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>From bkj386!brian Sat Feb 27 22:15:30 1993
To: moore!unix-unanimous-relay
Date: Sat Feb 27 22:02:14 1993
From: bkj386!brian (Brian Jenkins)
Content-Length: 2371

Subject: Re: Blackmailing software? (Help!)
To: moore!unix-unanimous-relay (Evan Leibovitch)
Date: Sat, 27 Feb 93 22:02:13 EST
In-Reply-To: <2B8C6ACF.B06@telly.on.ca>; from "Evan Leibovitch" at Feb 25, 93 6:44 am
X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.3 PL11]

According to Evan Leibovitch:
> 
> No such luck. Upon re-installation, 'ltar' refuses to work, and instead
> demands that I all a certain number to buy a licensed copy. The client
> had no idea that someone in their past had put an illegal software copy
> on their system (everything else they have is legit). I have no idea
> what the previous "expert" did to fool this copy of 'ltar' into
> believing it was legit, before the OS was re-installed.
> 
> The program is apparently called "Lone-tar". Upon doing a 'strings' on
> the binary, I noticed a reference to a file called '/dev/lone-tar', but
> I had no idea if this was supposed to be a device, or what major/minor
> numbers, or what 'ltar' did with it, etc...

I do not have lone-tar, nor do I have really know any of the
details of the system.  However, since they are compressing,
verifying and backing-up data, it might be quite reasonable
to set up their own "device" for the tape and have it
compiled in the kernel.  Not the most portable arrangement,
but likely one that optimizes control of the device.  Of
course, not having a functioning device in the kernel would
be a prime indication of something being not-right.  Might
not be a copy protection scheme at all.

> Can anyone offer any short-term panic fixes which will let 'ltar' do its
> job, long enough for me to just read some tapes the client inadvertenly
> created with it? As soon as I can read all the tapes created with 'ltar',
> I'm probably going to dump it, unless none of the aforementioned alternative
> tools is available. (Has anyone compiled afio or gtar for Xenix?)

I have compiled afio for Xenix.  Used it mostly with
diskettes, but it works with my tape drive.  It is an
"older" copy and is a cpio-like function.  Do you think it
would help?  I compiled pax and that type of stuff once long
ago in Xenix (it is a superset of which cpio and tar are
subsets) but never used it.

Have you tried dd's the tape onto a file and seeing if the
format is a tar file with something as simple as compressed
files?  Admittedly with a product like that everything might
be propriety, but ......



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