[comp.sys.amiga.hardware] 2091 full-time mounting question

jma@beach.cis.ufl.edu (John 'Vlad' Adams) (04/07/90)

Well, there's an option for bootable, but not for mountable.  I'll
take it you meant that.  How could one remount the hard drive when
there is no entry in the mountlist for the first parition?  I got
a message from jss that this would be changed in the next upgrade.
--
John  M.  Adams    --*--    Professional Student on the six-year plan!      ///
Internet:  jma@beach.cis.ufl.edu   -or-   vladimir@maple.circa.ufl.edu     ///
"Houston, we have a negative on that orbit trajectory." Calvin & Hobbs  \\V//
Cosysop of BBS:42; Amiga BBS FIDOnet 1:3612/42. 904-438-4803 (Florida)   \X/

mks@cbmvax.commodore.com (Michael Sinz - CATS) (04/08/90)

In article <22846@uflorida.cis.ufl.EDU> jma@beach.cis.ufl.edu (John 'Vlad' Adams) writes:
>Well, there's an option for bootable, but not for mountable.  I'll
>take it you meant that.  How could one remount the hard drive when
>there is no entry in the mountlist for the first parition?  I got
>a message from jss that this would be changed in the next upgrade.

There is an option for not mountable, but it is in the file system
screen of the partition setup.  That way you can have a partition that
is not AmigaDOS.  This was in there since day-1.

/----------------------------------------------------------------------\
|      /// Michael Sinz -- CATS/Amiga Software Engineer                |
|     ///  PHONE 215-431-9422  UUCP ( uunet | rutgers ) !cbmvax!mks    |
|    ///                                                               |
|\\\///          "I don't think so," said Ren'e Descartes.             |
| \XX/                    Just then, he vanished.                      |
\----------------------------------------------------------------------/

dcr3567@ultb.isc.rit.edu (D.C. Richardson) (04/09/90)

In article <10666@cbmvax.commodore.com> mks@cbmvax (Michael Sinz - CATS) writes:
>In article <22833@uflorida.cis.ufl.EDU> jma@beach.cis.ufl.edu (John 'Vlad' Adams) writes:
>/----------------------------------------------------------------------\
>|      /// Michael Sinz -- CATS/Amiga Software Engineer                |
>|     ///  PHONE 215-431-9422  UUCP ( uunet | rutgers ) !cbmvax!mks    |
>\----------------------------------------------------------------------/
[Things about the A2091 deleted.. Hell, I still got a A2090!!)

To the CATS dudes:
 
  I have the A2090 (with ST-251 40 meg) with the Centaur AutoBoot card.
It workds real nice, and I like it, etc..etc..

  Is it still going to work under 1.4/2.0??  (Or, was anything changed
in the AutoConfig that will make the card fail?)

-Daniel Richardson


-- 
Daniel C. Richardson
Rochester Institute Of Technology     /    Mechanical Engineering Dept.
"Immaturity Is The Essence Of Humanity.  Children Shall Be Our Saviors"
-Red's Dream

daveh@cbmvax.commodore.com (Dave Haynie) (04/10/90)

In article <22833@uflorida.cis.ufl.EDU> jma@beach.cis.ufl.edu (John 'Vlad' Adams) writes:
>I've a question for the floor.  Is anyone else bothered by the fact that
>the A2091/Quantum 40S is *always* online?  Isn't this an open invitation
>for Trojan horses?  I'm rather envious of my friends who can run
>off of floppy without having access to DH0.  Now, I'm welcoming corrections,
>but as far as I can tell (especially with the lack of any useful information
>in the 2091 manual) the hard drive is accessible to any program, right?

The 2091 doesn't have a traditional Boot Block, in the sense of the floppy,
than can be used to wedge in evil code like the kind that get started up
from boot floppies.  There is a utility called "Lock" on the latest Workbench
disk that lets you write protect your hard disk, under a password if you
like.  When testing totally unknown software, it could never hurt to write
protect the hard drive.  I'm not sure at what level this Lock works, but it
certainly is possible to protect a disk for any access other than blatent
register-level attacks, and if any virus hackers are clever enough to be 
implementing virus drivers for individual HD controllers, they should get 
into the commercial software business and drop this stupid virus hacking.

>John  M.  Adams    --*--    Professional Student on the six-year plan!      ///
>Internet:  jma@beach.cis.ufl.edu   -or-   vladimir@maple.circa.ufl.edu     ///
>"Houston, we have a negative on that orbit trajectory." Calvin & Hobbs  \\V//
>Cosysop of BBS:42; Amiga BBS FIDOnet 1:3612/42. 904-438-4803 (Florida)   \X/


-- 
Dave Haynie Commodore-Amiga (Systems Engineering) "The Crew That Never Rests"
   {uunet|pyramid|rutgers}!cbmvax!daveh      PLINK: hazy     BIX: hazy
                    Too much of everything is just enough

mwandel@tiger.waterloo.edu (Markus Wandel) (04/10/90)

In article <10722@cbmvax.commodore.com> daveh@cbmvax (Dave Haynie) writes:

> [ Explanation of the "lock" command of 1.3 deleted]

>                       ...I'm not sure at what level this Lock works, but it
> certainly is possible to protect a disk for any access other than blatent
> register-level attacks, and if any virus hackers are clever enough to be 
> implementing virus drivers for individual HD controllers, they should get 
> into the commercial software business and drop this stupid virus hacking.

It's not very hard.  The lock is built into the FFS.  All the virus writer
has to do is traverse the device list, find the entry for the disk, get the
Filesystem startup message, and bingo, he has access to the device driver.
Probably <100 lines of assembler to get the device driver data for all mounted
FFS partitions.

From there it's not much to find the root block, unset a few
bits in the bitmap, or do any other kind of insidious damage.  I don't want to
sound like a smart-ass, criticizing everything that gets said here, but I do
want to point out that without write-protection built into the device driver,
a disk is certainly not safe from device-independent attacks.  And as near
as I can tell, device drivers do not presently allow software write protection.
I figure I could write the "do insidious damage to all mounted FFS partitions"
part for a virus in a couple of afternoons, lock or no lock.  Certainly easier
than the "file infecting" viruses of late.

No flames please, I don't intend to do the above, just prevent a false sense
of security.

Markus Wandel
mwandel@tiger.waterloo.edu
(519) 884-9547