serial number blues

[printit]

I’m looking for a FM Plug-In or to develop a FM Plug-In that will extract the hard drive serial number from the computer in witch the software resides on. I have tried the Crypto Toolbox Plug-In that extracts the hard drive serial number, however it extracts the info from the computer that is actually running the date base and not the computer that the files are on. I have spent hours trying to find a work around for this.

Any help would be wonderful

Thanks Ron Bascom www.priceitsoftware.com

1-800-845-5188

[email protected]

[Anatoli]

http://www.24u.cz are skilled guys. Talk to them.

[SteveB]

I think that's cause the plugin is not on the machine you want the serial number for. I use it in my solution and it runs just fine. If you are running Windows, you can try WinBatch from Wilsonware, as it also returns the disk serial #, but it will allow you to specify a given drive.

[printit]

Hi thank you for the feedback :-)

Ok I’m at about hour number 10 on this project with no fix to this issue as of yet.

Ill try not to leave out any details this time “I hope”

Computer A and B are networked together.

Computer A (is where the program is physically and has the Crypto Toolbox Plug-In)Installed in the system folder.

Computer B fires up the program (Runtime) through the network and runs a script, that script will insert a calculated result in a field, the result we want is computer A’s hard drive serial number, what we are getting instead is computers B’s serial number.

P.S. If we start the program on computer A then we get computer A’s number.

Thanks

Ron Bascom

[Anatoli]

RE: Computer B fires up the program (Runtime) through the network and runs a script, that script will insert a calculated result in a field, the result we want is computer A’s hard drive serial number, what we are getting instead is computers B’s serial number.

That is probably because everything is running on B and gets evaluated there.

[printit]

"That is probably because everything is running on B and gets evaluated there."

Ok so with that in mind then how in the world you you ever protect or serials your software using this this plug-in? I'm I missing something?

Ron Bascom

[printit]

P.S. we have alot of customers that use my software in this manner ie: single user but still through a network.

[David McKee (Protolight)]

Filemaker just doesn't work the way you are expecting it to.

No calculation functions return values based upon the status of a DIFFERENT machine than the one you are using, not even current time/data (for servers).

The Crypto Toolbox was MEANT to detect the SN of the machine you are using, otherwise it wouldn't be much use, would it? ; )

When you are a guest of a solution, that machine is essentially using that solution. Ie a copy of the original is being run. The point of the SN scheme is to store a unique value based on registration time of the machine it's registered on, and then EVERYTIME the solution is run, check to see if the current machine's SN matches the stored one.

What I think you are trying to do is to restrict the NUMBER of users from your solution. In that case, using only the hosts SN would then prove to be worthless.

What you want to do is store the SN from each workstation into a database that keeps track of how many unique SN records are currently connected.

Or, more simply, use the status current users (forget the exact name) to keep track of how many people are connected at one time.

Does that solve your issue, or is there something I'm missing?

[printit]

Hello again

Actually we do use the if statement(status)user count to control the number of users at one time, it works great for that.

The goal is to stop the theft of our software from people just copying the entire program to a cd and giving it to there buddy after we have internally unlocked it.

We want to prevent this theft by calling a script at startup. This script will read a field, if that field is empty then Crypto Plug-In will fill it with the hard drive serial number, and if the field is populated then the script will leave it alone. The script will fill another field with the hard drive serial number and compares the two, if they match then the program runs, if they don't then the program goes into demo mode.

The problem is if the program is fired up through the network then the hard drive serial number comparison test will fail:-(

So I guess this plug-in is not going to work in my situation.

P.S. I would check your solution in this manner as well. ie: through a network.

Thank you so much for your contributions.

Ron Bascom

[David McKee (Protolight)]

Ok, this makes sense.

The only suggestion I have for this one, is that you could still use the Crypto-Toolbox for this.

The situation would require that your client agrees on a maximum "concurrent" users. Meaning a max of the number of machines that could connect to this solution.

Your solution could then register each workstations harddrive sn into a database/field, and whenever someone opens this database their SN is checked against the master SN list.

At first, when a client logs on, if the master SN list has zero or less than max SNs in the list, the script can add the client's SN to the master list, once the list is filled, you have to work out how you want the client to be allowed to change that master list (to protect vs piracy).

I'll also look into allowing the SN scheme to get the volume serial out of an arbitrarily specified drive. Otherwise I think someone else mentioned a tool that can do that for you already.