How to get list of all present disc drives? (RISCOSCloverleaf)

Implement a Wimp message that tells the Filer to remove its icon from the iconbar.

An application can just go ahead and do this on behalf of the filer, the beauty of the RISC OS lack of security model.

An application can just go ahead an do this on behalf of the filer, the beauty of the RISC OS lack of security model.

Yup.

An application can just go ahead an do this on behalf of the filer

For obvious reasons, involving sanity and llamas, I wasn’t going to go there…

It’s the one of the things that makes RISC OS fun, in that you can get in there and change the behaviour of just about anything, using vectors, callbacks, filters and plain buggering with someone else’s shit. As other OS’s have become more mature their security models (try to) prevent this type of thing, the alternative being to implement an official API (as Rick suggested), but that of course relies on the authors having the forethought to realise that such a API would be needed.

For obvious reasons, involving sanity and llamas, I wasn’t going to go there…

Something in my mind twisted that to “involving salty llamas” and we definitely don’t want to go there…

https://xkcd.com/2531

I have just spent a happy hour or so putting together a tiny little app to access all my disc drives from the ShareFS ‘Discs’ icon.

It is crude and is manualy set up, but it might interest someone. If there were a *command that I could use to remove the real disc icons it would almost do the complete job. ;-)

http://www.kappa.me.uk/Miscellaneous/swDiscs001.zip

That’s a first, I decided to have a look and Firefox complained about downloading the file from an insecure location.
Browser people are starting to get nit-picky about non-TLS links…

If there were a *command that I could use to remove the real disc icons …

RMReInit ####Filer will do it, but there seems to be no way back.

Edit: to ReInit

Anyway, my toy now has access to my drives in one place and no other Iconbar icons.

Firefox complained about downloading the file from an insecure location.

OK. Hint taken. How much should I pay for essential SSL? My hosting service, Namesco, is asking £66 pa for a good basic DV, but I see that I might get it via RapidSSL, for example, for &6. I am completely lost in this subject. ;-(

Pay? Ideally nothing!

So long as NetSurf doesn’t care about non-TLS links we are OK.

How much should I pay for essential SSL? My hosting service, Namesco, is asking £66 pa for a good basic DV, but I see that I might get it via RapidSSL, for example, for &6.

I pay about £6 pa for the davehigton.me.uk domain from 123-reg, but last time I looked, there were others offering domains at similar prices.

I don’t need much web space, so I get it free.

SSL certificates are free from Let’s Encrypt and are valid for 90 days. You can easily obtain and renew them yourself if you have a Linux box.

If you pick a helpful web space provider, they’ll handle automatic renewal of certificates for you at no cost.

So the only thing that should cost you real money is domain name registration.

If you want to host a web site on your own premises, you can get a dynamic DNS name for free, but you’ll have to update it yourself every 30 days or less. I’ve got one of those too, not for a web site but for other purposes (home automation, and SSL experiments). In my case, my BT router automatically communicates with the DNS when my external IP address changes. BT keep forcing the router to restart every few days, which forces an IP address change, because BT want lots of money for providing a static IP address. So, for a web site, it’s possible to do it for free, but I can’t recommend it.

My hosting service, Namesco, is asking £66 pa for a good basic DV

Consider changing your hosting.

Once upon a time SSL was a special thing and hosts charged accordingly.
These days, any host that doesn’t offer it as standard doesn’t cut it as a host. As you’ve noticed, typical browsers are actively rejecting non encrypted downloads and resources.

For example, this:

https://www.ovh.com/world/web-hosting/shared-ssl.xml

Adding Let’s Encrypt certificates to a site shouldn’t cost anything extra, and really the host ought to have it automated.

BT keep forcing the router to restart every few days

Orange do the same, and I don’t think static IP is even available to normal homes (it’s an expensive “business” thing).
Therefore, I think they force the restarts because it’s a quick fix for various problems. Easier to reset the box than to fix the firmware!

OK. Hint taken. How much should I pay for essential SSL? My hosting service, Namesco, is asking £66 pa for a good basic DV, but I see that I might get it via RapidSSL, for example, for &6. I am completely lost in this subject. ;-(

If you have a virtual host or your ISP has an SSL panel, you should be able to use “Let’s Encrypt” it’s totally free and now certificates also last for a long time.

If you need help with let’s encrypt large number of options please let me know, I can help.

OK. Hint taken.

I wasn’t hinting, just commenting on the “feature” that slid in quietly in FF.
I knew they were pushing the HTTPS to the fore, but I hadn’t realised that they were now setting the default in FF to treat HHTP file transfer like some kind of nasty disease.

you should be able to use “Let’s Encrypt” it’s totally free and now certificates also last for a long time.

and they’ve mostly flushed out the expired Intermediate certificate issue

That caught a fair number of well known sites

I have just spent a happy hour or so putting together a tiny little app to access all my disc drives from the ShareFS ‘Discs’ icon.

Sharing a local drive and then accessing it via ShareFS very rarely works at all in my experience, if it does it is hopelessly unreliable. This has been the case from 3.5 to 5.xx / 6.xx

BT keep forcing the router to restart every few days

Orange do the same, and I don’t think static IP is even available to normal homes (it’s an expensive “business” thing).

This just seems really strange to my Kiwi mind. I can consciously remember rebooting my router 2-3 times over the past five years, and it doesn’t get auto-rebooted. My static IP was a one-off payment on a residential connection.

Like Dave above, I pay for my domain name, and use Let’s Encrypt for HTTPS.

Sharing a local drive and then accessing it via ShareFS very rarely works at all

Of course, but that is not what I have done. I just use the ‘Discs’ icon to display the Resources.$.Discs directory. ;-)

This is just a toy, but I will upload a slightly more sophisticated version tomorrow.

My static IP was a one-off payment on a residential connection.

How long ago was this? Static IP used to be available (like Demon). These days it’s harder as they’ve technically “run out” ¹, and dynamic IP lookups exist.

I can consciously remember rebooting my router 2-3 times over the past five years, and it doesn’t get auto-rebooted.

I would say maybe it’s because you have better firmware…but on the other hand…is your firmware ever updated?

¹ It didn’t help that in the early days, some of the IP block assignments were crazy. Universities were assigned blocks of 16 million addresses each (in March, Penn State sold a big chunk of addresses).

How long ago was this?

Early last year, although I’ve just checked my ISP’s site and the pricing hasn’t changed since then.

These days it’s harder as they’ve technically “run out”

I think in this part of the world it’s less of an issue as many local providers hoarded them several years ago. I can’t remember how to view the allocations but I’m sure that my ISP has more than a handful :)

Back on topic, my suggestion would be to contain all drives under one icon initially, with pinning to add drives to the task bar – ie middle-click on the drive and tick Pin to Task Bar. Possibly pinning the boot drive by default on initial install so it looks a bit normal for people used to the Acorn way.

Regarding the Partition bounty, it’s been over a year since it was assigned with no updates what-so-ever. Is it still being actively developed?

Regarding the Partition bounty, it’s been over a year since it was assigned with no updates what-so-ever. Is it still being actively developed?

There was a “progress review” in April but I don’t know whether it was a ‘success’ or not.

Given what the bounty is, it’s probably going to need a ridiculous amount of testing.
If a wobbly network stack drops connections, it’s annoying.
If a wobbly filesystem trashes your data, it’s catastrophic.

So – test, test, and then test a little bit more. And test the tests too.

I will upload a slightly more sophisticated version tomorrow.

For amusement only:

I have changed the name from Discs to Drives.

It didn’t help that in the early days, some of the IP block assignments were crazy. Universities were assigned blocks of 16 million addresses each (in March, Penn State sold a big chunk of addresses).

Being a little more accurate, and your reference to “Penn State” gives a clue, “American IP block assignments” were crazy.
But then the US of A does own the world, does it not?