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Home » Stars! Clones, Extensions, Modding » Stars! Extensions » Utility to reset Stars! passwords
Utility to reset Stars! passwords Sun, 12 August 2018 19:52 Go to next message
ricks03 is currently offline ricks03

 
Officer Cadet 1st Year
Creator of TotalHost and Stars! utilities
Created TotalHost and Stars! utilities

Messages: 222
Registered: January 2012
Location: NC
I wrote a script (in Perl) that will:
-Remove the password on a .M file (change the password when submitting the turn to make the change persist)
-Remove all player passwords in a .HST file (so the next turn generation will have no passwords on any .M files)
-Remove a password submitted in a .X file (effectively preventing someone from setting a password).
-Remove the host-level password on a .HST file.

The script (StarsPWD.pl) is posted to Raptor's GitHub site: https://github.com/stars-4x/totalhost

I was only interested in resetting the .M file to to permit player replacement when someone drops and doesn't provide their password. Little is more irritating that investing months, only to have someone drop out of a Stars! game. I've been burned that way more than once.

This functionality was trivial to implement (well, if you know what you're doing; me, less so) with raptor's files. Anyone who has written a utility that can write out Stars! files could implement this in minutes. Undoubtedly this ability has existed in the wild for years.

Hosts can also use this to easily check a player's file to validate questions about turn validity. I can even update TotalHost so that game admins can dynamically reset a player's password for a replacement. Another feature I can now implement is using the Stars! mapping utilities (like StarMapper) to automatically create a movie at the end of a game, displaying the expansion of players across the universe. Not possible if any or all all the files are password-protected!

This script shouldn't affect play on AutoHost or TotalHost, because they limit access to the individual player. But I wanted to resolve the uncertainty of, "who can read my Stars! files if they can access them?"

Everyone.

Rick


[Updated on: Sun, 19 August 2018 02:37]




https://www.irelandbybicycle.com
http://totalhost.sinister.net:999
https://github.com/ricks03/TotalHost

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Re: Utility to reset Stars! passwords Mon, 11 February 2019 06:12 Go to previous messageGo to next message
ricks03 is currently offline ricks03

 
Officer Cadet 1st Year
Creator of TotalHost and Stars! utilities
Created TotalHost and Stars! utilities

Messages: 222
Registered: January 2012
Location: NC
Yeah, massively useful when digging through Stars! files from 20 years ago that I've forgotten the password to.


https://www.irelandbybicycle.com
http://totalhost.sinister.net:999
https://github.com/ricks03/TotalHost

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Re: Utility to reset Stars! passwords Sun, 16 May 2021 17:44 Go to previous messageGo to next message
ricks03 is currently offline ricks03

 
Officer Cadet 1st Year
Creator of TotalHost and Stars! utilities
Created TotalHost and Stars! utilities

Messages: 222
Registered: January 2012
Location: NC
Now that I've untangled the checksum on .R files, StarsPWD.pl can now also blank the password of .R files

You can:
Reset the password on a .M file (so you can open it with no password)
- If you don't reset the password, stored in the .HST file, it will come back
Reset the password on a .HST file (so you can open it with no password)
- Also resets the password of players in the .HST file. Reset the .M password(s) at the same time
Reset password on a .X file (so you can programmatically prevent someone setting a password)
Reset the password on a .R file (for those race files you can't remember the password)

As with any utility, back up your files first, but works fine on my machine Smile


Available at: https://github.com/ricks03/TotalHost/tree/master/scripts
You'll need both StarsPWD.pl and StarsBlock.pm




https://www.irelandbybicycle.com
http://totalhost.sinister.net:999
https://github.com/ricks03/TotalHost

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Re: Utility to reset Stars! passwords Mon, 28 June 2021 15:43 Go to previous message
ricks03 is currently offline ricks03

 
Officer Cadet 1st Year
Creator of TotalHost and Stars! utilities
Created TotalHost and Stars! utilities

Messages: 222
Registered: January 2012
Location: NC
I've gone ahead and created a standalone EXE of StarsPWD.exe (so you don't need a Perl install to get it to run). It's on Github.


https://www.irelandbybicycle.com
http://totalhost.sinister.net:999
https://github.com/ricks03/TotalHost

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