From: DJ Vollkasko (DJ_Vollkasko_at_gmx.net)
Date: Tue Aug 23 2005 - 11:34:09 PDT
cc. Eckhart, Ed
Subject: [NTLK] Possible Newton virus?
From: Ed Kummel <tech_ed () yahoo ! com>
Date: 2005-08-22 3:48:27
> On my download site, I have two Newton Press books.
> Both are copies of Deception Point. One is called
> "download only other not work" and the other is titled
> "Deception Point"
Observation 1:
Installing either title via OSX/BT: Blunt aborts transfer after over
2/3 of the file, complaining about insufficient capacity of either
internal or card store (which has 1200 and 4700 KB free space
respectively). Odd. Related or unrelated problem?
Installing "Deception" via Win98/NBU (serial): NBU aborts, complaining
file is not a package.
> If you download and install these directly on your
> newt from my web site (I can't vouch for other means,
> but they too will probably work) you will no longer
> have access to any Newton books on your Newt. You will
> probably get a -48221 error. Reference to deactivated
> package. Deleting Deception Point will not return your
> Newt to normal.
Not reproducable here, as those books no install...
Observation 2: I tried with other of your titles; results as above.
Some titles I've tried about five times, downloading on this box,
downloading on that, moving from one to the other, all no worky, all no
joy. But at some point one of the batch always DID let itself get
installed in Win98 via NBU w/o any problems at all while others who
have been treated the same way stalled. Why that so, huh?
> The only way I know of to get the newt
> back is to install XNewtBook, Copperfield library
> editor, find all references to Deception Point and
> remove them, then reboot the Newt with the button.
Pls. put that up at the Wiki, maybe start ebook-FAQ at bottom of
http://tools.unna.org/wikiwikinewt/index.php/MakeNewtonEbooksIndex .
> I have *NO* idea what I did in creating Deception
> Point that would cause this kind of behaviour.
Perhaps this: After the required suffix .pkg, there are a lot of blank
spaces in the file name (as in "booktitle.pkg ").
Observation 3: With the blanks, OSX didn't show the proper package-type
icon, no joy any which way. When I'd removed them, OSX and Win98
recognized the files both as packages, and I immediately had great
delight installing (OSX/BT *and* WIN98/NBU) the titles I had probs
with. Not "Deception", though.
> I have
> created dozens of books, a bunch after creating
> Deception Point that have worked flawlessly. It just
> seems that Deception Point has some kind of bug in it
> that causes mass corruption.
Check if the "virus"-acting version has got the file name right. That's
obviously why NBU on Win complains.
Note that Blunt on the Newt doesn't accept the same weirdly named
files, either, but gives a seemingly non-related error message back.
Paging Eckhart: Doesn't Blunt get the file size and file extension
*before* a file's actual transmission, so it can check against space
left on
the store it's going to install to and confirm the validity of the
package type? If not, it might be worth a thought for Blunt 2.
Cheers,
DJV.
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