[Opensim-dev] Ban listing MAC address 469947894f9e298a7726b4a58ff7bf9f

[Fred Beckhusen]

A lot of people appear to use the same MAC address.   The hash is 
469947894f9e298a7726b4a58ff7bf9f.    This has led to some bizarre 
effects, such as grid owners banning themselves via notecards passed 
around of 'known' griefers.Â

Please don't ban it, as it is the hashed MAC address of the Windows 
Loopback adapter. If you use ban lists for specific avatars, use the 
Disk ID0 instead.

Hundreds to thousands of Windows systems running Opensim servers have to 
use the Microsoft KM-TEST loopback driver when their router does not 
support loopback.  This adapter quite rudely has a constant Mac address 
of "02-00-4C-4F-4F-50" which is 469947894f9e298a7726b4a58ff7bf9f. Â *Â *

The other 'solution' for loopback, the etc/DNS hosts loopback hack, does 
not work as well as it causes issues where grid owners cannot teleport 
home.   Linux users of Opensim may have similar issues with 
etc/hosts.  Linux grid owners may also add a loopback adapter 'lo', or 
'lo0' which is claimed to not have a MAC address, but you may not be 
safe from this bizarre ban bug. Linux MAC's appear as all zeros which 
would have a different hash from the above.

# ifconfig -a
1: lo: <LOOPBACK,UP,LOWER_UP> mtu 65536 qdisc noqueue state UNKNOWN 
group default qlen 1

    link/loopback 00:00:00:00:00:00 brd 00:00:00:00:00:00

If someone more knowledgeable could please check their logs for the 
hashed MAC for Linux Loopback, I would certainly appreciate it.   It 
should not be banned as a general rule, too.  I can add add a ban-ban 
for both to all DreamGrids.   Macs, while rarer, will have a similar 
issue.Â

Fred Beckhusen
fred at outworldz.com

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Fred K. Beckhusen
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