OFW sad face doesn't say why

C. Scott Ananian cscott at laptop.org
Fri Jul 18 17:21:48 EDT 2008


On Fri, Jul 18, 2008 at 2:57 PM, Mikus Grinbergs <mikus at bga.com> wrote:
> Happened to put in laptop BB a SD card copied over from laptop AA.
> Pushed power-on, laptop BB showed me a sad face and powered down.
>
> Figured out why -- that SD card had a directory on it called
> /security, and in that directory there was a file called
> develop.sig.  Since this file's content did not match BB's identity,
> BB powered down.  I erased that file - then BB would boot o.k.
>
>
> If you have a cheap SD card, and an enemy with an XO, why not create
> /security/develop.sig on that SD card, and surreptitiously insert
> that SD card into his OLPC - he would be extremely UNLIKELY to think
> of examining the sd-card-slot for the cause of his XO not booting.
>
> If the OFW identified its reason for not proceeding with booting,
> this opportunity for mischief would not work.

Do you normally use a developer key in order to boot -- ie, are you
running a joyride build on BB?  Is the root problem here, perhaps,
that after OFW finds a develop.sig on the SD card which doesn't work,
it doesn't continue to look in other places (like NAND)?

Eben, the lock icon is still there.  The sad face is just in the
"something went terribly wrong" case (when we don't even get out of
OFW) and I'm sure Mitch can give you the dimensions of the icon if you
want to substitute something more attractive.  But, again, no one
should really ever see the sad face.
 --scott

-- 
 ( http://cscott.net/ )



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