Not yet dead

Although barely hanging on X_X

It's the home stretch of my semester here in Angers, France and so I'll have to be extra dilligent in studying. When I get back home I'll start updating this blog (and start coding for OpenKore again)

Poseidon server now has a picky

I've added a picky in the poseidon server. Later on I'll probably add a Kafra, an item, open the storage, some skills, and some stuff in the inventory of our poseidon character. I'm planning to convert the server from just being a game guard solution into being a packet sniffing platform.

After all, it was my brainchild XD I should be the one to know how to exploit the poseidon server's abilities. It's kinda amazing when I look back from when it was still called fakeServer.

Rule of Thumb

After being a forum moderator for a long time, I've formulated some conclusions that I managed to encapsulate into ruls of thumb. I'm gonna be posting rules of thumbs every now and then.

Rule of Thumb: There are no stupid questions. Only stupid people.

pRO Ragnarok packet changes

Looks like pRO is in for a really difficult lenten season :)

LU! has decided to punish pRO botters for their sins by mutating the attack/sit/stand and skill use packets. Apparently, these are the only packets that changed, as the other packets (login, chat, etc.) have not. Which is only logical, since these abilities are actually the ones which cause botters an undue advantage over other players. By mutating these packets, LU! retains their business while levelling up (pun not intended) the playing field.

Of course one can still use OpenKore to route to faraway maps (conserving zeny for warps), snoop in PvP by revealing cloaked and hidden players, auto-loot the caverns of the zenorcs, and many other things that do not use the skill use and attack packets.

Hmm. I guess no auto-vending either :)

Having fun with remote shells

I just bought a VPS (virtual private server) a couple of days ago, and I'm enjoying tinkering with it. It's not the most powerful beast though; it only has 64MB RAM and 128MB swap. I won't say the name of the company I'm subscribed to since my box isn't exactly the bastion of security, but you should be able to discern the shell provider from how I describe my escapades :D

The most important lesson I've learned while playing sysadmin is: learn how to take notes. I had to take down, reload, reboot, reconfigure, and do it over and over again during the last couple of days. In the end, I settled for a no-frills Ubuntu Breezy, and decided to just scrap the webmin idea and learn how to hand-configure the daemonsmyself. But everything would have been much easier from the start had I taken down notes. Now I have them, and should I need to reinstall the thing (hope I do not) I have a copy of it :)

I'll post it here too just in case I lose that piece pf paper (which I'm expecting is going to happen).

• Disable root SSH login: nano /etc/ssh/sshd_config
• Create a normal user account: useradd -m -s /bin/bash -g users username
• Create a password for normal user account: passwd username
• Add username to list of sudoers: visudo
• Test account and sudo access, then remove root login: sudo passwd root -l
• Relog as normal user and restart the SSH daemon: /etc/init.d/ssh restart
• Add /bin/false to /etc/shells
• Update apt-get package list: sudo apt-get update
• Upgrade the whole system to the latest programs: sudo apt-get dist-upgrade

That should take care of the initial setup.

Now what am I using the remote shell for? Since I still haven't figured out how to configure a webserver, I'm currently running my bot on it ^_^ Here are the steps I did:

• Install an ftp daemon: sudo apt-get install vsftpd
• Configure ftp daemon to accept uploads: sudo nano /etc/vsftpd.conf
  • anonymous_enable=NO
  • local_enable=YES
  • write_enable=YES
• Restart ftp daemon: sudo /etc/init.d/vsftpd restart
• Install GNU Screen: sudo apt-get install screen
• Install compilers and development headers: sudo apt-get install build-essential
• Install subversion: sudo apt-get install subversion
• Install development headers for readline: sudo apt-get install libreadline5-dev
• Checkout OpenKore sources (http://www.openkore.com/wiki/index.php/List_of_SVN_modules)
• Create symlinks to tablepack and fieldpack
• FTP over configuration files from local computer

Placeholder for the webserver stuff (Yay! It works~)

http://rimuhosting.com/howto/virtualhosting.jsp

libapache2-mod-php5

php5-mysql

phpyadmin

So far, that's all I;ve done. I'll be updating this page when I do more with my box.

Trace of Battle

This is an iRO mini-quest (not sure if this is also available in the other ROs).

Before you start the quest, make sure you at least have these in your inventory:

• Green Potion x1
• Red Gem x1
• Green Herb x1
  

Note that some of the NPC you will be encountering will poison you, so better have Detoxify as a skill or bring more Green Herbs than required.

Start by talking to the NPC at moc_ruins 66 164 Thief Trainer#T and he will mention something about this quest. You would need to go through each NPC in order in order to complete it.

Here are the NPC locations:

• moc_fild12 166 369 Trace of Battle#1
• moc_fild12 173 215 Trace of Battle#2
• moc_fild12 276 165 Trace of Battle#3
• moc_fild11 39 163 Trace of Battle#4
• moc_fild11 205 52 Trace of Battle#5
• moc_fild11 184 342 Trace of Battle#7
• moc_fild17 213 358 Trace of Battle#8
• moc_fild17 228 274 Trace of Battle#9
• moc_fild17 34 292 Trace of Battle#10
• moc_fild18 346 296 Trace of Battle#11
• moc_fild18 309 257 Trace of Battle#12
• moc_fild18 177 333 Trace of Battle#13
• moc_fild18 111 303 Trace of Battle#14
• moc_fild18 109 197 Trace of Battle#15

I can't seem to find the 6th Trace of Battle, but I was able to complete the quest anyway. I got quite a good amount of EXP (I wasn't able to check the Base exp as it made me level up, but the Job exp was 3,000). It would seem that all 1st job classes can do the quest, the only difference being the typeof loot you would get as a reward (as a thief I got an unslotted Mantle). Also, this quest is best made when your character is still low levelled, since this will boost your levels up without risk of dying.

Recommended programs

While mucking around my computer and generally getting bored, I found a few neat programs to install. They're really cool, and your Linux computer shouldn't be without them :)

• Firefox AdBlocker - blocks ads from websites. Definitely heaven sent, as browsing becomes faster without all those ads being loaded (the extension dynamically modifies the page to comment out the ads, so they don't get rendered). You can get to choose which ones to block too. Get the AdBlocker and teach those popup advertisers a lesson.
• Yakuake - cool konsole for KDE. Anyone who had played quake before would recognize the interface. No need to reserve a space for the taskbar entry in the main panel. Plus, a terminal emulator is just one keypress away :)
• kde WorldClock - nice way to impress your friends by showing you are a "Citizen of the World." Set this as your desktop background and you'll immediately know if it's day or night in a particular region of the Earth.

Reinstalling Kubuntu

My data drive had some corruption as regards its file system tree, and i was forced to rebuild it. I figured I'll just reinstall Kubuntu too since I inadverdently installed Ubuntu Desktop, which kinda doubled the applications I have on the menu.

Here are some of the things I did in order to remind myself in case my system crashes again:

• Make a dos partition writable - the options in fstab for the partition should be: user,exec,rw,umask=000 0 0
• Get Automatix and install some of the necessary non-free software
• Install packages used for compiling source code: sudo apt-get install build-essential

I'll add to the list as I walk through the rebuilding of my settings.

Progress reports

Since I'm still offline (as expected, the maintenance guy doesn't show up on Sundays) I'll just put here the things I've done so far:

• Minor cosmetic fix in 's' command
• Added descriptions of config options removeActorWithDistance and route_randomWalk_inTown
• Fixed disconnections when a guild member logs in/out

Research results

We don't have any internet today, and probably won't have one until Monday morning. Damn the french for their long vacations X_X

So to a bit productive I conducted a little research on some of the stuff vivi had been nagging me about (i.e. plugins that would allow us to avoid our guild members). It won't be comprehensive and I won't be able to give tangible results yet since I won't be able to properly test it, but these compilations would serve as my notes for my future work.

I've installed Nezumi (a Freya fork) and was able to compile and run it. This is to help in testing some of my code while I'm offline, but I really prefer doing the testing on VistaRO where there are already a few people on the server.

Okay, time for some reports:

• Apparently, you can get a player's information just by sending the getPlayerInfo packet with a player ID (character ID?). OpenKore has had this functionality for quite some time now. In fact, we have a command called "getPlayerInfo" which does exactly that. Note: I'm not sure what will happen if you send a getPlayerInfo request on a player ID that is offline.
• You are able to get the account ID and the character ID from the guild_members_list packet.
• Combining the two bits of information above, it should be possible to retrieve the list of your guild members, bot your character, and then avoid any character that has the same account ID as one of your guildmates. We avoid those characters that share the same account ID because it is assumed that they are owned and played by the same person, and that we might get caught by our guild botting.
• Mr_Incredible has also been writing some kind of "big brother" plugin that is a huge improvement in the player recorder plugin by isieo. He plans to use the information gathered to create a more accurate version of mercdb.
• In line with mercdb, I'm planning to write a mini-version of the plugin called shopping. Just like the doCommand (which I consider to be a mini-macro plugin) shopping should allow me to visit vendors in (e.g.) Prontera and buy stuff according to conditions I specify. The plugin is intended to be used for automating the monotonous task of checking each vendor's shop window and comparing prices. This especially helps if you know what you're specifically looking for. For example, I'm currently looking for a mocking muffler. The plugin should (theoretically - I haven't written it yet) go around Prontera inside a set time, looking at all the vendors' shop windows, and at the end of the set time visit the merchants in order (from lowest price to highest price). The plugin should automatically buy the lowet priced mocking muffler it would find under the set time, up to a certain maximum price I'm willing to pay. The plugin should also be useful in buying low priced and "rush" items such as elunium, oridecon, etc. and beable to resell them at a higher price later on.

I also plan on doing some research on the following stuff, as well as finish some of the work I've done:

• Figure out the packet that shows the client the location of guildmates at the map.
• Add a "players" array to the webMonitor plugin
• Fix some of kadiliman's problems and generally make it more newbie friendly (this for-fun project is increasingly getting used for serious anti-anti-bot maneuvers, and I guess there is merit in having more people test it).
• Make some support code for the MediaServer, such as a classification function (poring, drops, poporing, marin, etc => poring; knife, stiletto, main-gauche, etc. => dagger; etc.)
• At least commit the login packets for serverType 7 (which is going to be used for the new Aegis 10.2 zone).

As usual, so many things to do and so little time X_X What OpenKore really needs are more dedicated developers as well as testers that can help while we all work for hauling OpenKore into version 2.0, and be able to continue to claim being the best bot for Ragnarok Online there ever was.