission is removed/disabled, maybe some kind of google/chromeOS security?)

I run Install.sh all the time in testing so it really should work completely the first time, assuming permissions are good.

If we can figure out why ChromeOS acts like this, then Install.sh should run consistently for you.


I’m glad MSMoneyquotes works for you! PocketSense is probably not as robust as it could be considering that it was created for python2 and with community best efforts to convert it to python3 it isn't perfect. With Direct Connect being phased out quickly now, I wonder how useful pocketsense will be going forward. If you look in msmoneysetup/desktop there is a OFXQFX.sh script that looks in ~/Downloads and tries to import any qfx and ofx files after backing them up to statement.ofx.bak and scrubbing problems (currently for my penfed and nfcu files). This is very rudimentary, it doesn't combine them into one ofx file; just processes them one at a time and sends them to Money.


As for Balance your account, this doesn't work with Money prior to Sunset (2008) in wine. I've tried, and continue to test anything and everything that I can think of.

If you Balance an account while in the process of running Install.sh when Money runs for the first time, it should work.
If you do it when running MSMoney.sh, Money will hang and you'll see this in the log:

0190:err:sync:RtlpWaitForCriticalSection section 003FEEC8 (null) wait timed out in thread 0190, blocked by 012c, retrying (60 sec)

Money is stuck in a deadlock. One process needs access to some exclusive resource but something else won't let it go. You have to Ctrl-c to get out of this.

You're a pioneer in the Chromebook space David! Hopefully with more of your feedback we can adjust Install.sh to be more compatible with ChromeOS.