Hacking Contacting the Wood4TT author

[xyrophile]

Hey everyone,
I was wondering if anyone has tried asking Dragon (the Wood4TT author) for the source directly. After doing a search here, it doesn't look like anyone realized the last part of the name he posted (xMOiWm66pBTN onion) is a TorChat user ID - TorChat is an IM client that runs over Tor.

Maybe we've just been trying to get in touch in the wrong place?

 

[greenwizard]

I searched for some info in 2ch, he have some post there, but there is not any source. Even toght we can post there, because it have an IP filter
and only japanese people can post there.

 

[Mbmax]

Good luck in your quest.

BTW, wood R4 gone closed sources, what will you do if "Dragon" (i'm still not convinced about this nickname) send you those sources ?

 

[Rydian]

GPL doesn't allow closed-source derivatives, not even his own.

I'm considering e-mailing him to ask him for the latest sources myself so we can mirror them on filetrip.

 

[gamefan5]

Well, it seems that, at this moment, that's our only option.

Edit: Does putting updates in TTmenu.dat involves hex editing? I'm just trying something here. When you put the hex codes of TTmenu.dat in DS_menu.Dat and rename it, it works. However, if I knew where the hex codes of the updates would be, perhaps we would be able to update it, hypothetically?

 

[jurassicplayer]

You can't update by hex editing. You can't translate by hex editing either. All hex editing will do is break everything if you attempt expanding the original file to add some extra bytes. And obviously if you copy/paste the entire contents of the TTMenu.dat to a ds_menu.dat and rename it, it's going to work since that is pretty much copying one file as another and then renaming it back to the same file it originally was.

tl;dr
Unless you have the source, updates are NOT GOING TO HAPPEN.

 

[gamefan5]

You can't update by hex editing. You can't translate by hex editing either. All hex editing will do is break everything if you attempt expanding the original file to add some extra bytes. And obviously if you copy/paste the entire contents of the TTMenu.dat to a ds_menu.dat and rename it, it's going to work since that is pretty much copying one file as another and then renaming it back to the same file it originally was.

tl;dr
Unless you have the source, updates are NOT GOING TO HAPPEN.

ok, that's what I wanted to know.

 

[Moncicci]

I want to congratulate the guy who has conceived, really good as kernel

 

[xyrophile]

Well, I'm hoping if we can get Dragon to release his source, we can convince YWG to re-open his SVN and start updating Wood4TT. One important thing to understand about the GPL is that you don't necessarily have to publically publish the source. What you are required to do is, on request, provide the source to anyone you've provided the binaries to. It doesn't even have to be an electronic copy - you can actually provide it on paper after requesting a reasonable fee for printing and postage. If nobody has contacted Dragon to request the source, he's not actually violating the GPL. Ditto YWG.

On the subject of hex editing, it is theoretically possible to do updates in this manner, but it's an extremely difficult and fraught process. Fundamentally, it involves reverse engineering the code through dissasembly (and ideally decompilation) and then reassembling and integrating the changes, updating any addresses and entry points in the raw machine code. Possible, but not really practical - it would probably be easier to rewrite Wood4TT from scratch.

To that end, there's a more compelling alternative; disassembling the same version of both Wood4TT and WoodR4, identifying both loader sections, and working out how Wood4TT manages to load on the DSTT by comparing the two, with the released WoodR4 source as a guide. While I've done some work to this end around this neck of the woods, the truth is I'm just not familiar with ARM assembly (or any other RISC architecture for that matter) and I'm having trouble getting my hands on a good ARM decompiler. (a much rarer tool than dissasemblers, that's for sure)

Regardless, it seems the best course of action is to try and get in touch with Dragon. Does anybody who speaks Japanese want to try?

 

[bitonio6]

im pretty sure, this guy come here every day, like us...

So if he really want to continue new release for Woodtt,
he know what he need to do...

 

[greenwizard]

You should alsto contact the creator of Wood, cause you will need the source in order to update woodtt