On Sunday 19 September 2010 11:55:25 Kshitiz wrote:

Dear Friends

Want to know how to tie up an installation to a particular HDD.

We do Linux implementations and had seen people ghost the whole harddisks to save on implementation charges.

Firstly you are explicitly prohibited from preventing the user from copying AND redistributing the gpld (and most other FOSS licenced) software you installed on his disk. Installation is the same as distribution, as per several court judgements, just incase you were planning to hide there.

Currently we are using a commercial solution that costs us dear

Kinda logical.

and does not let us bring down the cost of deployment.

If your product and service is good, the vast majority who value their time will pay. There will always be a small minority who may choose for whatever reason to clone the install. You DO NOT have the right to prevent them, as far as FOSS is concerned. What you do with your specific app is entirely your business though.

You have a serious rethink about your business plan.

What we thus require is:

1. We can tie up the installation with the hdd serial number with

some command / application that can... a. Check the harddisk serial number before booting (may be through GRUB - but to my knowledge, such a command does not exist within GRUB).

write it. Should not be too hard, given that all the source are available, including smartctl. Then discover how easily it can be defeated.

b. Delete the installed partition where we have installed our deployment and applications if not matching.

Trivial to do. And equally trivial to defeat.

c. Encrypt the data partition with a key that only we can decrypt.

Will require phone home capability, or a dongle which will cost money. And is equally trivial to defeat.

2. We can run our entire installation from a DVD provided that is

tied with an online system which will not allow the system to boot unless the key matches with the one in our database.

Old chestnut. Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it. There were ample attempts by similar brain dead businesses trying to do what you are trying (I am fairly sure you know that). All are in the dustbin of computing history.

Crazy formatting of floppies, disks with laser holes, writing on non standard portions, drm, phone home and similar other nonsense. None of this deters the professional copier. But it severely impairs a honest customer. More recently we have had stupid schemes like drm, backed by billion dollar dodos, consigned to the scrap heap. And M$ phone home Vista, which screwed very many honest customers.

Even embedded encryption within devices have been easily cracked.

So you are better off thinking about your value chain and enhancing that, rather than wasting Greycell on such idiotic pursuits.

Thanking you in anticipation of a reply. If your reply includes a commercial proposal, please inform us accordingly on my email id privately.

We do have a pleasant bunch of members dont we.

YOU ARE VIOLATING THE TERMS OF THE GPL (AND OTHER FOSS LICENCES).

It is the SAME as illegal copying.