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Reproducing the printer hack of Windows 95

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Re: Reproducing the printer hack of Windows 95

#41

Post by asciimov »

jchw wrote: post #39
asciimov wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Not sure what this means to be honest: [...] As someone who also has similar frustrations as the author I can explain. I don't regularly run virtual machines, but I have been doing it for decades now, for a long time the install process was: install VirtualBox (or equivalent), tell what resources to allocate including disc images, run the vm, install the os, and your good to go. To install Qemu/kvm/lib-virt you fir…

I still don't understand what this means. In Debian installing qemu is no different from installing any other package, including Virtualbox. Like: > edit random config files I have no idea what config files you have to edit to run a relatively basic qemu incantation. My best assumption is that they mean libvirt, but I also don't really know what you have to edit to make libvirt work. Since the OP is using Debian, I c…

Thanks for the detailed write up.

I don't have full notes for my last adventure into QEMU, but you are correct that it was mostly an issue with libvirt and getting graphics to render correctly.

> Well, given how long this post is, it certainly doesn't do anything to disprove the notion that Qemu is less accessible and intuitive to use for ordinary users than Virtualbox, that's for sure. And to be sure, I 100% agree and empathize with the fact that it is not, because it isn't.

That's really the rub, choosing to be an ordinary user. The older I get the less I choose to tinker with things that I'm not going to use very often. I like it when software just sets itself up and lets me get to work.

Re: Reproducing the printer hack of Windows 95

#42

Post by TheNewsIsHere »

PebblesHD wrote: post #9

In a similar flavour, on older versions of Mac OSX, you could touch an initial setup file and reboot which would start the out of box experience and let you make a new admin user if you ever found yourself locked out of one for some reason. Modern disk encryption put an obvious stop to that…

The old /var/db/.AppleSetupDone trick. At least as of 2-3 years ago this still worked. I _think_ they've renamed the file since; I haven't used this in a long time. If I recall correctly that file became SIP protected so had to disable SIP to delete/create it.

Even with FileVault2/FDE, it was still possible as long as you could unlock the drive. Now being able to authenticate as an administrator privileged user is (in some scenarios) a direct proxy for demonstrating ownership to recoveryOS, blocking access to the Utilities menu. It's a clever strategy from a security perspective.

Mixed, mostly past, tense because I'm not sure if this still works in 2024.

Re: Reproducing the printer hack of Windows 95

#43

Post by Kwpolska »

xenadu02 wrote: post #8

The "login" dialog on Windows 95 was just providing network credentials. Windows 95 is a single-user OS. There is no actual login or security.

Windows 9x does let users have separate profiles with their own files and settings, even if they aren’t super secure.

Re: Reproducing the printer hack of Windows 95

#44

Post by dpola »

I would like to thank all of you for reading my blog. It means a lot to me!

I think I need to address the many comments about my qemu/kvm rant... I think my experience could be best described by the user asciimov in his comment. I don't know what I do wrong, but I always get some error messages and barely make the virtualization work. Never even get to network the VMs.

Re: Reproducing the printer hack of Windows 95

#45

Post by jchw »

asciimov wrote: post #41
jchw wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I still don't understand what this means. In Debian installing qemu is no different from installing any other package, including Virtualbox. Like: > edit random config files I have no idea what config files you have to edit to run a relatively basic qemu incantation. My best assumption is that they mean libvirt, but I also don't really know what you have to edit to make libvirt work. Since the OP is using Debian, I c…

Thanks for the detailed write up. I don't have full notes for my last adventure into QEMU, but you are correct that it was mostly an issue with libvirt and getting graphics to render correctly. > Well, given how long this post is, it certainly doesn't do anything to disprove the notion that Qemu is less accessible and intuitive to use for ordinary users than Virtualbox, that's for sure. And to be sure, I 100% agree a…

This is true. If someone says "I just want something that works, and Virtualbox works" it doesn't really raise any eyebrows. It's really the tone of "I am unable to make QEMU/KVM work, since I am not a rocket scientist" that implies, maybe they would use QEMU, if only it wasn't horrifically difficult to get working. I think if your experience with QEMU is this bad, you may have just gotten a bit unlucky and gotten off into the weeds on a detour you probably did not need.

That said, are there reasons why someone who just wants things to work and doesn't want to tinker ever would choose QEMU over Virtualbox? Definitely. Here's a good one: the Virtualbox kernel modules were notoriously problematic. Back in the day, loading the vboxdrv module would add TAINT_CRAP in your running kernel[1], because the kernel developers were tired of dealing with bug reports that are the fault of the vboxdrv. Presumably it's better nowadays, but out-of-tree modules are generally a source of headache. Another good one is features: Virtualbox has a lot of great features for desktop end users, but QEMU can do a whole lot more; it supports absolutely tons of architectures and system options. You get access to a wide range of paravirtualization devices through Virtio drivers, including VirtioFS, a dramatically superior solution for mounting directories into VMs versus Virtualbox's Shared Folders feature, in my opinion. It's also possible to do a lot more advanced things, like setting up a discrete GPU passthrough and Looking Glass, or passing a portion of your Intel iGPU using GVT-g.[2]

Of course, some day Virtualbox may support a KVM backend, just as virtualization tools are starting to support unified hypervisor backends on Windows and macOS. There's even an existing patch, though I do not know what the status is and whether or not it could ever be merged upstream.[3] So maybe in the future, choosing between Virtualbox or KVM will become unnecessary.

For now though, it's definitely not clear what you should recommend to someone IMO. (For this particular use case, I don't even recommend a VM at all; I think for Windows 95, 86Box is a better solution.)

[1]: https://lkml.org/lkml/2011/10/6/317

[2]: https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Intel_GVT-g

[3]: https://github.com/cyberus-technology/virtualbox-kvm, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39300317

Re: Reproducing the printer hack of Windows 95

#46

Post by znpy »

jchw wrote: post #31
znpy wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The very sad thing is that VirtManager (a gtk app) used to be able to handle pretty much everything qemu. But it's getting deprecated, iirc ?

It's still being updated. I don't see anything on the virt-manager homepage or GitHub that would suggest it is deprecated. https://virt-manager.org/ https://github.com/virt-manager/virt-manager It can't do literally everything Qemu/libvirt can do using only the UI, but given that it has escape hatches to directly edit libvirt configurations, and libvirt has escape hatches to directly pass arguments to Qemu, there's v…

My bad, maybe it's only getting deprecated in RHEL then?

Re: Reproducing the printer hack of Windows 95

#47

Post by nuc1e0n »

jchw wrote: post #18

Cool. No substantial comment but found this quite entertaining to read. > * I prefer to use VirtualBox because I am unable to make QEMU/KVM work, since I am not a rocket scientist. I don't see the advantage of a package manager when I have to edit random config files and hunt for tutorials. Why this can't be managed by APT or explained by the developer/maintainer? Seriously, why this needs to be another Wine-like exp…

Dosbox can also boot Windows 95 now. archive.org has an online version: https://archive.org/details/win95_in_dosbox

Re: Reproducing the printer hack of Windows 95

#48

Post by valleyer »

nubinetwork wrote: post #40
xenadu02 wrote: post #8

The "login" dialog on Windows 95 was just providing network credentials. Windows 95 is a single-user OS. There is no actual login or security.

This, you could literally press escape to login.

The herein linked article discusses disabling that option, and the animated GIF linked at the beginning shows it not working.

Re: Reproducing the printer hack of Windows 95

#50

Post by [deleted] »

asciimov wrote: post #41
jchw wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I still don't understand what this means. In Debian installing qemu is no different from installing any other package, including Virtualbox. Like: > edit random config files I have no idea what config files you have to edit to run a relatively basic qemu incantation. My best assumption is that they mean libvirt, but I also don't really know what you have to edit to make libvirt work. Since the OP is using Debian, I c…

Thanks for the detailed write up. I don't have full notes for my last adventure into QEMU, but you are correct that it was mostly an issue with libvirt and getting graphics to render correctly. > Well, given how long this post is, it certainly doesn't do anything to disprove the notion that Qemu is less accessible and intuitive to use for ordinary users than Virtualbox, that's for sure. And to be sure, I 100% agree a…

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