Gregtech deliberately crashing client if TC installed..

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Hoff

Tech Support
Oct 30, 2012
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I don't think it's possible to be sane and subscribe to the ideology of greg and some of his more zealous followers.
 

BanzaiBlitz

New Member
Jul 29, 2019
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It's a pity really as GT was so full of glorious potential and the updated fusion reactor system was a marvelous thing.

Doing my own tinkering but I have to agree. It's gotten to be increasingly clear that GT is not worth the problems and needs to be set aside indefinitely. There will always be new mods with new ideas.

At least the "flowerchild" syndrome is rare in the modding community.
 
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ShneekeyTheLost

Too Much Free Time
Dec 8, 2012
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Lost as always
You know, I was going to make a new thread petitioning the removal of Gtech from future FTB mod packs.

I even had a rather witty way of doing it, parodying the American Declaration of Independence. You know "We the Users of the FTB Launcher, in order to create a more perfect gaming experience...".

The truth of the matter is: a) There isn't any point, and b) this really isn't a laughing matter.

At this point, the only people who will play with GregTech are those who adamantly wish to, and will just include it in their play even if the mod is removed. Also, just about everyone else will, at this point, simply remove the mod from the mod pack they are playing. Removing or adding the mod to a mod pack won't really change anything, those who wish to play with the mod will play with it, everyone else will steer clear.

You know the old saying 'it's all fun and games until someone gets hurt'? Yea, it crossed that line. Sure, he may be targeting immibis and mDyio now, but he's not going to stop there. He left that code in deliberately so that he could 'defend' 'his' code with a crash any time someone dares try to do things in a non-GregTech manner.

As the mod author, he has the absolute right to take his mod in any direction he wishes. However, as my momma used ta say 'yer right ta swing yer arm stops before it hits yer brother'. In other words, while he may have a Vision(tm) for where he wants his mod to go, he doesn't have the right to crash the program because a different mod has a different Vision(tm), even if that vision is incompatible with his.

If he truly had a problem with mDyio, a simple solution would have been to detect if the mod in question is loaded. If it is, do not load GregTech with the following system message:

GregTech not loaded due to the presence of Tinkers Construct. If you wish to play with GregTech, you will need to uninstall Tinkers Construct first.

NOT crash the game, NOT flood the user with a whole paragraph of nonsense, simply don't permit the mod to load up. If you want to play with him, I'll take my toys and go home. Still a bit immature, but FAR less so than crashing the user because you don't approve of what the other mod is doing.

What FTB does with their official packs is up to them. I know I will never use GregTech again, regardless of its presence or absence in a mod pack. I know I will never include it in any mod pack I am involved in, simply because I don't wish to risk crashing MY users because he gets into a snit again.
 

KirinDave

New Member
Jul 29, 2019
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Aside, why is Greg mad at Immibis? Besides being contentious, Greg says he "always responds to attacks" which is why Immibis is on the pumpkin of shame list. What did immibis code?
 

gattsuru

Well-Known Member
May 25, 2013
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I still don't think people realize what kind of code bomb Greg made.
No. Bombs are not security measures. They destroy things.
Calling it a code bomb is overstating things a bit. Throwing a hard-to-catch exception is not exactly tricky code, and there are a number of folk who already check their compiled code signatures to avoid reverse-engineered versions of their mod flying around. Contrast, say, turning bees into bombs, and it lacks even elegance.

But it is remarkably immature, and pushing me further away from the GT modsphere, especially combined with the other changes and the automatic updating functionality. I've got my Minecraft instances reasonably well sandboxed, but most people don't, and I can't in good conscience encourage folk to be automatically downloading trusted code from a source I can't trust.

If greg can make the game crash, can he also compile code to install viruses in the background? Just wondering.
Every mod for Minecraft, by default, runs with the same permissions as the initiating user, and a very large array of commands. For most Windows folk -- and even a large percentage people starting to learn Linux -- that's more than enough to do a lot of negative things. Java has some tools to lock down permissions further, but it's never been the most secure platform, and you'll have to understand how to apply a Java SecurityManager and/or separate users sandboxes to really nail it down further.

I don't think he's likely to do that, and it'll be /incredibly/ obvious if he did, the same as any other mod author, but it's something to be aware of and why I /strongly/ recommend only downloading mods from trusted sites.

((You really shouldn't run as an administrative or root user, too, regardless. There are too many damned security holes you'll run into just surfing the web with Flash installed for questions about Minecraft mods to be relevant.))
So, Greg is the new FlowerChild?
FlowerChild had a number of code design level disagreements with other/new parts of the Forge team, and decided to go through a different implementation process (JarMod, rather than ForgeModLoader-style), and then the profanity came out. It's a bit disrespectful to compare that to this GT action.
 

ShneekeyTheLost

Too Much Free Time
Dec 8, 2012
3,728
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Lost as always
Calling it a code bomb is overstating things a bit. Throwing a hard-to-catch exception is not exactly tricky code, and there are a number of folk who already check their compiled code signatures to avoid reverse-engineered versions of their mod flying around. Contrast, say, turning bees into bombs, and it lacks even elegance.
What he has done is quite literally the definition of a code bomb. It is a piece of code that crashes the program deliberately under certain circumstances. In this case, the circumstances are 'if anyone tries to make a recipe which is identical to one of mine with different results'. This isn't code signature checking to avoid reverse-engineered versions of his mod. This is 'I want this recipe to be this way, and if anyone else wants a different result, then I'll just crash the user'. This is attacking the *user* for something another mod author did.

But it is remarkably immature, and pushing me further away from the GT modsphere, especially combined with the other changes and the automatic updating functionality. I've got my Minecraft instances reasonably well sandboxed, but most people don't, and I can't in good conscience encourage folk to be automatically downloading trusted code from a source I can't trust.
I can agree with this.
 

Alex Cubed

New Member
Jul 29, 2019
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If greg can make the game crash, can he also compile code to install viruses in the background? Just wondering.

I personally dont feel go0d about a guy who shows no remorse for what he has done. You know what they say about people with no remorse....

Possibly, though the game crashing is a built in function designed so that if a program detects an error it can shut down quickly and safely with a message, rather than actually crashing and possibly freezing up the entire java application. GT is just abusing the function to make it so Minecraft wouldn't run.
 

KirinDave

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Jul 29, 2019
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If greg can make the game crash, can he also compile code to install viruses in the background? Just wondering.

I personally dont feel go0d about a guy who shows no remorse for what he has done. You know what they say about people with no remorse....


The answer is yes. This is why I'm concerned. I decompile and skim every mod I play. Every one. Because I am not very excited about the prospect of running code I can't trace back to someone liable.

Not that I'd catch everything, and not that I have done this for mods that I have come to trust. I was integrating new mods into my multimc instance when this all went down and saw the crash.
 

Bellaabzug21

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Jul 29, 2019
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Possibly, though the game crashing is a built in function designed so that if a program detects an error it can shut down quickly and safely with a message, rather than actually crashing and possibly freezing up the entire java application. GT is just abusing the function to make it so Minecraft wouldn't run.

Well if he ever actually did create a virus that's distributed through his mod, he'd likely be in quite a bit of trouble.
 

SteveTech

New Member
Jul 29, 2019
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Well if he ever actually did create a virus that's distributed through his mod, he'd likely be in quite a bit of trouble.

With whom? Yes it would be deplorable and he would lose most of his community support(lets be honest, there will always be people that support actions no matter what), but how would he be punished?

If he was in the US he would likely get off since he didn't do it to a corporation, and idk about other countries. Quite honestly I'm liking KirianDave's philosophy of inspect first, accountability is luxury the internet can't afford..
 
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gattsuru

Well-Known Member
May 25, 2013
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Possibly, though the game crashing is a built in function designed so that if a program detects an error it can shut down quickly and safely with a message, rather than actually crashing and possibly freezing up the entire java application. GT is just abusing the function to make it so Minecraft wouldn't run.
From a code perspective, the difference between "throw EverythingStopsWorkingException;" and "FileOutputStream.getChannel.transferFrom();" is pretty much trivial, and there's no way to lock the latter down without disabling multiplayer (and causing a lot of other problems). The tricky part to applying malicious code is saving it to disk (which can be blocked at the SecurityManager or the user level) and then getting the OS to run it.

What he has done is quite literally the definition of a code bomb. It is a piece of code that crashes the program deliberately under certain circumstances. In this case, the circumstances are 'if anyone tries to make a recipe which is identical to one of mine with different results'. This isn't code signature checking to avoid reverse-engineered versions of his mod. This is 'I want this recipe to be this way, and if anyone else wants a different result, then I'll just crash the user'. This is attacking the *user* for something another mod author did.
That's less a definition, and more an ipse dixit. At the very least, it's not worth being talked up as a novel superweapon from the code writing perspective.
 
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