obsolete Pro/ENGINEER, aka Pro/E, Unix

[legacy]

So I bought an original Pro/E media for Unix.
"for Unix" means { UPUX/PA, AIX/PowerPC, Irix/MIPS } are supported, but I do not have a valid license
And it seems I can't buy a license (too obsolete software, out of any support) 

I'd like to run on Irix-6.5/MIPS-R12K, any idea, guys ?

purpose: to have a good nostalgic play with Unix, to have a good piece of software under my finger tips to redesign my hobby

[Tainer]

And it seems I can't buy a license (too obsolete software, out of any support) 

I'd like to run on Irix-6.5/MIPS-R12K, any idea, guys ?

Well, you know.. there are such things like *cough* torrents *cough*

[legacy]

never found a valid license there, I have seen something for R20, which is completely different (and incompatible) with the R17 I have 
I have also tried to contact the company who made Pro/E, without a response 

[Bassman59]

never found a valid license there, I have seen something for R20, which is completely different (and incompatible) with the R17 I have 
I have also tried to contact the company who made Pro/E, without a response 

Well, that's not a surprise, because for software there's no such thing as re-selling. How much did you pay for the discs, and why did you expect that all you needed to run the software was just the binary and not a license?

[legacy]

When I bought the Pro/E CD I was thinking the license was already included inside and not hardware locked.

I was thinking that because when I bought the WordPerfect media (2 CDs), the license was included as "demo"
and this means you can run the program, it's fully working, the only limitation is the label "running as demo"

Pro/E will not run at all without a license 

[legacy]

an other example is Adobe Illustrator.
When I bought the CD I got a license written on a piece of paper.
It's a demo license, it's not hardware locked, and the program is fully working.
The only limitation is: I can't print, but I do not need to print anything!

[legacy]

I wonder if there is a "demo" version or license for Pro/E

There were collections of demo CDs called "hot mix", they were made for Irix with the purpose to let people to try applications
I see there is a demo version of WorkPerfect (5 versions earlier than mine), but I can't see Pro/E in any of these CDs 

[HighVoltage]

I see there is a demo version of WorkPerfect (5 versions earlier than mine), but I can't see Pro/E in any of these CDs 

WordPerfect was outdated 20 years ago
First time I see it mentioned in long long time.

If you look at the right places, I have no doubt that you will find both packages.

[Rasz]

1: wrong forum section

2:

Well, that's not a surprise, because for software there's no such thing as re-selling. How much did you pay for the discs, and why did you expect that all you needed to run the software was just the binary and not a license?

Bassman59 Country: ASS of the Earth aka US

well, all I can say is LOL bro http://www.zdnet.com/article/oracle-cannot-block-the-resale-of-its-software-in-europe/
Next thing you will claim patents on round corners and swiping are totally legit

3:

So I bought an original Pro/E media for Unix.

media, not a license. Where did you buy it? its so obsolete getting a license with the media shouldnt be a problem, usually people selling old junk dont even know there is a key/paperwork needed
does it need a code? or a hardware dongle?

I'd like to run on Irix-6.5/MIPS-R12K, any idea, guys ?

Do you actually have SGI box to run it on? have you tried installing? what was the problem?

4: PTC Creo is on a lot of torrent sites, not to mention you can get a legit academic edition

[legacy]

does it need a code?

Pro/E needs a valid Flex code, and this code is "node locked", it means it depends on the MAC_address and something else (e.g. the S/N of the motherboard).

Do you actually have SGI box to run it on? have you tried installing? what was the problem?

The CD does not contains an executable, it contains a (shell) script which identifies the platform in order to untarball the right file. There is a big .tar file for each supported platform. The scrip does nothing more than invoking "tar", so at the end you get Pro/E installed into a folder.

You have just to fix the "path", then you can launch the application (all this procedure is written in the ReadMe.txt, inside the CD), but once launched from the Irix console, the Application ends immediately reporting the message "Flex error, no license found".

the Readme.txt tells to add the right license (physically it's a long pairs of alphanumeric chars) to the Flex Manager.

There is no "demo mode", so without that license you can't do anything, and the program simply ends as soon as it is launched.

PTC Creo is on a lot of torrent sites, not to mention you can get a legit academic edition

I will try to contact PTC, in order to ask them if they have a "demo" version, I do not think they have an "academic edition" for Irix 6.5, but I will ask.

[Bassman59]

Well, that's not a surprise, because for software there's no such thing as re-selling. How much did you pay for the discs, and why did you expect that all you needed to run the software was just the binary and not a license?

Bassman59 Country: ASS of the Earth aka US

well, all I can say is LOL bro http://www.zdnet.com/article/oracle-cannot-block-the-resale-of-its-software-in-europe/
Next thing you will claim patents on round corners and swiping are totally legit

No, what I am saying is that it's perfectly OK for you to sell your physical media. Whether the vendor will provide a license key to the purchaser is up to that vendor. And in pretty much all cases, the answer to that is "no, we will not provide a key."

[legacy]

I forgot: bought on ebay dot ca

[legacy]

@Bassman59
I believe I have bought the Pro/E media from a "recycler".

[asgard20032]

Old program = easy to reverse engineer it and crack it. A nice learning exercise, lucky you. You bought a reverse engineering training kit. I wish i could find old software to make some fun in assembly.

[sync]

Pro/E needs a valid Flex code, and this code is "node locked", it means it depends on the MAC_address and something else (e.g. the S/N of the motherboard).

On IRIX it depends on the host id.

There is no "demo mode", so without that license you can't do anything, and the program simply ends as soon as it is launched.

I don't know Pro/E but I have experience with other CAD/CAE software in this class. There are no demo modes. If you what to evaluate a software you contact the manufacture/vendor and get a evaluation license which is usually node locked and have an expire date.

[legacy]

yes, but oh well, first you have to understand Irix binaries, especially the call points to FlexLm. It's not so easy. I guess 

some time ago, I bought a pair of floppies with a compiler demo, the limitation was no more than 100 lines of C, no more than 2000 lines of asm, and no more than 3000 chars per file. I paid just the floppy + shipping, something like 10 bucks, and it helped me a lot because its documentation told me about the memory layout of a second hand board which I bought without any manual, but luckily included in the list of the supported boards by the Demo compiler.

Excellent examples, full documentation of my board (txt files + C files + assembly files + linker script, in short everything I needed), the compiler was amazing, googling around to understand how much money was the full version (and if it was still available) I found a russian dude who claimed to have removed the limitations X____X

I contacted him, and he argued that he was able to assembly the dos binary (.exe) in order to find - he said - "hot points" (1), so he exchanged them with "NOP".

I was impressed, but then I switched to GNU C/68k, I have no experience in reversing&C, just a feeling in my head: a DOS program should be easier than an Irix's one, a piece of cake against a nightmare. I guess.


(1) he explained
where in the program, the code flow calls a function is_running_into_demo_mode which check if the program has to run as demo or full features, he followed the call, and inside the function he replaced everything except the return value, so calling that function was modified to always answer "no" to the question is_running_into_demo_mode? no->full features enabled without any limitation

Code: [Select]

function is_running_into_demo_mode:
... NOP /* original check removed */
... NOP
... NOP
... return No


main program:
....
....
call is_running_into_demo_mode
if answer is Yes then
... limitations, demo mode
else
... no limitations, full features


[legacy]

Pro/E needs a valid Flex code, and this code is "node locked", it means it depends on the MAC_address and something else (e.g. the S/N of the motherboard).

On IRIX it depends on the host id.

sure, but the host id depends on NVRAM & MAC_address. The NVRAM (sometimes it's a EEPROM, it depends on the machine) has the S/N of the motherboard, plus the MAC_address.

[HighVoltage]

Old program = easy to reverse engineer it and crack it. A nice learning exercise, lucky you. You bought a reverse engineering training kit. I wish i could find old software to make some fun in assembly.

So true....
I am not a programmer by any means but this was so easy in those days. Just bypassing where the code was looking for the dongle and instead just make a jump to the position in the code, where the program would go after successfully finding and identifying the dongle.
 
We did this not for the fact to get a software for free, but just to get rid of 5 to 10 dongles on the parallel port of the PC and for fun.

[legacy]

I don't know Pro/E but I have experience with other CAD/CAE software in this class. There are no demo modes. If you what to evaluate a software you contact the manufacture/vendor and get a evaluation license which is usually node locked and have an expire date.

this explains why I got a demo-license for Illustrator and WordPerfect, and I was lucky, they are not node-locked, and they have no expire date.

oh well, I found a Mathematica demo, it's node-locked (I can run it only on the machine of my friend, I can't move the program to mine), but it has no expire date. He found the demo already installed when he bought his machine.

When I contacted Wolfram they said
1) sorry, we do not support Unix since a while
2) we provide a free accademic version for RPI/Linux (arm)

[sync]

this explains why I got a demo-license for Illustrator and WordPerfect, and I was lucky, they are not node-locked, and they have no expire date.

That's cheap software. Keep in mind that these CAD/CAM software costs ($)$$$$ per license per year. And every feature costs extra $$$$.

1) sorry, we do not support Unix since a while

Expect the same from PTC. Unix workstations are dead since a long time and especially IRIX died earlier.

[amyk]

FlexLM - it was really common in the 90s, there is plenty of information/tutorials around on how to break it.

You don't even need to know the instruction set in detail, as Mike's video here shows:

[jnz]

Heh, someone would be much happier with Windows and Solidworks.

ProE isn't something you want to get into right now, and an old version, in Unix... Yea, I'd say course correct!

[codeboy2k]

FlexLM - it was really common in the 90s ...

I hated FlexLM so much back in those days, it was infecting everything I used, HP, Sun, IBM workstations.. every product wanted it's own license manager running and they didn't interoperate.. then when you changed workstations or upgraded we needed to get new licenses again grrr...

It's still around, too.  MATLAB uses FlexLM licenses, probably others too.  Autodesk bought them and uses it for all their products, and calls it adLM.  I don't use any Autodesk products, but googling around it seems they are major f*cktards with DRM too, actually doing something nasty and permanent on the harddisk in a hidden area or partition just for licensing.. so that uninstall or backup/restore doesn't work...

[legacy]

MATLAB uses FlexLM licenses

never seen on Irix, it seems it was not good

probably others too

• MIPSPro C/C++
• SoftWindows
• Adobe { Illustrator, Photoshop, Premiere }
• WordPerfect
• Alias WaveFront { SurfaceStudio, StudioPaint }
• Mathematica
• Pro/E

This is what I know, but I am more interested in umm, { Ansys (+Fluent?), Catia, Pro/E, FiberSIM, AutoDYNþ, ... }

[legacy]

so, suddenly my machine died 
the problem is located in the motherboard and it seems too hard to be repaired
I got a new machine, then I bought a new hard drive and I copied my App on it.

with SGI, your "hostid" comes from the mac address of the first built-in lan located on the motherboard
If your motherboard dies, you loose the hostid.

• machineA (died): comes with SS&&S already installed, plus a valid license key,  it does not expire
• machineB (new): able to reprogram the 96CS265 EEprom, so I can change the hostid, and so I did

I copied my application and its license into the new hard drive
and it happens the following:

Code: [Select]

machineB: flexlm-diag -c /var/flexlm/aw.dat
flexlm-diag: This is the correct node for this node-locked license
flexlm-diag: but I don't know if the license-key is good or not

And I am confused: missLicense? C'mon, we're quitters and we're sober
but you don't know, if to trust in evil or in god, ready to fall, taught to be nothing at all


I tried to contact the Company which developed my Application (in order to get a new license for my new machine)
and d they are like dinosaurs: gone, extinct since a jurassic while

ideas  ?

[amyk]

Pick up some RE skills and have a crack at it (literally)...

[legacy]

eheheh, in first place I have to understand the strange error I get
I wonder what is wrong if I have reprogrammed the EEPROM
so the hostid is equal to my died machine

[legacy]

I wonder if ... someone has already reversed the hash algorithm used by FlexLM v=<5 

[suicidaleggroll]

You could always set up a VM with a MAC that matches your old system, then use that to run all of this old software you can't update to the new machine.

[legacy]

You could always set up a VM with a MAC

not possible on IRIX

[kmike]

You could always set up a VM with a MAC

not possible on IRIX

Hi,

as far as I can remember, flexlm only checked the hostname and the MAC address (they were in cleartext in the license file). As for changing the MAC address, You could look on the network card, it was stored in a serial eeprom on most of the old network cards. Maybe this forum topic could help:

hXXp://comp.sys.sgi.admin.narkive.com/by8lqEGp/how-to-change-mac-address-on-o200-irix6-5-8

br,
mike

*edit:typos

[legacy]

as far as I can remember, flexlm only checked the hostname and the MAC address

the Irix kernel is different for every machine, IP32 is different from IP30
therefore that method doesn't work, I mean it works only for a few machines

in fact we have different hacks

anyway, a better idea is to change or reprogram the chip which assigns the mac-address
again, it's different from IP32 to IP30, in the last case it's a 1wire chip by Dalsemi
on IP28 it's a EEPROM 96xx, etc

there is an other problem in reprogramming the MAC: IRIX has a lot of licenses to be satisfied
in my case I have the CFS-XVM mirroring and Impressario, both of them are node locked to my MAC
if I change the MAC in order to run Pro/E … I will lose them

ergo, one (not saying me) has only two ways

• generating a valid license, by fishing the 5 keys inside flexlm
• cracking and patching flexlm

oh, the first one is the most elegant and less invasive, but it's ONLY possible with flexlm v1..v5
with v6 they introduced more protections, including a blackbox with a cryptography

[legacy]

unfortunately I don't know in details how flexlm works
and I don't know which is the rule of lmcrypt 

each vendor has its own five keys, plus 2 seeds
it's not exactly a piece of cake

[kmike]

ergo, one (not saying me) has only two ways

• generating a valid license, by fishing the 5 keys inside flexlm
• cracking and patching flexlm

Is it possible to add another network card with the right MAC address (changed in the eeprom ) to the system?
As for the software approach, I would not attack the crypto in flexlm, but the point where it reads the MAC address. As IRIX is based on Unix/BSD, this should be a file read.

br,
mike

[richardman]

The only thing I know about PRO/E is that back in the days when we first brought up what would become the Itanic, I meant, Itanium, getting PRO/E to work was one of those "must happen" things. Don't you hate it when companies always say "This new widget X and project Y will be the future of the company! TYPE FASTER!!!" and then lots of things happen anyway, including a few CEOs that burn the company to the ground...

[legacy]

Is it possible to add another network card with the right MAC address (changed in the eeprom ) to the system?

it's not so easy to add another NIC with a customized MAC, those NICs must be SGI-compliant, and ... lmhostid won't care about them about the hostid, since it cares only to the build-in NIC

As for the software approach, I would not attack the crypto in flexlm, but the point where it reads the MAC address. As IRIX is based on Unix/BSD, this should be a file read.

I have to investigate

[kmike]

Is it possible to add another network card with the right MAC address (changed in the eeprom ) to the system?

it's not so easy to add another NIC with a customized MAC, those NICs must be SGI-compliant, and ... lmhostid won't care about them about the hostid, since it cares only to the build-in NIC

As for the software approach, I would not attack the crypto in flexlm, but the point where it reads the MAC address. As IRIX is based on Unix/BSD, this should be a file read.

I have to investigate

Is it possible to install/run a debugger on Your system?
There are a lot of interesting things about v6 here:
hXXp://www.woodmann.com/fravia/siulflex.htm

br,
mike

[legacy]

Is it possible to install/run a debugger on Your system?

yes

There are a lot of interesting things about v6 here:
hXXp://www.woodmann.com/fravia/siulflex.htm

frankly … 60% of bullshits there

[legacy]

FLEXlm libraries are *flexible* and support many different APIs and methods of license management. How the applications use those libraries is largely up to the developer.

I have developed a FLEXlm-like engine toy, it is not flexible since it offers just *one way*: the validator code is stored in supervisor space, protected by MMU, not accessible form the userspace, and it can be invoked only by a kernel system call, there fore the application needs to pass the FEATURE line as input, and it will get a boolean answer,  is_it_valid { True, False }

you put the FEATURE string pointer into a register (including the hash), you invoke the method, it will recompute the hash, it will check if the date is expired and other limitation, then it will answer with the compute hash and with the response

Code: [Select]

is_it_ok = check_limitations();
is_it_valid=(acquired_hash isEqualTo computed_hash);
ans=(is_it_valid logicalAnd is_it_ok);
return ans;


about bullshit on FLEXlm articles: well, my toy is just a toy, there is no business on it, ... you don't think that the it would really creates an hash (computed_hash) in ram and then compares it the one in the license file (acquired_hash) ... but ... yes they would because this is exactly what they do, and not only that they leave it in memory untouched when they are finished with it.

do you think the same scheme can be applied to FLEXlm? so, are you really *to fish* (through a debugger) the computed hash in memory ? FLEXlm < v5 are claimed to do so, seriously?

in my case ... I was too lazy to implement something really strong, so I put my effort on the protected memory method (XINU kernel), and the validator runs inside the super-user space, which traps a memory error if an application in user space tries to access

the MMU doesn't translate address, virtual addresses are equals to physical addresses, but there is a protection, and some area are not accessible, protected

poor design for my 68060 board, I know


FLEXlm <v5 promotes security through obscurity, then they evolved, since these days (after 2006) one would design something based on public key cryptography, the functional equivalent to openssh login using a certificate.

[kmike]

Another idea: program a microcontroller to emulate the serial eerprom of the network card, hook it up to a switch so You can decide wich MAC address to use.
Or use multiple serial eeproms and literally switch between them dependig on what software You need
Not nice, but should work

br,
mike

[legacy]

Another idea: program a microcontroller to emulate the serial eerprom of the network card, hook it up to a switch so You can decide wich MAC address to use

good, but on SGI the MAC address is read at the boostrap in order to provide the lmhostid
if you change the MAC on the fly the lmhost is won't follow the update

you need different licenses to be present

[legacy]

p.s.
on Octane you need to reprogram or to emulate a OneWire chip made by DalSemi/Maxim
on Impact you need to reprogram or to emulate a 96xx EEprom

on O2 it's OneWire chip
on Fuel/Tezro it's more complex

On Indy it's a piece of cake: you can reprogram the MAC from the firmware, it's written in NVRAM

[Grunchy]

So I was looking into this vintage Pro/Engineer project for myself and there are plenty of resources now available on the topic.

First of all, it wasn't until Pro/Engineer R20 that they started to use FlexLM. Check out their information page from 1997:
https://support.ptc.com/olm/flexlm/

So it would be nice to get an ISO version of R20 since that may be straightforward to generate a FlexLM licence file for it, however archive.org only seems to have R16 and R17 so far.

Pro/Engineer R16 for Unix:
https://archive.org/details/pro-unix-16

Pro/Engineer R17 for Unix:
https://archive.org/details/pro-unix-17

Meanwhile, there's a super-convenient method to set up a vintage Sun Solaris virtual machine using "Qemu" software, I already did this and it's terrific!
https://learn.adafruit.com/build-your-own-sparc-with-qemu-and-solaris

Plus a terrific manual to play with the pro/engineer software if and when I can ever get it working:
https://archive.org/details/insideproenginee0000utzj

So right now I'm at a cross-roads, I can either try to find somebody who created a "keygen" for R16/R17 and go ahead and get one of those working,
or hopefully somebody got a CD copy of R20 and wouldn't mind uploading that to archive.org.

[HighVoltage]

I might still have the ISO of all these old Pro/Engineer versions. Need to take a look on old hard drives.

 

[Bicurico]

You can run Irix on a PC using MAME.

There are ready to use setups you can find on the internet with IRIX 5.3 or IRIX 6.2, emulating a SGI INDY or a SGI Indigo 2.

This emulation is rather slow, as MAME strives for exact emulation.

However, on my new workstation running an Intel Core i9-13900KF, the emulation is quite usable!