Why can't I put Stockfish in SCID?

Question

I'm installing stockfish to be used on SCID. I followed these two tutorials, using Stockfish from the Stockfish website rather than from git.

https://www.chess.com/article/view/scid--stockfish
http://support.stockfishchess.org/kb/advanced-topics/compiling-stockfish-on-linux

I downloaded the engine binaries for Stockfish7 for Linux from

https://stockfishchess.org/download/

I read that you need to compile it first so I compiled the Stockfish engine with sudo apt-get install git g++. Tested it with make profile-build ARCH=x86-32 then I went to add the engine in SCID, with these settings:

name: stockfish
command: stockfish
directory: /home/user/Desktop/stockfish-7-linux/Linux/src/.stockfish
UCI on

But then it tells me that it is unable to start the program: stockfish.

That error is the default response for any error. If I typed in folders that don't exist and a file that doesn't exist, it gives that error too. What am I doing wrong?

Answer 1

In the line:

name:stockfish command: stockfish directory: /home/user/Desktop/stockfish-7-linux/Linux/src/.stockfish UCI on

Are you sure your exe file is called ".stockfish" and not only just "stockfish". Seems odd that you have a hidden exe file (even that it is possible)

Answer 2

1. Make sure you are pointing to the binary distribution of Stockfish and not the source. The binary distribution should be a variation of stockfish_10_x64.

2. Make sure this binary has execute permissions:

   chmod u+x stockfish_10_x64
   

Answer 3

The solution is:

This command right here, as linked: /home/yourusername/.scid4.7/Linux/stockfish_10_x64

It worked for me.

I went into a search and found "Stockfish." Then I went onto "copy link location," and pasted it into command (I copied the Stockfish files in the SCID folder).

I hope that someone finds this helpful.