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colinfinckon Running WolfSSL and Curl on Windows 2000

Not long ago I remember coming across some discussions about upgrading SChannel (the actual TLS component in Windows) in older versions using OpenSSL or other TLS libraries, but can't find at the moment.

ReactOS has an schannel.dll built around the mbedTLS library: https://github.com/reactos/reactos/tree/master/dll/win32/sch...

I remember reports about people using it on Windows XP/Server 2003.

colinfinckon An implementation of the NTFS filesystem in a Rust crate

Author here. Surprised to suddenly find my project from 2021 on Hacker News!

If you want to learn more about NTFS internals and my crate, check out the talk I gave at FOSDEM 2022: https://archive.fosdem.org/2022/schedule/event/misc_ntfs_rus...

Also I'm open to any questions here.

colinfinckon In defense of linked lists

FWIW, I recently implemented a safe Rust crate around the Windows variant of intrusive linked lists [1] and spoke about it at EuroRust [2].

I did it only for compatibility and would still prefer vectors whenever I can use them. Nevertheless, I put some efforts into coming up with a useful and high-performing implementation. To give an example: My `append` function is O(1) and not a poor O(N) version that you rightfully criticized in your tweet.

[1] https://colinfinck.de/posts/nt-list-windows-linked-lists-in-... [2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IxhZIyXOIw8

colinfinckon Ask HN: Has anyone here worked on the Windows kernel?

I have worked on a Windows-compatible kernel. Not at Microsoft, but within the ReactOS Project. And I can affirm that even after 15 years of low-level development, nowadays mostly within various Rust projects, it doesn't get boring. Can't imagine going back to high-level while there is still so much work to do on the underlying foundations..

Congrats on your kernel development offer from Microsoft! I imagine these to be very scarce these days, considering that today's Microsoft seems to be more into services and less about low-level software development.

If you like to chat more about this, just drop me a line. Always interested to hear from low-level devs and aspiring ones. My website/e-mail is in my HN profile.

colinfinckon Cross-compiling binaries for Windows is easier than building natively

> Only if you want to be trendchasing rather than letting backwards compatibility take care of itself...

> I'm a native Win32 developer, have been one for a few decades, and know quite a few others still using MSVC6 because it's fast and enough for what they do. Takes <250MB of disk space, and the self-contained binaries it generates will work on any version of Windows starting at Win95.

I share your view about the unmatched backwards compatibility of Win32 binaries, but I wouldn't let a 24-year old compiler like MSVC6 near any new project. We are talking about a compiler here that doesn't even support the C++98 standard, let alone all the basic features for writing safe software (stack cookies, _s APIs, smart pointers - just to name a few).

When I needed reliable self-contained binaries and backwards compatibility, I switched to VS2019's clang-cl compiler and ported their libc++. Together with winpthreads from the mingw-w64 project, this enabled me to write software using even C++20 features, but still maintain compatibility down to Windows NT 4 from 1996. If you're interested, it's all documented here: https://colinfinck.de/posts/targeting-25-years-of-windows-wi...

colinfinckon Xerox scanners/photocopiers randomly alter numbers in scanned documents (2013)

From the original post: "numbers seem to be mangled independently from the compression mode, which makes the issue hard to avoid"

colinfinckon Usbimager – A non-electron based alternative to Balena Etcher

I've been using Win32DiskImager since the first Raspberry Pi. Never found a reason to change.

Usbimager looks nice in comparison to the bloated Balena Etcher, but otherwise very similar to the Win32DiskImager I'm already using. Or is there something I am missing?

colinfinckon ReactOS Updates

We didn't do it just for the eye candy, but also for threads, offline messages, and user identification. I wrote down our reasons for moving from IRC to a self-hosted Mattermost here: https://reactos.org/project-news/new-discussion-platform/

We never broke ties with IRC though. You can still join #reactos or #reactos-dev on Freenode, both are bridged to their corresponding Mattermost channels using Matterbridge.

Our Matrix server was set up right in time for FOSDEM 2021. It will soon be extended to bridge to the IRC and Mattermost worlds, as Matrix integrates even better with Freenode's IRC server than Matterbridge.

As an open-source project, never place your bets on a single third-party platform!

colinfinckon ReactOS

No. The project has no legal entity in the US.

colinfinckon ReactOS

ReactOS dev here. As of today, compatibility is primarily hampered by the fact that many applications don't run under Windows XP anymore. We don't want to change the entire OS target to something newer than NT 5.2 (XP/Server 2003) at this point. Let's better stabilize on one target than chasing a moving target forever.

This is why a versioning system is being implemented right now to allow applications targeting NT 6.x to use newer DLLs/APIs not available under Windows XP. Check e.g. this recent PR from a few days ago for details: https://github.com/reactos/reactos/pull/3239

colinfinckon C Macro Magic

This implementation of doubly linked lists is not even exclusive to Unix-based operating systems, but also known as struct LIST_ENTRY under Windows/ReactOS and heavily used for kernel development there. They also provide a singly linked list version as struct SINGLE_LIST_ENTRY.

Check e.g. https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/desktop/api/ntdef/n... and https://git.reactos.org/?p=reactos.git&a=search&h=HEAD&st=gr...

colinfinckon Nobody Cares About OAuth or OpenID Connect

The complexity of OpenID Connect or even just SAML is exactly why I developed RosLogin for the ReactOS infrastructure: https://github.com/reactos/web/tree/master/www/www.reactos.o...

Our web services are all running under the same base domain reactos.org and we wanted a Single Sign-On system for all of them. I was surprised to find out that doing this simple seems to be an unresolved problem: CAS, OpenID Connect, and SAML all want you to set up heavyweight authentication servers and a certificate infrastructure for identifying each participating web service. A lot of protocol messages need to travel for a simple action like a user login when a site-wide session cookie could just do the same job. Sure, those systems support advanced features like access control and delegated authentication, but this is all not required if you just want to link a few web services under your own control, say a MediaWiki and phpBB forums.

RosLogin simply sets a site-wide session cookie on each user login. Each web service then just calls RosLogin::isLoggedIn() to check its validity and retrieve the user name. No certificates, no protocol messages, and no heavyweight server software is involved. Together with centralized Login, Registration, and Self-Service pages, RosLogin currently needs no more than 1600 lines of PHP code - perfectly auditable from a security standpoint!

The ReactOS infrastructure is mostly built around PHP web services, so PHP bindings and plugins for Drupal, MediaWiki, and phpBB are currently the only ones available for RosLogin. However, our few non-PHP services can still plug into the same user database by connecting to RosLogin's underlying OpenLDAP directory.