On Thu, Oct 05, 2006 at 04:25:38AM -0400, Tim Schmidt wrote: > What we're talking about here is a class of applications that expect > raw (or nearly-raw) disk access: > > - copy-protection that writes mysterious things to or near the MBR > - various utility software (virus scanners, disk defragmenters, > forensic tools, etc.) > - other possibilities?
IMHO you can rule out #2. the majority of people using wine want to use their last few remaining apps they have no counterpart for unix and all their games. all these are copy-protection-pestered. the #2 folks are proficient enough with their systems to know what they are doing. the #1 folks hope to get away from the world of #2 things they are forced on the windows world when they change to unix. so #1 is definetly something that should be done with "files" - not "disks" - to prevent the masses from fiddling with /dev/sda permissions or running WINE as root. for the "law" point of view - i though about it from the comments of yesterdays discussion. reducing this to the plain thing i guessed so far: - assuming windows dont let anyone write directly to the disk the app has to gain some higher privs first - as this is no go for most of the admins out there i assume this apps install their .sys files all over the place and run as "drivers" so they get that extra privs granted - so here comes my big blank: once they have the privs: do the drivers actually work the machine or are they still using the win-api for stuff like writing to the disk? if the winapi is used i would asume there is no law-problem other than all the law problem "we allready have". but if they directly access the machine - can we actually intercept it? -- cu
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