Version: 0.8.5
Sat Jul 09 10:04:47 PDT 1994

Ever been up at 3am on Monday morning trying to move an essential 
application from one piece of hardware to another and been unable to 
do it because you'll need a new licence key from your vendor and they 
don't give them out at weird hours? Well, here's a solution that 
works in many cases. Basically it allows you to modify the value 
returned by gethostid/sysinfo for the hostid on Solaris 1.x and 2.3 

This kit contains scripts/programs to do this using four different
approaches. These are (pretty much in the order of severity and danger):
1. Use shared libraries to modify the value returned by gethostid/sysinfo
   for a particular group of dynamically linked executables. Does not
   work for statically linked executables.
   newhostid, sidump.c  (Solaris 1.x and 2.3)
   newhostid was contributed by Jean-Louis Faraut <jlf@sauma.essi.fr>

2. Modify the in-core image of the kernel so that all processes on a running 
   Solaris system will see a different hostid via gethostid/sysinfo.
   hid.c, hid_solaris2.c (Solaris 1.1 and 2.3)

3. Build a new kernel on which certain processes running on a Solaris 1.x 
   system will see a different hostid which can be set by a new
   system call [really cool! - I haven't tested this - markh] 
   hostid-by-egid (Solaris 1.1 only).
   Contributed by someone who wishes to remain anonymous

4. Reprogram your NVRAM so that you really have changed your hostid.
   nvram.c (Solaris 1.x only), nvram.info (instructions for
                                           reprogramming from the monitor)
   The other approaches just fake your OS into reporting a
   different hostid via the standard system calls.  This approach is
   much more dangerous, but you may have to resort to it if your
   licence manager actually goes and fetches the IDPROM value (perhaps
   through the OPENPROM interface, see getobphostid.c for a way of
   doing this). In particular 1 and 2 can be undone very easily (reboot). 
   Approach 3 can be undone by rebooting with one's old kernel.  The NVRAM 
   modifier if it is abused or malfunctions can actually render your 
   machine unbootable, even from CDROM. Read the comments in nvram.c and 
   nvram.info before trying this. I don't generally recommend it.

-------

Please don't use these program to steal software. The intended use is 
for emergency situations where an application has to be moved from 
one computer to another (e.g. in the event of a hardware malfunction) 
and licence keys cannot be obtained quickly from the vendor or when
your NVRAM gets wiped out by some unfortunate accident.

USE AT YOUR OWN RISK.

nvram.c is particularly dangerous.  Read the comments and proceed with
extreme caution. If this program malfunctions or is misused you can get
your NVRAM into a state where you will no longer be able to boot Sun OS.
Unless you absolutely need to modify your NVRAM, I recommend going with
the approach in hid/hid_solaris2.  Reprogramming your NVRAM can be
useful when it gets wiped out for some reason. BE SURE TO WRITE DOWN
YOUR NVRAM INFO BEFORE YOU MODIFY IT.
