Thoughts about that darn Safety message...

[Stephanie]

I'd really love to eliminate that safety message that comes up every time you first go into the Map screen. I've tried finding it a few times, without luck yet, but I know it's in there somewhere. The more I think about it, the more I think it's something we (the community) *should* be able to defeat. I'm posting this in hopes of either getting some feedback, or providing the clues needed for someone else to locate it.

 

Here's the facts, as far as I am aware:

 

1. The iGo software starts automatically when the nav unit turns on.

2. The safety message only appears when you try to go into the Map screen (If your last screen was the map, then the safety message appears automatically of course.)

3. The safety message does not appear every time you switch to the map screen, only the first time for that 'session'.

4. The data.zip has a number of ui files which contain clues that refer to the safety message.

5. The clues point to a directory and an xml file, but I cannot find those in data.zip or on the nav unit. They might be hidden, or might be 'hardcoded' into the executables.

6. There must be a 'first run' or 'first view' variable, so the thing knows to show the safety message only the first time in each session.

 

With those facts, I am thinking of two ways to proceed, in order to defeat that message.

 

A) I know which ui file contains the script that *I think* launches and dismisses the safety message. I could hack that script and maybe it would trick the nav unit into thinking the message was displayed and OKed instantly, so the message would never actually appear.

 

Although I have not found it, there must be a variable that indicates either the safety message has already been shown, or that the map is displaying for the first time. In either case, if we can find the variable we can put in whatever will make it happy, so the safety message does not come up.

 

Naturally there's some amount of trial-and-error required, testing back and forth. On the other hand, like everyone else, I am not looking to 'brick' my shiney new nav unit! So I don't tend to actually test something unless I'm either certain it will work, or certain that it won't cause any permanent damage.

 

Anyhow - that's pretty much all the information I have right now, about the safety message. I'm eager to hear what you all have to say.

 

Cheers!

[bitman]

sorry i have been working the whole week in our data centre at amsterdam so not a lot on-line since no (free) internet in the hotel.

 

have a look at those files from that testmode.zip file. you know, those files we can safely remove to get the box in wince mode.

[schaferc]

I tried a number of different things also, there are references to the startup and first time start and exit on restart and such, none control that i also tried playing with tbhe UI files for the saftey message and such they also dont do anthing to it. im guessing its hardcoded into the nav.exe file, oinly because as we both know the xhtml file isnt on the unit or update...

 

 

I'd really love to eliminate that safety message that comes up every time you first go into the Map screen. I've tried finding it a few times, without luck yet, but I know it's in there somewhere. The more I think about it, the more I think it's something we (the community) *should* be able to defeat. I'm posting this in hopes of either getting some feedback, or providing the clues needed for someone else to locate it.

 

Here's the facts, as far as I am aware:

 

1. The iGo software starts automatically when the nav unit turns on.

2. The safety message only appears when you try to go into the Map screen (If your last screen was the map, then the safety message appears automatically of course.)

3. The safety message does not appear every time you switch to the map screen, only the first time for that 'session'.

4. The data.zip has a number of ui files which contain clues that refer to the safety message.

5. The clues point to a directory and an xml file, but I cannot find those in data.zip or on the nav unit. They might be hidden, or might be 'hardcoded' into the executables.

6. There must be a 'first run' or 'first view' variable, so the thing knows to show the safety message only the first time in each session.

 

With those facts, I am thinking of two ways to proceed, in order to defeat that message.

 

A) I know which ui file contains the script that *I think* launches and dismisses the safety message. I could hack that script and maybe it would trick the nav unit into thinking the message was displayed and OKed instantly, so the message would never actually appear.

 

Although I have not found it, there must be a variable that indicates either the safety message has already been shown, or that the map is displaying for the first time. In either case, if we can find the variable we can put in whatever will make it happy, so the safety message does not come up.

 

Naturally there's some amount of trial-and-error required, testing back and forth. On the other hand, like everyone else, I am not looking to 'brick' my shiney new nav unit! So I don't tend to actually test something unless I'm either certain it will work, or certain that it won't cause any permanent damage.

 

Anyhow - that's pretty much all the information I have right now, about the safety message. I'm eager to hear what you all have to say.

 

Cheers!

[Stephanie]

I tried a number of different things also, there are references to the startup and first time start and exit on restart and such, none control that i also tried playing with tbhe UI files for the saftey message and such they also dont do anthing to it. im guessing its hardcoded into the nav.exe file, oinly because as we both know the xhtml file isnt on the unit or update...

 

Thanks for looking into this. More eyes on the problem will help solve it -- and I still believe it can be solved.

 

In the iGo forums, I found a variable that can be entered into the setup files... in the iGo directory, there is a sys.txt file which they said under the [interface] section, add the variable drive_carefully=0

 

I tried this and it did not work. I also noticed that this variable was already set in the data.zip\ui_pioneer\common\ui\variable_def.ui file.

 

There is an executable in the igo directory, it's ezrider.exe and it appears to be the actual iGo program. When I ran strings on it, I noted an interesting variable is in there -- "disclamer_closed". Yes, the typo is in the exe file. We know that the nav software knows that the disclaimer has been shown and closed once, since it never comes up again (till after the power is cycled). This misspelled variable could well be it. The question now is, how do we get to that without hacking the executable... I tried putting it into the variable_def.ui file but it didn't work. I'll try it in the sys.txt file next.

 

Cheers!

[schaferc]

Well im decompiling the executable now, took a bit to copy the whole Flash disk but i got the whole dang thing so i dont have to keep going outside and back LOL.

 

 

I tried a number of different things also, there are references to the startup and first time start and exit on restart and such, none control that i also tried playing with tbhe UI files for the saftey message and such they also dont do anthing to it. im guessing its hardcoded into the nav.exe file, oinly because as we both know the xhtml file isnt on the unit or update...

 

Thanks for looking into this. More eyes on the problem will help solve it -- and I still believe it can be solved.

 

In the iGo forums, I found a variable that can be entered into the setup files... in the iGo directory, there is a sys.txt file which they said under the [interface] section, add the variable drive_carefully=0

 

I tried this and it did not work. I also noticed that this variable was already set in the data.zip\ui_pioneer\common\ui\variable_def.ui file.

 

There is an executable in the igo directory, it's ezrider.exe and it appears to be the actual iGo program. When I ran strings on it, I noted an interesting variable is in there -- "disclamer_closed". Yes, the typo is in the exe file. We know that the nav software knows that the disclaimer has been shown and closed once, since it never comes up again (till after the power is cycled). This misspelled variable could well be it. The question now is, how do we get to that without hacking the executable... I tried putting it into the variable_def.ui file but it didn't work. I'll try it in the sys.txt file next.

 

Cheers!

[HiFiSi]

Well im decompiling the executable now, took a bit to copy the whole Flash disk but i got the whole dang thing so i dont have to keep going outside and back LOL.

That was the very first thing i did... copy the entire contents of the flash disk (after getting all my settings right where i want them) and put it on my computer in a folder named DO NOT TOUCH!!!!. That way, if anything ever happens, I can just write over the flash memory on the unit and reset it to exactly how i had it.

 

Made a secondary copy for foolin' around with stuff.

 

Kinda weak how it took the F90 almost 20 minutes to copy 1.6GB on to the SD card, though. That's slow as hell. Took my computer less than a minute to copy the same amount of data off of the SD card.

[skicrave]

Just to continue this conversation, I see onclick and onrelease event handlers scattered through the UI files, has anyone seen a valid onload handler that we can make use of?

[Stephanie]

I think if you look in the data.zip\ui_pioneer\common\ui\general.ui file there is a state for a safety message. (I might be mistaken, but I'm pretty sure that's the correct file.)

 

Anyhow, it seems to be referring to an XML file that does not exist, so I don't really know if it's valid or not. It contains the coding to launch and display a safety message then to dismiss it. I haven't really experimented with that however, as I was unable to find the XML file so I figure it's just another dead end -- leftover code from some distant iGo ancestor. From the comments in those files, there's been so many edits and revisions I'll bet half the stuff in there is depreciated and unused.

[skicrave]

Take a look at ui_pioneer/800_480/ui/main.ui. It calls ui_pioneer/common/ui/legal.ui, which contains this code:

 

 

 

Also, in pioneer_ui/800_480/ui/legal_800_480.ui we have this:

 

 

 

When you push the accept button sc_AcceptEula is being called in legal.ui, which accepts the EULA and sets NEXTSTATE to st_Start. I'm playing around with duplicating that this morning.

[CatchMeIfYouCan631]

Damn, I was looking at that last night, but I thought that said XM rather than XML so I figured it had to do with some XM stuff

 

But that second part also has a text labled "Decline"..what's up with that, it doesn't give you a choice at the safety screen. The button doesn't even say Accept.

[Stephanie]

I had a brainstorm this morning about this stuff... no solutions yet but one more piece in the puzzle perhaps.

 

In general_800_480.ui there is a line which calls the safety message xml file:

but the i18n directory does not exist. Otherwise I was hoping to view the xml file and see if that was indeed the file that we see as the safety message.

 

So this morning it hits me, that maybe the i18n directory is hidden in the ezrider executable -- and it is! I don't have decompiling abilities -- infact I'm not a windows programmer (or for that matter, a windows user) so I'm lost when it comes to doing anything with this knowledge. But when I ran strings again on the executable, searching for "xml" and "i18n" I got the following:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
 xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"

i18n/%d_%d/%s
i18n/%s
i18n/dictionary.lang
i18/CountryInfo/%s.xhtml

 

So it looks to me like when ezrider is launched, it either creates the i18n directory in memory, or in a temporary location, and reads the safety message from there.

 

Granted, I can't find the safety message file but I'm betting it's compressed or encrypted... obviously they really don't want us to defeat it. Now, I've tried removing the safety message layer from general_800_480.ui and I've tried removing the safety state from general.ui but that did not work..

 

So I'm thinking that this is all handled within the executable, and is independent of the 'skin' stuff we can tinker with in data.zip.

[CatchMeIfYouCan631]

When you push the accept button sc_AcceptEula is being called in legal.ui, which accepts the EULA and sets NEXTSTATE to st_Start. I'm playing around with duplicating that this morning.

 

Try deleting the whole button altogether, and in place of it, put something in that automatcally goes to the next step, which would be accepting the EULA. Like how it knows to automatically boot up the different softwares. Because right now, correct me if I'm wrong, i think that when map starts to load, it triggers the safety screen to come up. then the OK button is required to view the map. I'm Kind of comparing it to DucatiBoy's flash circuit for the Z1, where before the circuit you had to flash your headlight 3 times to bypass the Z. the parrallel to that is us hitting the button. With the flasher installed, it flashes for you, where that parrallel is replacing the ok button with an automatic initiate. Did I confuse anyone?

[skicrave]

That makes sense from a theoretical standpoint, the problem is that we need a way of calling that function. Right now it's controlled by the onrelease even handler.

[GDGR]

I think this is a red herring. The safety screen isn't a EULA and I can't see them calling it that just to throw hackers off the trail. That's probably left over from some other purpose of the iGo software and not in use here.

[rv7flyer]

The key is in the executable used to start the map. Nul the request for the nag screen before the nag is started. This is what we needed to do to defeat the security code checking with Dish net cards.

 

Also I bet the nag text is embedded in the bios.

Im no good at windows scripting but I bet I can dump the bios. And if I can dump the bios I sure can write to it. Dish net used all sorts of redirects to throw us off.