Disabling disk startup natively?

So I noticed this Dan's tweet. It looks like Dan is porting ComputerCraft to Minecraft 1.8.8 1.8.9 and while doing so, adding a new configuration option to disable/enable certain features of a specific computer. What caught my eye specifically, was the "shell.disk_startup" option. It looks like we will be able to disable the disk startup on computers. That's good news for door locks and locked computers, but it's also good news for virus developers. There's other things to keep in mind too, like making a startup script which hangs or goes into an infinite loop and not being able to fix that computer without file access. What are your thoughts about that?

It is a nice for command computers or any other important computer owned by the admins since they can access the fs through the physical PS.

But command computers have the disk startup feature already disabled.

That feature actually existed for all pcs but was removed, I think.

Indeed, if only in the betas, and for a very brief period at that - see the discussion starting here.

This (planned) change really makes me wish for disk drives to read the computer/turtle contents like it does with pocket computers.
Also we don't know how exactly this change will work so personally i am reserved but positive for it.

What is really interesting is the "set" command. This seems like environment variables of some form. If these are integrated with the OS I can imaging them getting more use than home grown solutions.

SquidDev, on 09 January 2016 - 09:09 PM said:

What is really interesting is the "set" command. This seems like environment variables of some form. If these are integrated with the OS I can imaging them getting more use than home grown solutions.

Well that depends for me. Will you be able to "set" them to strings/numbers or just true/false? Because more advanced settings require more than true/false. If yes then i can see total overhaul of many programs settings systems.

Wojbie, on 09 January 2016 - 07:04 PM said:

This (planned) change really makes me wish for disk drives to read the computer/turtle contents like it does with pocket computers.

Thanks for this suggestion. It's an elegant solution to the problem of "if a virus disables disk startup, how do we unbrick it?". All computers and turtle items except Command Computers will be disk drive mountable in 1.77, allowing you to delete the startup file or the settings file

Doesn't that undo the point of being able disable startup files, though? Don't get me wrong, if I had to pick between the two features I'd take remote drive mounting any day, but it seems one makes the other redundant.

Bomb Bloke, on 09 January 2016 - 11:29 PM said:

Doesn't that undo the point of being able disable startup files, though? Don't get me wrong, if I had to pick between the two features I'd take remote drive mounting any day, but it seems one makes the other redundant.

Well it does remove ability to just chuck disk drive next to computer and doing stuff to it. Also it's like real word case. If you have computer in hand you can just extract hard drive and read it.

Bomb Bloke, on 09 January 2016 - 11:29 PM said:

Doesn't that undo the point of being able disable startup files, though? Don't get me wrong, if I had to pick between the two features I'd take remote drive mounting any day, but it seems one makes the other redundant.

Not entirely, since you can hinder people who should not have access to a PC from getting it by having a world protecting mod. With this they won't be able to look into the filesystem. So IHO, this is an excellent idea. Thanks Wobje.

But… a world-protecting mod would also guard against a regular start-up disk solution!

To my understanding, all this means is that if I want to take over a computer, instead of needing to carry around a disk drive and disk, instead I'd just be carrying around a single computer block.

Bomb Bloke, on 10 January 2016 - 12:17 AM said:

But… a world-protecting mod would also guard against a regular start-up disk solution!

To my understanding, all this means is that if I want to take over a computer, instead of needing to carry around a disk drive and disk, instead I'd just be carrying around a single computer block.

The protection could end just next to the PC allowing for someone to put a disk drive there. The filesystem mount is a nice feature that should be implemented.

we could keep this discussion going forever, its basicly a new way to change the startup code and which means we can no longer brick it agian,

there are some sollutions:
1. the mounted drive from the second computer only has everything availible except for system files like startup and the settings file, meaning if your pc gets bricked, you can still get your precious, precious data from it.
2. make the external mounting also an option, when this is disabled other computers cannot get into the system via mounting.
3. have a system folder called "share", only that folder gets mounted if present

to end the world protection discussion, now you can discuss about these three options

Ah, I'm an idiot - I got it into my head that computers would be "disk drive mountable" in the way that disk drives are mountable. Dan's likely meaning "you can put them in disk drives". That seems a bit more secure, as it should be possible to prevent people from doing this using eg Thaumcraft's warding system or whatever.

wilcomega, on 10 January 2016 - 10:29 PM said:

we could keep this discussion going forever, its basicly a new way to change the startup code and which means we can no longer brick it agian,

there are some sollutions:
1. the mounted drive from the second computer only has everything availible except for system files like startup and the settings file, meaning if your pc gets bricked, you can still get your precious, precious data from it.
2. make the external mounting also an option, when this is disabled other computers cannot get into the system via mounting.
3. have a system folder called "share", only that folder gets mounted if present

to end the world protection discussion, now you can discuss about these three options

The second option again allows for a virus making the PC unreachable.

The third point too.

Bomb Bloke, on 10 January 2016 - 10:46 PM said:

Ah, I'm an idiot - I got it into my head that computers would be "disk drive mountable" in the way that disk drives are mountable. Dan's likely meaning "you can put them in disk drives". That seems a bit more secure, as it should be possible to prevent people from doing this using eg Thaumcraft's warding system or whatever.

Thaumcraft warding only works on non-tile entity blocks, so you can't ward a computer. Additionally, you can't interact with them once warded - if you ward a crafting table, you can no long open the GUI and craft with it.

Plugins like GriefPrevention should still work, but last I checked they weren't compatible with many mods, including CC - you can still access computers and disk drives in claims.

Ah. Well, I suppose you can at least still ward a room around them, and feed out a network cable. Previously, that would've allowed players to connect a disk drive to the network, and then use another computer to reboot the target (as a peripheral).

Mind you, I gather THAT can already be protected against simply by pre-placing a disk drive with a startup disk yourself; by putting it against whatever side the computer checks first, you can ensure that your startup disk will always be the one used, no matter what gets connected to the cable feeding outside of your warded area.

Bomb Bloke, on 10 January 2016 - 10:46 PM said:

Ah, I'm an idiot - I got it into my head that computers would be "disk drive mountable" in the way that disk drives are mountable. Dan's likely meaning "you can put them in disk drives". That seems a bit more secure, as it should be possible to prevent people from doing this using eg Thaumcraft's warding system or whatever.

Yeah, this is what I meant. You can can place them inside a disk drive, just like you already can with Pocket Computers

dan200, on 11 January 2016 - 02:58 PM said:

Bomb Bloke, on 10 January 2016 - 10:46 PM said:

Ah, I'm an idiot - I got it into my head that computers would be "disk drive mountable" in the way that disk drives are mountable. Dan's likely meaning "you can put them in disk drives". That seems a bit more secure, as it should be possible to prevent people from doing this using eg Thaumcraft's warding system or whatever.

Yeah, this is what I meant. You can can place them inside a disk drive, just like you already can with Pocket Computers

i would like to see the disk rom crafting feature, or some similar way to physically change the software instead of through the software. IRL you also have to use hardware on bricked devices or find loopholes in the software to be able to change the core OS