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Re: problem adding custom programmer definition

PostPosted: 07, 2009 Oct Wed 1:03 pm
by admin
ashwinm wrote:Hey, good going! I tested the binary in my system, and it works here too. The only downside is that it needs admin privileges to run. Perhaps it's possible to decouple the kernel driver part from the user space part to avoid this problem. That way, only during installation (which requires admin privileges anyway) will the UAC box pop up.

- Ashwin

I though about the admin issue. If I install the driver as it exists (supposing I found how to do it), this will be a huge security weakness: it allows anybody to access anything in the kernel :!:
It would require a mean to restrict the driver users. May be possible to use some sort of ACL to prevent other application to use it? Not sure yet.

So the first version will unfortunately require the admin priviledge and to set it manually (I hope to add the automatic switching to privileged environment in the next revision). The good news is that I have this first version that is running under XP. I have to test it under VISTA and to complete the boring stuff (update the help and language files, configuration management and packaging in the installer). Should not be more than few hours left before next version :D

Re: problem adding custom programmer definition

PostPosted: 07, 2009 Oct Wed 5:12 pm
by ashwinm
Wow, great progress :-)

Regarding the admin issue, I was looking into the WDK, and found an example driver called PortIO that allows arbitrary R/W access to any port address. This example also comes with INF files etc required to actually install the driver. May be too late now, but perhaps later you could look at it and see if it is a better fit for WxPIC (especially considering the admin permissions issue). I may be wrong though; I don't know if this direct port access will prevent Windows from "fooling around" with the port :-)

- Ashwin

Re: problem adding custom programmer definition

PostPosted: 10, 2009 Oct Sat 2:59 pm
by admin
ashwinm wrote:I don't know if this direct port access will prevent Windows from "fooling around" with the port :-)

No it doesn't :-(
And an explicit opening of the LPT port that is also done by WxPic does not prevent either Windows from accessing the port, thought the channel that WxPic opens on the port is able to prevent WxPic itself to open it a second time (I know it for sure because I had a bug that tried to open the port each time the Initialize button was pressed :oops: )

But the DisableWarmPoll trick still works :) (at least on my non-SP1 VISTA - I can't go to SP1 because my disk is too small !!! :x )

I am quite late because I got 3 regressions on my language file generation procedure. I was responsible of the 2 easy ones. But the last one took me hours of experiments and is still unexplained. The FC executable of Windows no longer works when invoked through the make :shock: . Finally I had to replace it by the GNU diff.
In addition my test under VISTA failed because of... the orange wire of my fake adapter that disconnected from one of the pins while I move it from the XP to the VISTA PC. You can imagine the time I spent searching why the software did not want to work under VISTA...

But here we are. The V1.1 is OUT