Talk:Backdoor

Question

What are Frob and Twiddle? TheBozzball asks a dumb question.

Frob

[ARG]/001 Ghogg says, "http://events.perplexcity.com/gateway/commandinterface/index.html"

[ARG]/002 Ghogg says, "this is the most recently popped up puzzle. it is a 'backdoor' of some sort with a bunch of unix-y commands"

[ARG]/003 inky says, "hey, I got it to do something"

[ARG]/004 Ghogg asks, "PWRITE, POPEN, and PREAD seem pretty straightforward. What would SWITCH and ROTATE do?"

[ARG]/005 inky says, "I figured that the commands were meaningless and it was just going to be a puzzle about spelling stuff out with the first two letters"

[ARG]/006 inky says, "if this is like befunge, then switch and rotate may change which direction execution moves in"

[ARG]/007 Ghogg asks (of inky), "whoa, really?"

[ARG]/008 inky says (to Ghogg), "well, I got it to blink and say "invalid command path""

[ARG]/009 inky says, "I realize that is not that exciting"

[ARG]/010 Ghogg says, "heh, ok. If you drop 'run' anywhere it'll try to excute the stuff on the row and column"

[ARG]/011 Ghogg says, "someone managed to get one thing to run ... lesse..."

[ARG]/012 Ghogg says, "something with mount and zone, but I'm not getting it to work"

[ARG]/013 Ghogg says, "I do think this is supposed to represent a 'real' computer system"

[ARG]/014 inky says, "yeah, apparently"

[ARG]/015 Jota says, "I got it to complain about disk access."

[ARG]/016 Jota says, "Runtime Error: No disk access."

[ARG]/017 inky says, "you have to popen first"

[ARG]/018 inky says, "er"

[ARG]/019 inky says, "mount first"

[ARG]/020 Jota says, "I've got mount as the first operations of the row and column (after run, in the upper left), and I've still got that error."

[ARG]/021 Jota says, "Which is interesting, since I guess it means I managed to compile."

[ARG]/022 * NewsBoy hollers, "Extra! Extra! Ghogg has posted message 6, about Backdoor' in Perplex City puzzle', to the bulletin board! Jaybird soon to be given WizBit!"

[ARG]/023 Ghogg says (to Jota), "the goal here seems to be either to a.) dump the system files from this point or b.) cause a crash that will let you break into the system proper"

[ARG]/024 Jota says, "I'm vaguely curious what that blank one is all about."

[ARG]/025 inky asks, "blank one?"

[ARG]/026 Jota says, "The thing in the upper right."

[ARG]/027 Jota says, "(Or is that only visible if you open the SWF directly?)"

[ARG]/028 inky says, "I don't see any such thing, yeah"

[ARG]/029 Jota says, "I managed to use it to get an 'undefined' command."

[ARG]/030 inky says, "neat"

[ARG]/031 Jota says, "Dunno if that's a bug or necessary to win."

[ARG]/032 Jota says, "Huh. It doesn't let you put things in certain places."

[ARG]/033 inky asks, "really?"

[ARG]/034 inky says, "I've occasionally had them snap back but it seemed to be more because I was misplacing them within the grid"

[ARG]/035 inky says, "and when I tried again it worked"

[ARG]/036 Jota says, "Let me try to recreate it."

[ARG]/037 Jota says, "I can't seem to find how I did it before."

[ARG]/038 Jota says, "'Session can not be unloaded at this time'."

[ARG]/039 inky says, "hrm"

[ARG]/040 inky says, "oh, heh"

[ARG]/041 Jota says, "'No area has been accessed'"

[ARG]/042 Jota asks, "Do we know what the P in popen, pwrite, pread are?"

[ARG]/043 inky says, "hey, nice"

[ARG]/044 inky asks, "how did you get it to do that?"

[ARG]/045 inky says, "no, although they're actually names of unix system functions"

[ARG]/046 Jota says, "Mount, run, rotate, end in the first row; run, rotate, end in the second column. (Same 'run'.)"

[ARG]/047 inky says, "although they're not related, I don't think -- popen forks a new process, and pread and pwrite read and write a file"

[ARG]/048 inky says, "hmm, interesting"

[ARG]/049 Jota says, "It appears that you need mount before run, and you need some command between run and end. I'm trying out the different commands now."

[ARG]/050 Jota says, "Hmm. I can legally put a pwrite before the mount."

[ARG]/051 Jota says, "I get the same runtime error, but at least it's a valid command grid."

[ARG]/052 Jota exclaims, "Woo, a file error!"

[ARG]/053 Jota says, "'File access denied'."

[ARG]/054 inky says, "awright"

[ARG]/055 josh_g says, "hee hee"

[ARG]/056 Jota says, "I am totally racking up the errors here."

[ARG]/057 josh_g says, "phrases you didn't expect to hear"

[ARG]/058 Jota exclaims, "Access error!"

[ARG]/059 Jota says, "(Unable to reset read permissions)"

[ARG]/060 Jota says, "I currently have zone, mount, run, rotate, pread / -, -, popen, zone, - / -, -, pwrite, pread, - / -, -, rotate, -, - / -, -, end, -, -."

[ARG]/061 Jota says, "I am confused by the fact that the zone needs to be present for this to 'work'."

[ARG]/062 Jota says, "'Timeout in folder'"

[ARG]/063 Jota says, "I still have no idea what I'm doing, but at least I've reached the point where I get lots of different messages."

[ARG]/064 Jota says, "Hmm. I think the timeout might mean some kind of loop."

[ARG]/065 inky says, "holy!!!"

[ARG]/066 inky says, "I think I got it"

[ARG]/067 inky says, "arg, shit, and the screen that popped up obscured what I did"

[ARG]/068 josh_g says, "woot!"

[ARG]/069 inky says, "curse it all"

[ARG]/070 josh_g says, "but you are still a winnar"

[ARG]/071 Jota says, "Congrats."

[ARG]/072 inky says, "so irritating"

[ARG]/073 inky says, "I really have no idea what I did"

[ARG]/074 inky says, "I think I put a rotate in the upper-right corner and and a switch in the lower-right"

[ARG]/075 inky says (to Jota), "starting from what you had"

[ARG]/076 (from josh_g) inky says, "but I might be able to remember more clearly for, say, $10"

[ARG]/077 Jota says, "Working silently and secretly, not sharing his progress (by which I mean 'error messages') with the rest of us."

[ARG]/078 inky says, "for the record, the code phrases or whatever from this seem to be "CRYPTO PARTS REF: 384621-5A" "EXTERNAL REF: 9CE42T""

[ARG]/079 Jota says, "I think you must have made more changes than to the upper right and lower right squares, since since that's an invalid command grid."

[ARG]/080 inky says, "yeah"

[ARG]/081 inky says, "I think the theory is rotate turns the direction of execution, and going off the edge without hitting an end is one of the things that trigger invalid"

[ARG]/082 inky says, "you've got the 'session can not be unloaded at this time' one, right? I think that's from hitting an end too early, or without caching or something"

[ARG]/083 Jota says, "Yeah."

[ARG]/084 Jota says, "I think that was the third one I saw, after the one for not mounting and the invalid grid one."

[ARG]/085 inky says, "dadgummit"

[ARG]/086 inky says, "I just got another useful ending screen"

[ARG]/087 inky says, "(so clearly the previous one wasn't the whole solution, which makes sense)"

[ARG]/088 Jota says, "Curse it all."

[ARG]/089 Jota says, "(I have no real reason to curse anything, but I just felt like going along with you.)"

[ARG]/099 inky says, "zone mount run rotate rotate / - - rotate zone cache / - - pwrite pread - / - - rotate - end / - - end - -"

[ARG]/100 inky says, "pops up one of the screens I've got"

[ARG]/101 inky says, "(but you can't keep accessing the grid at this point)"

[ARG]/102 Jota asks, "File access denied?"

[ARG]/103 inky says, "oh you're kidding me"

[ARG]/104 inky tries it himself

[ARG]/105 Jota says, "Maybe you did something else to gain access first."

[ARG]/106 inky says, "ack, I hope not"

[ARG]/107 inky says, "this will be even harder if it's not stateless"

[ARG]/108 inky says, "grah, yes, I get the error too"

[ARG]/109 inky says, "aha, sorry, I made a typo"

[ARG]/110 inky says, "try zone mount run rotate rotate / - - popen zone cache / - - pwrite pread - / - - rotate - end / - - end - -"

[ARG]/111 inky says, "ie, sub popen for the rotate on the second row"

[ARG]/112 Jota says, "Aha, there it is."

Twiddle

[16:57] <achenar> This whole thing would probably make more sense if I knew Unix, wouldn't it? ;)

[16:57] * _SB|nothere is now known as _SilentlyBroken

[16:57] <SteveC> So - we've got two distinct paths - one is giving us parts, the other is giving us chat..

[16:57] <SteveC> achenar: Not really

[16:57] <poozle> Knowing unix doesn't help achenar

[16:57] <Book[sidelines]> Hmm

[16:57] <Scott`> http://perplexcitywiki.com/wiki/Backdoor

[16:58] <SteveC> I'm not convinved that it's not just random :)

[16:58] <Scott`> has all the latest as i am aware

[16:58] * Cheese|Away is now known as MasterCheese

[16:58] * Gibbet has joined #syzygy

[16:58] <achenar> Ooh, thanks. *wikifies before she does anything too stupid* ;)

[16:59] <poozle> I'm looking at it and there seem to be patterns, just not a lot of them

[16:59] <AxysDenyed> Actually, you can just do zone mount run switch - / - - popen rotate cache

[16:59] <Book[sidelines]> No END needed ? Hm...

[17:00] * Mico has joined #syzygy

[17:00] <MAFIAA> end might be needed for the branches

[17:00] <CLU> Wait, what have we got so far?

[17:01] <poozle> Anyone had "Session can not be unloaded at this time"?

[17:01] <Wizdumb> yea

[17:01] <Wizdumb> that's from an end too early

[17:01] <poozle> ok

[17:01] <SteveC> brb

[17:01] <poozle> thanks, will keep trying

[17:01] * SteveC has quit IRC (Quit: )

[17:03] <jbd> that's interesting the switch works

[17:03] <Book[sidelines]> Yup.

[17:17] <TheBozzball> If you do programs consisting of just "run", you get invalid command grid unless you put run on the first column, in which case you get "no disk access". If you do programs consisting of square 1: some command, square 2: run, you get - for Switch, Copy, Flush, Pread, Cache, Mount - Inv. Command Grid, for the other 6 - No Disk Access