I must admit that have never heard of such a program but what a good
idea!.

I actually doesn't have to know anything about the local network. It only
has to know how to ping the server. The server can then use the HTTP
protocol to get the IP address of the client

Regards,
Phill O'Flynn


-----Original Message-----
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf
Of [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Sent: Friday, 17 June 2005 2:44 PM
To: [email protected]
Subject: Re: [SLUG] stolen laptop

On Fri, Jun 17, 2005 at 01:27:11PM +1000, Michael Lake wrote:

> Yes. There are readable and writable areas on the physical platter that
> are not normally accessable by the OS or BIOS. They are usually reserved

> by the hard disk manufacturer for their use. By working with the HD
> manufacturer and the laptop builder you could get a driver written which

> will be able to access those regions.

Supposing that you do get access to those regions, that gives some
space for the program... there's still the boot process to consider and
where is this code going to reside in memory? If I'm running some
sort of NAT system (which everyone does), how is it going to know my
local network settings? If I use a pppoe tunnel (typical ADSL user) then
it is even worse. I guess it could try for DHCP but that requires
the resident code to take over from the OS for long enough to get
a reply on the DHCP (i.e. a long time, long enough for the OS to attempt
a context switch or a device driver interrupt). What about network
card buffer space and packet queues? Frankly, I don't see any way it could
work independently of the operating system except for if it can grab
the bootstrap process and get a quick packet out the door just as the
sustem boots up, and then only if DHCP is working, and if there is
no local proxy.

Contrariwise, if it does work with the operating system then it
must be hooked into the OS files somehow (and thus living in regular
IDE disk space where the OS can find those files).

        - Tel
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