Changing the Boot Order

What really pisses me off is that (aside from the fact that you can just break a computer) any sort of computer lock or anything that you place on your computer's startup can be overridden with an override disk with a startup file. So how about making a way to change the "boot order", whether it looks for a startup file in a disk, or just uses the computer's root startup. (or any other place there's a startup file.) Perhaps you could add a way to have a list of directories that it would search in order for a startup file.

The list of searched directories would look something like this right now:

Boot order:
[1] /disk/startup
[2] /startup

And you could change it so that the root startup always comes first, somehow.

Boot order:
[1] /startup
[2] /disk/startup

I would imagine some sort of back panel for computers that would be opened up using a sort of screwdriver, but I imagine there would be a simpler way to implement this.

EDIT: I just realized that aNYONE CAN JUST OPEN THE BACK PANEL AGH.

This is why we have rednet.

You can physically secure a computer against direct unauthorized access, and yet still be able to access it from another terminal. The access will be naturally restricted to what you have actually programmed to be possible.

That rednet host program can be easily overridden by a disk, which can basically clear an entire filesystem.

…a neat trick, since they don't have physical access to the host, they only have physical access to the client.

Regardless, being able to simply tell the computer to look for a startup file in the root directory before looking for one in a disk seems like a basic capability that a computer should have, and it'd actually give some use to the many different security and antivirus programs that exist. There's no point in making any of these when a disk can just bypass the entire system.

Plus, with the system you think of, what happens when someone somehow manages to find and wipe your host computer? It can and usually will happen, since hacking takes little to no effort.

There is no ultimately secure system, short of being an op and encasing yours in bedrock.

Nor should there be.

You can use BiOS. But now it have only a order. But in future you can change the order of boot.

ChunLing, on 30 December 2012 - 12:11 AM said:

There is no ultimately secure system, short of being an op and encasing yours in bedrock.

Nor should there be.

Using bedrock even as a server admin I believe is cheating, but that's beside the point. There's gotta be some way to make it so that some moron can't just stroll by and bypass your computer with a simple startup disk.

If it matters so much to you, just edit the bios. I think it's a terrible idea, as you could easily brick your computer.

You should read this post: http://www.computercraft.info/forums2/index.php?/topic/7332-addition-advanced-disk-drive/
Basically, non-pvp wants more protection, and does not care about bricking (in, fact, non-pvp likes bricking), most of it can be done through editing the shell program (not the bios, that's not where boot order is decided) and some block protection, both for turtles and computers. So, yeah, it ca be done, but by the server owners. A nice complement is a screen lock, then again, that can be done in Lua (without editing the rom).

Dlcruz129, on 30 December 2012 - 07:58 AM said:

If it matters so much to you, just edit the bios. I think it's a terrible idea, as you could easily brick your computer.

To be fair, I do screw up a lot in making simple password systems for friends, in that I've made a mistake but forgot to keep the os.pullEvent = os.pullEventRaw thing off for debugging at some point in the code, so having a failsafe startup bypass is sort of nice. I'll just throw a remote shell host in the sky or something.

CoolisTheName007, on 30 December 2012 - 08:09 AM said:

You should read this post: http://www.computercraft.info/forums2/index.php?/topic/7332-addition-advanced-disk-drive/
Basically, non-pvp wants more protection, and does not care about bricking (in, fact, non-pvp likes bricking), most of it can be done through editing the shell program (not the bios, that's not where boot order is decided) and some block protection, both for turtles and computers. So, yeah, it ca be done, but by the server owners. A nice complement is a screen lock, then again, that can be done in Lua (without editing the rom).

This sounds nice :D/>

Kingdaro, on 30 December 2012 - 08:15 AM said:

This sounds nice :D/>

Bear in mind that a screen lock is a complement, and does not prevent malicious startup by disk drive; btw, there is a thread about a screen lock somewhere that looks exactly like the shell, but does not allow anyone to execute anything.

Edit the shell program.