C++/Windows: Get unique machine id: mac address, volume serial number, - ethernet

My platform is Windows 7 (or later), and I am using Visual Studio 2010.
In an attempt to get a unique machine identifier, I was trying to retrieve the mac address and I encountered the following problem.
I am having difficulty identifying which is the primary ethernet network adapter from the list of adapters returned by GetAdapatersInfo method.
I can get a list of ethernet adapters by checking their type (it should be MIB_IF_TYPE_ETHERNET).
However, there are multiple ethernet adapters on my machine: Actual LAN adapter, Cisco created software adapter, bluetooth ethernet adapater, etc.
Depending upon how I am connected to the internet, this list keeps changing.
So, how do I know which one is the actual ethernet adapter (the one that will connect using LAN cable).

Well,
After experimenting for some time (about one month), the volume number seems to be a reliable metric for generating unique id which is persistent across reboots and which cannot be changed by the user. This id will not change unless the disk is reformatted.
The following code fetches the volume number.
int getVolumeNumber(char *volumeNumber, int capacity) {
for(int i=0; i<capacity; i++) {
volumeNumber[i] = '\0';
}
TCHAR volumeName[MAX_PATH + 1] = { 0 };
TCHAR fileSystemName[MAX_PATH + 1] = { 0 };
DWORD serialNumber = 0;
DWORD maxComponentLen = 0;
DWORD fileSystemFlags = 0;
if(GetVolumeInformation(_T("C:\\"), volumeName, ARRAYSIZE(volumeName), &serialNumber, &maxComponentLen, &fileSystemFlags, fileSystemName, ARRAYSIZE(fileSystemName)) != 0) {
sprintf(volumeNumber,"%lu",serialNumber);
return 0;
} else {
return 1;
}
}
In the above code, I am fetching the volume number of the C: drive.

"the volume number seems to be a reliable metric for generating unique id which is persistent across reboots and which cannot be changed by the user."
The last part of this statement ("cannot be changed by the user.") is not true. There are several utilities which either change or spoof the volume serial number.
See for example https://www.raymond.cc/blog/changing-or-spoofing-hard-disk-hardware-serial-number-and-volume-id/ .
Depending on your use case, you might be slightly better off using the hard disk serial number, which is provided by the HD manufacturer and cannot be changed by the user (but CAN be spoofed). It can be retrieved using the Win32_PhysicalMedia class (https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/desktop/aa394346%28v=vs.85%29.aspx).
Another option might be to enumerate all ethernet adapters, sort them and compare the result - but it seems you have investigated this road.
In general, anything that could be used as a unique ID of a PC could be used for "software protection" (i.e. preventing unauthorised use of software), and it is therefore highly probable that people have tried to find ways to circumvent it.

Related

How to loop through all page table entries of a process in xv6?

I'm trying to loop through all pages for a process in xv6.
I've looked at this diagram to understand how it works:
but my code is getting:
unexpected trap 14 from cpu 0 eip 801045ff (cr2=0xdfbb000)
Code:
pde_t * physPgDir = (void *)V2P(p->pgdir);
int c = 0;
for(unsigned int i =0; i<NPDENTRIES;i++){
pde_t * pde = &physPgDir[i];
if(*pde & PTE_P){//page directory valid entry
int pde_ppn = (int)((PTE_ADDR(*pde)) >> PTXSHIFT);
pte_t * physPgtab = (void *)(PTE_ADDR(*pde));//grab 20 MSB for inner page table phys pointer;
// go through inner page table
for(unsigned int j =0;j<NPDENTRIES;j++){
pte_t * pte = &physPgtab[j];
if(*pte & PTE_P){//valid entry
c++;
unsigned int pte_ppn = (PTE_ADDR(*pte)) >> PTXSHIFT;//grab 20 MSB for inner page table phys pointer;
//do thing
}
}
}
}
This is in some custom function in proc.c that gets called elsewhere. p is a process pointer.
As far as I understand, cr3 contains the physical address of the current process. However in my case I need to get the page table for a given process pointer. The xv6 code seems to load V2P(p->pgdir) in cr3. That is why I tried to get V2P(p->pgdir). However,the trap happens before pde is dereferenced. Which means there is a problem there. Am I not supposed to use the physical address?
Edit: As Brendan answered, the virtual address p->pgdir is what should be dereferenced. Additionally, the PPN from the Page directory should also be converted via P2V to properly dereference into the page table.
If someone else also gets confused about this aspect of xv6 in the future, I hope that helps.
When dealing with paging the golden rule is "never store physical addresses in any kind of pointer". The reasons are:
a) They aren't virtual addresses and can't be dereferenced, so it's better to make bugs obvious by ensuring you get compile time errors if you try to use a physical address as a pointer.
b) In some cases physical addresses are a different size to virtual addresses (e.g. "PAE paging" in 80x86 where virtual addresses are still 32-bit but physical addresses are potentially up to 52 bits); and it's better (for portability - e.g. so that PAE support can be added to XV6 easier at some point).
With this in mind your first line of code is an obvious bug (it breaks the "golden rule"). It should either be pde_t physPgDir = V2P(p->pgdir); or pde_t * pgDir = p->pgdir;. I'll let you figure out which (as I suspect it's homework, and I'm confident that by adhering to the "golden rule" you'll solve your own problem).

How does BIOS determine the PCI port type during enumeration process?

As in PCI Express a capability register called “pci express capability register” specifies the device/port type field which tells whether its root port, upstream switch port, switch downstream port, end point etc.
What mechanism does BIOS use to determine the port/device type during PCI Bus enumeration ?
I am not sure answering your question but while getting bridge operation in coreboot (get_pci_bridge_ops) https://github.com/coreboot/coreboot/blob/master/src/device/pci_device.c it is done that way :
unsigned int pciexpos;
pciexpos = pci_find_capability(dev, PCI_CAP_ID_PCIE);
if (pciexpos) {
u16 flags;
flags = pci_read_config16(dev, pciexpos + PCI_EXP_FLAGS);
switch ((flags & PCI_EXP_FLAGS_TYPE) >> 4) {
case PCI_EXP_TYPE_ROOT_PORT:
case PCI_EXP_TYPE_UPSTREAM:
case PCI_EXP_TYPE_DOWNSTREAM:
printk(BIOS_DEBUG, "%s subordinate bus PCI Express\n",
dev_path(dev));
return &default_pciexp_ops_bus;
case PCI_EXP_TYPE_PCI_BRIDGE:
printk(BIOS_DEBUG, "%s subordinate PCI\n",
dev_path(dev));
return &default_pci_ops_bus;
default:
break;
}
}
It's fixed - the vendor programs that field based on the design of its product.
The manufacturer always knows if a port is upstream or downstream or if it has just designed a root complex instead of a switch or if it is using PCI instread PCIe.
Simply put this is where the vendor knowledge is essential and why it is its duty to write a firmware.
Specifically, the field value can come from an EEPROM/FlashROM or be programmed by the BIOS/UEFI at early boot using hardwired values.
It doesn't really matter how it is done, what matters is that the field gets initialized as intended in the factory before any dependent software read it.

Confusion over CoreMIDI Destinations

Given the following code if I use the first method in the if branch to obtain a MIDIDestination the code works correctly, and MIDI data is sent. If I use the second method from the else branch, no data is sent.
var client = MIDIClientRef()
var port = MIDIPortRef()
var dest = MIDIEndpointRef()
MIDIClientCreate("jveditor" as CFString, nil, nil, &client)
MIDIOutputPortCreate(client, "output" as CFString, &port)
if false {
dest = MIDIGetDestination(1)
} else {
var device = MIDIGetExternalDevice(0)
var entity = MIDIDeviceGetEntity(device, 0)
dest = MIDIEntityGetDestination(entity, 0)
}
var name: Unmanaged<CFString>?
MIDIObjectGetStringProperty(dest, kMIDIPropertyDisplayName, &name)
print(name?.takeUnretainedValue() as! String)
var gmOn : [UInt8] = [ 0xf0, 0x7e, 0x7f, 0x09, 0x01, 0xf7 ]
var pktlist = MIDIPacketList()
var current = MIDIPacketListInit(&pktlist)
current = MIDIPacketListAdd(&pktlist, MemoryLayout<MIDIPacketList>.stride, current, 0, gmOn.count, &gmOn)
MIDISend(port, dest, &pktlist)
In both cases the printed device name is correct, and the status of every call is noErr.
I have noticed that if I ask for the kMIDIManufacturerName property that I get different results - specifically using the first method I get Generic, from the USB MIDI interface to which the MIDI device is connected, and with the second method I get the value of Roland configured via the Audio MIDI Setup app.
The reason I want to use the second method is specifically so that I can filter out devices that don't have the desired manufacturer name, but as above I can't then get working output.
Can anyone explain the difference between these two methods, and why the latter doesn't work, and ideally offer a suggestion as to how I can work around that?
It sounds like you want to find only the MIDI destination endpoints to talk to a certain manufacturer's devices. Unfortunately that isn't really possible, since there is no protocol for discovering what MIDI devices exist, what their attributes are, and how they are connected to the computer.
(Remember that MIDI is primitive 1980s technology. It doesn't even require bidirectional communication. There are perfectly valid MIDI setups with MIDI devices that you can send data to, but can never receive data from, and vice versa.)
The computer knows what MIDI interfaces are connected to it (for instance, a USB-MIDI interface). CoreMIDI calls these "Devices". You can find out how many there are, how many ports each has, etc. But there is no way to find out anything about the physical MIDI devices like keyboards and synthesizers that are connected to them.
"External devices" are an attempt to get around the discovery problem. They are the things that appear in Audio MIDI Setup when you press the "Add Device" button. That's all!
Ideally your users would create an external device for each physical MIDI device in their setup, enter all the attributes of each one, and set up all the connections in a way that perfectly mirrors their physical MIDI cables.
Unfortunately, in reality:
There may not be any external devices. There is not much benefit to creating them in Audio MIDI Setup, and it's a lot of boring data entry, so most people don't bother.
If there are external devices, you can't trust any of the information that the users added. The manufacturer might not be right, or might be spelled wrong, for instance.
It's pretty unfriendly to force your users to set things up in Audio MIDI Setup before they can use your software. Therefore, no apps do that... and therefore nobody sets anything up in Audio MIDI Setup. It's a chicken-and-egg problem.
Even if there are external devices, your users might want to send MIDI to other endpoints (like virtual endpoints created by other apps) that are not apparently connected to external devices. You should let them do what they want.
The documentation for MIDIGetDevice() makes a good suggestion:
If a client iterates through the devices and entities in the system, it will not ever visit any virtual sources and destinations created by other clients. Also, a device iteration will return devices which are "offline" (were present in the past but are not currently present), while iterations through the system's sources and destinations will not include the endpoints of offline devices.
Thus clients should usually use MIDIGetNumberOfSources, MIDIGetSource, MIDIGetNumberOfDestinations and MIDIGetDestination, rather iterating through devices and entities to locate endpoints.
In other words: use MIDIGetNumberOfDestinations and MIDIGetDestination to get the possible destinations, then let your users pick one of them. That's all.
If you really want to do more:
Given a destination endpoint, you can use MIDIEndpointGetEntity and MIDIEndpointGetDevice to get to the MIDI interface.
Given any MIDI object, you can find its connections to other objects. Use MIDIObjectGetDataProperty to get the value of property kMIDIPropertyConnectionUniqueID, which is an array of the unique IDs of connected objects. Then use MIDIObjectFindByUniqueID to get to the object. The outObjectType will tell you what kind of object it is.
But that's pretty awkward, and you're not guaranteed to find any useful information.
Based on a hint from Kurt Revis's answer, I've found the solution.
The destination that I needed to find is associated with the source of the external device, with the connection between them found using the kMIDIPropertyConnectionUniqueID property of that source.
Replacing the code in the if / else branch in the question with the code below works:
var external = MIDIGetExternalDevice(0)
var entity = MIDIDeviceGetEntity(external, 0)
var src = MIDIEntityGetSource(entity, 0)
var connID : Int32 = 0
var dest = MIDIObjectRef()
var type = MIDIObjectType.other
MIDIObjectGetIntegerProperty(src, kMIDIPropertyConnectionUniqueID, &connID)
MIDIObjectFindByUniqueID(connID, &dest, &type)
A property dump suggests that the connection Unique ID property is really a data property (perhaps containing multiple IDs) but the resulting CFData appears to be in big-endian format so reading it as an integer property instead seems to work fine.

Page fault when trying to access VESA LFB with paging enabled

Whenever I try to write a pixel to the LFB of VESA mode, I get a page fault where the page is present and has been read. My paging implementation is from James Molloy's OS series. I've tried identity mapping the LFB as follows:
for (unsigned int i = 0xFD000000; i < 0xFE000000; i += 0x1000) {
page_t* pg = get_page(i, 1, kernel_directory);
alloc_page(pg, 1, 1);
}
These are the prototypes for those functions:
page_t* get_page(uint32_t address, int make, page_directory_t* dir);
void alloc_frame(page_t* page, int is_kernel, int is_writeable);
When paging is disabled, I'm able to write pixels to the LFB without any issues. Am I identity mapping the LFB incorrectly? Is there something else I need to do to identity map it correctly? Any suggestions?
When paging is disabled, your accessing address is the physical address. However, when paging is enabled, your accessing address is virtual, so you should first map the address region you will access to a phsyical address region. This can be implemented by the remap_pfn_range or nopage function, as introduced here.

Linux and reading and writing a general purpose 32 bit register

I am using embedded Linux for the NIOS II processor and device tree. The GPIO functionality provides the ability to read and or write a single bit at a time. I have some firmware and PIOS that I want to read or write atomically by setting or reading all 32 bits at one time. It seems like there would be a generic device driver that if the device tree was given the proper compatibility a driver would exist that would allow opening the device and then reading and writing the device. I have searched for this functionality and do not find a driver. One existing in a branch but was removed by Linus.
My question is what is the Linux device tree way to read and write a device that is a general purpose 32 bit register/pio?
Your answer is SCULL
Character Device Drivers
You will have to write a character device driver with file operations to open and close a device. Read, write, ioctl, and copy the contents of device.
static struct file_operations query_fops =
{
.owner = THIS_MODULE,
.open = my_open,
.release = my_close,
.ioctl = my_ioctl
};
Map the address using iomem and directly read and write to that address using rawread and rawwrite. Create and register a device as follows and then it can be accessed from userspace:
register_chrdev (0, DEVICE_NAME, & query_fops);
device_create (dev_class, NULL, MKDEV (dev_major, 0), NULL, DEVICE_NAME);
and then access it from userspace as follows:
fd = open("/dev/mydevice", O_RDWR);
and then you can play with GPIO from userspace using ioctl's:
ioctl(fd, SET_STATE);