| Re: sec : U Re: travelling idl license [message #32315 is a reply to message #32221] |
Wed, 25 September 2002 12:12  |
Rick Towler
Messages: 821
Registered: August 1998
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Senior Member |
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"Randall Skelton" <rhskelto@atm.ox.ac.uk> wrote >
> There are no provisions in the IDE or SCSI interface
> specifications to provide a unique hardware id.
I don't think this is true. From a casual browsing of google.groups I read
a number of posts which state that there has been a spec for HDD serial
numbers since ATA-1. This has been carried on into ATA-2 and ATA-3.
Although there is nothing requiring manufacturers to implement this I
beleive that many today do. I spent less time looking for SCSI references
on this topic but I believe that SCSI devices have implmented something
similar as well.
And I am not talking about the 4 byte VSN.
My search terms were: "'hard drive serial number' +ATA"
> So there are really 2 noteworthy points. Firstly, the VSN was never
> indended to be used as a firm method of authentication.
> Second, it is impossible to have IDL for *nix and Windows on the
> same physical disk with the license tied to the VSN because
> provision for including it are not made by other file systems
> (ext2, xfs, ufs, hfs, hfs+, etc).
Your points are valid, assuming that the FlexLM system uses the 4 byte VSN.
From what I can tell it *does* which makes it pretty much useless. So yes,
I agree that HASP and MAC addresses are probably the most robust. And all
of this is academic since RSI is only using the MAC address when generating
licenses anyway.
RSI could issue dongles using FlexLM instead of HASP. I am assuming that
they dropped HASP after counting some beans. Since they will still be
maintaining the FlexLM code in IDL and paying the license fees one would
assume that offering hardware keys using FlexLM would come at a significant
savings over HASP allowing them to still offer "portable" secure licenses
available for all of their supported platforms (not just the popular ones).
But I am mostly talking out my rear on this.
Bob: You could be the guinea pig for us HASP users. It would be worth
trying to license IDL to a PCMCIA NIC and use that as your dongle. You of
course would have to get a PCMCIA card reader for your desktop. It should
work, the only issue would be managing the multiple NIC's in the machine. I
don't know how the license manager selects the NIC on a machine with
multiple network interfaces though. It looks like it takes the first one it
finds which would complicate this a bit. You want to try that out and get
back to us? ;)
Also, How does this personal license work. Say I have a work machine,
laptop, and home machine (all running the same OS). Currently I can carry
my dongle in my pocket and work wherever I want. How does the personal
license "float"?
-Rick
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