minilogin

[Yeormom]

You all obviously have the Internet, being how your getting the source files. Set up your server world address as localhost and then you've got the same exact thing only difference is you get to have unique character accounts. What's it matter?

[devn00b]

well said Yeormom.

[Swampdog]

Originally Posted by Yeormom

You all obviously have the Internet, being how your getting the source files. Set up your server world address as localhost and then you've got the same exact thing only difference is you get to have unique character accounts. What's it matter?

Yup, we all have internet but unfortunately not all have permanent connections which is where minilogin came in handy. Don't get me wrong, I'm not complaining and support whichever stance the devs take. Would be nice to have some kinda offline solution at some point though for those of us who can't get broadband connections. But for now, I agree the time would be better spent getting everything else working with DR4 since SOE screwed the pooch with their latest patches.. Those of us who are on non-dedicated connections can always continue to work with developing our worlds on DR3.

[mikenune]

Additionally, some of us are behind ISPs that filte rthe hell out of traffic.

When I first made my server public (a while ago), it was up for about 6 hours before they locked down their ports.

Now, with MiniLogin being "dead" I have no way to test/play on my server! :cry:

[RangerDown]

Damn, Mike!

Are you behind a school or corporate network? That kind of stuff happens often there... if not, I'd call up customer service and tell them you'll be taking your business elsewhere.

(Edit: A clever idea I thought of to do: make your server ports to be ports associated with well-known services... if they're filtering because they see you're running a "non-standard" service, then this might thwart em. ie, put your world server to listen on port 80 (HTTP), have your zone servers listen on various other well known ports, like 23 (telnet), 21 (ftp), the HTTPS port (forgot what it was off the top of my head), and so on. Maybe you can fool em.)

[Edgar1898]

world has to listen on port 9000, because thats the port the client tries to connect through. To my knowledge there is no way to change the port the client tries to connect to.

[RangerDown]

Oh, well that's teh suck :(

I knew when the login server advertised its server select list, it told the client the IP for each server... I assumed it also gave a port number... nope? Damn :(

[sanock42]

Minilogin was a LAN thing, really, and those with dialup. It helped those people who wanted to run a private server without having to be on the internet. I, being on dialup, used Minilogin when starting a server with a friend or two. However, it's not important enough to warrant all this fuss. It was a nice thing to have, but not needed.

A locked server can easily be private, if you only give status to people you want logging in. With high enough status, people can log into locked servers (unless I am mistaken, feel free to correct me Devs. )

[Muuss]

Hey Sanock!
I m still on Dial up, and you know how boring it is since i can't really play on public servers (you remember WR i guess ). So Eq remains private to me, and with a dial up, connecting to public login servers isn't as easy as having a minilogin somewhere on a PC at home.

L8s,

[Memener]

So minilogin is gone.... that sucks I am behind a router with a firewall I cant disable. so after any verson past 5.6 i am SOL
so i'll go back to 5.5.



Is anyone around that know alot about TCP/IP or IPX becuase i am ok in C+ maybe we can make a new one better then the old



Just an idea.

[wdrng123]

Is anyone able (and willing) to explain how minilogin worked?

I'm guessing it would compare account info with your MySQL database to confirm you're allowed access, but I'm not sure how it routed the connection to the world server after (I'm not asking for any specifics, but I was kind of curious as to an overview of how it worked).

I may be wrong, but I also thought you could set up eqemu and use a single connection without minilogin, but to connect more then one user at a time - without going through eqemu login servers - you needed minilogin (I think I read that in a post somewhere a while ago, but I could be mistaken or the poster could have been wrong :lol: )

If anyone is willing and able to explain a basic overview, I'd really appreciate it. With all the posts about minilogin since SOE broke it :( I've gotten pretty curious about why it seems to be a unique program that you need if you want a LAN eqemu server setup.

wdrng

[Swampdog]

Minilogin didn't do any account authorization. I think all it did was sent the ip address of the client and the login information for the account was then pulled from minilogin.ini.. Running with minilogin, I can put anything in the password field and connect. Would be nice to have an actual minilogin server which would authenticate though..

There was a post here somewhere with link to source for an OOOOLLLLDDDDD minilogin program.. Think it was from back in 2002 though but might give someone with C++ an overview of how it worked to write a new one.. Not sure if the link was deleted or not but was here a week or so ago.

[Muuss]

I've started working on a lan login tool yet, but its far of being useable right now. By the way, it will be perhaps never useable if i m'not able to finish it, but at least its fun

Here's the parameters i fixed :
- i m on a lan so i don't need to check the password, and then don't need the encryption algorythm
- i m on a lan so IP adresses could be fixed and have to match a login/password duet (like minilogin).
- i basically don't care of what the login server sends back to the client as long as it allows to click on the server and connect to it

I downloaded the latest version of ethereal/winpcap.(free network analyzer)
I have 2 windows PC at home and i brought my labtop from work this last week end, so i made the following configuration :

My PC : ethereal + Developpement tool (I choosed delphi cause i m better with it than i m with VSNet) + everquest
Labtop : Minilogin (eqemu version)
Second PC : Everquest, archived version for eqemu 5.3dr2 (i know its old, but to discover how it work(ed), its ok)

I started a project in delphi and added 2 indy udpserver components, one named login, one named client.
login configured on port 5995, client accepting with binding 0.0.0.0:0000 (receives everything).

Here's the process :

Connect the PC2 eqclient to PC1 project login component, sniff it with ethereal, see what it receives.
Connects PC1 project client component to labtop minilogin, send what you received from PC2 eqclient and see what minilogin answers
Send what minilogin answered to PC1 client component, send it to PC2 eqclient, receive what PC2 eqclient answers...

I could use the sony or eqemu login servers instead of minilogin. I choosed minilogin cause i was not connected to the web at the moment.

Doing this, you can understand how the login process works, and understand how to reproduce it. There's obviously a few things to analyze since 01 00 00 isn't that easy to read

The last part to do will be to connect the world processes to the login server but this time, we have the world sources !

I know this could eventually go against the eqemu dev choices, and posting it here may be an hazardous thing, but i also do it because minilogin is the only way for me to run an everquest server.

BTW, it would be so much easier for us if an official release of minilogin was created

[wdrng123]

Hey, thanks for the answers Swampdog, and Muuss. That clarifies a few things I was wondering about. I was running through how I thought it connected in my head, but now I can change my line of thought to be correct!! :lol:

[loderunner]

Keep us up to date on the progress, Muuss. If there is anything I can do to help in testing, please let me know.

I feel the same way, I dont care about encryption, and the login/IP check with MySQL in MiniLogin worked fine for me. I'm glad to see that others out there are pursuing alternative solutions.