pouët.net

I made an .lha of a shrinkled exe of this yesterday. This turned out to be troublesome.

Tests and results

.exe
My email program (Thunderbird) wouldn't let me send it, citing:



Also crashed Gmail hard to the point of shutting down the browser process, and following up with a link to this help page for newborns, which may be of help.

Note that it recommends to share via Google Drive and link it instead, which is a useless idea, because it requires a login to access. Do not do this for any file you want to share.

Of course a false positive (I know this because the .exe was stored, adding only 50b to the length).

7-zipping it (standard solution) made Gmail go from "Virus detected!" to "Blocked for security reasons!", and renaming the .7z extension to something random gives the same blocked result.

Not .exe
And of course scanners are as idiotic as always - by removing the PC style file extension (as I normally do) the Thunderbird/email provider/GMail scanner was immediately happy.

So the cited text is a pure lie. It did not recognize any type of signature, nothing changed except the filename ("extension").

Removing the .exe for Amiga releases fixes new uploads.

Problem
I think some recent scanner libraries are doing the circuit not only for email attachments, but also for upload and download clicks on webpages and in chat applications.

It may also be related to the recent UI issue in fix me beautiful, e.g. .lnx files and .zips with .com in them being reported by Pouet to the visitor as a Broken Link, when they actually work.

But, old releases or new ones by those who are unaware of every silly little waste of computer cycles scanner may result in a very large number of releases that can't be accessed or run.

Solution
Lay ourselves down as a carpet for corporations filled with stupid people writing stupid robots to trod upon humanity, until our spirits are broken, and no Demoscene production can be accessed or run anymore.

Running programs is what computers are for. I would prefer an alternative. Suggestions? :)

Run your own servers, avoid the ghettos.

no it doesn't.

Welcome to the modern PC Windows and Chrome world, where a lot of the time you can't even download an Amiga prod, despite the code being Motorola and not Intel and is totally harmless, but Windows most of the time recognises the code as "malicious" (snicker) and (for the moment) will allow you to download and keep it! And then there's the Windows warnings afterwards, which will remove any files from your storage drive that it doesn't like!

This sort of crap would never have happened in the Windows XP/7 days (the best ever)!

It's not really a solution to have every Demoscener (and potential newcomers) by and set up servers just to be able to download programs. (Maybe I misunderstood you?)

Also, note that .exe is not the only file extension checked by the stupid robots. I look at the list and see ".bat", ".ex" and ".ex_", arms akimbo, NOW our scanner is secure, LMFAO.

It's easily tested with an Incognito tab. But if it was possible until a year ago, then not possible, then fixed now that's another reason to never host files there. Point is they own your file. Pay for hosting.

Perhaps this is what Bifat meant, but I mean that this will not help. Browsers will employ it on download click. (So one workaround right now is to copy the link and paste it in a new tab. But Browser authors may inject the check, as Google's mobile browsers do already.)

I've used Google Drive continuously since at least 2020 for sharing video captures and have a habit of checking them in an incognito tab, so it's always been possible. If you don't know how to use the "share this with anyone with the link" dropdown, then maybe you shouldn't complain about help pages for newborns

that's a dead end, not all lnx files are what you kneejerk assume them to be

Why are people trying to trick the Windows executable loader by naming Amiga files .exe to begin with?

Haven't tested it, but maybe simply zipping the file (as in creating a .zip file) with using the simple 'Deflate' method does the trick? Also putting the file in a folder and zipping the folder also bypasses the scanner demands? :)

Woah...

> and renaming the .7z extension to something random

I usually used the strongest 7z compression and used to rename to TXT, DOC, XLS (or without extension) and it worked. Well, at least some time ago.

> Lay ourselves down as a carpet for corporations filled with stupid people writing stupid
> robots to trod upon humanity, until our spirits are broken, and no Demoscene
> production can be accessed or run anymore.

Hmmm. It is not only about the Demoscene.

The page reads as someone trying to make a scanner telling someone to try to understand what a file is, and write some sort of support article which they have created by not being knowledgeable about what files are, or what constitutes malware. I have already shown it with a simple test. My criticism of their scanner stands.

I had shared a .zip file containing .adf images publicly, and users reported problems downloading it, and when I logged out, I too got the problems. If they "fixed it later" it's another reason to not use a product that sometimes works and sometimes not. I'm sure Google Drive can cope with mobile/non power user needs. This means it's a mainstream product, not a capable one. Lastly, nobody needs to upload an attachment to attach it to an e-mail. It's to create an artificial need for the account/service/app, and obviously blocking safe file attachments pushes that.

My criticism of Google stands. They just want you to hand your files, so they can own them by any definition of the words, and disown you of them at whim or ransom.


Not sure what you mean by this. It may be related to scanners, but it may be as simple as that when the checker last looked, the prod couldn't be downloaded. (The reason why might be complicated.) I obviously looked up the .lnx format and tried to make it not about this problem, but couldn't. This extension and the same problem as mine, i.e. archived ".exe" matched my problem.


It seems not, by my findings. I think that some scripts also throw up at multiple recursions of archive format, as Gmail's page states.

If it wasn't clear, the problem that I see is that downloading files may be "unauthorized" by some script of dubious merit doing the rounds at different time periods, regardless of self-hosting at a reputed company (one with a ticket system).

We create executable files, and we must archive them to distribute them on-line, and to preserve the file flags of the file system they are for (e.g. the executable flag).

If "extensions" in "archives" are banned by scanners without even looking for malware or virus signatures by the incompetent, it means that large volumes of existing releases will be suddenly removed from the web from a particularly inane script appearing.

This is what I'm looking for suggestions towards.

The Amiga file systems actually have file types. They don't just slap on extensions, like 1970s CP/M and the illegal clone MS-DOS. Around 1992 PCs were used for Amiga BBSes, and the PC didn't support the file system from 1985, so file names had to be butchered to 8 characters, and an extension was required.

This is how it started. The executable file is an executable by virtue of its executable flag (similar to protection and archive flags), not by its extension.

The habit of .exe as extension (for Amiga executables) lingered. I don't subscribe to it, but this time I slapped it on lazily to disambiguate a file in a folder. Again, this is not needed, and it's nothing to do with anyone's PC-centric view, but it's how I found out.

lnx->lynx rom file

I never came across an executable with .exe extension back in the A500 days, so I'm not convinced about this explanation. It seems like a more recent trend?

I came to the Amiga straight from Atari DOS, and IT had extensions for filenames, even if they were the 8.3 naming convention of what eventually became MS-DOS.

Then I was on the Atari ST, same naming convention as MS-DOS, which was helpful, if not useful for such short filenames.

Believe me, when I first saw Amiga files in Workbench, I was confused as to what most of them actually were for, it wasn't exactly clear, and the Amiga practice of having an accompanying icon identified by a "(filename).info" file was UGLY beyond belief! I actually APPRECIATED those files that went to the trouble of including an extension of sorts, even if it wasn't needed, ALTHOUGH I hated those countless music modules that put the "mod" extension BEFORE the filename! WHY did they do that??

Photon, I should point out that before MS-DOS, Atari DOS was THE dominant operating system for several years, and so people used that, which they were most comfortable with. Of course, files can have internal identifiers as to what the file is in their headers, but it's also just as practical to have extensions indicating what that file type is OUTSIDE the file itself!

I'll tell you all this right now: I think AmigaDOS is actually WORSE OFF for not including extensions for filename AS STANDARD! I mean, I see a directory of pure Amiga filenames, and I'm guessing as to what file types most of them are! With Atari DOS/MS-DOS, there IS no ambiguity in that regard whatsoever!

the caps lock key on the Amiga sure is sticky

This thread is not about OS vs OS, but about the active blocking of executable file sharing.

My criticism of virus scanners are due to the lack of actual file type in arcane file systems. Therefore they require little notes added to each file name to hint at the type, while the content (as demonstrated by my tests) is ignore, even for security issues such as malware and viruses.

Obviously the false positives COME from this bad design (ask any file system designer), but defending bad choices will not bring about a good file system. There are a billion witnesses to renaming a file and suddenly the OS cannot open it, and the file association mess that is with Windows 11 greater than ever.

That is to say that other file systems suck by their own design, unrelated to the capabilities of Amiga to detect whether the file of a certain type can be opened by its structure. Icon files are not necessary in AmigaDOS. They can be added for a custom nice touch, generated volume-wide by script, or deleted from the entire volume.

I discovered the problem from applying an extension to an Amiga file that didn't need it, and using an archive format that preserves file flags present in all file systems.

I wanted to share the temporary fix, but also to share the hazards of ignorant virus scanner scripts by oblivious coders that does no scanning, but instead enforces blanket corporate policy (from suits in a meeting, as always, even if they're jumpsuits on Zoom).

A single decision from a piece of software 'people' use to download or share executables in archives stands between the entire catalog of Demoscene productions becoming deleted from web history.

And this may affect the Demoscene.

Back in the days, Amiga was better, unless you had an Atari, in which case Atari was better! :)

If you have Windows 10/11 Pro, you can just disable the scanner (Defender) with GPO (you can also disable the awful aggressive windows auto updater here).

I know I know, common folks have Home and cannot use GPO or will not disable Defender.

If you don't like the OS and the behaviour of the software for it, why not try something new?

Might be fun too. Might even learn something cool enough to talk about at demo parties...

Plenty to choose from. NixOS anyone? :)

What are you talking about?

There's a (thorougly debunked) conspiracy theory that QDOS/86-DOS/MS-DOS/PC-DOS is not just a re-implementation of the CP/M APIs, but actually uses stolen code from CP/M-80 (which is ridiculous, because that's written for a different, albeit similar, instruction set) or CP/M-86 (which is equally ridiculous, because it hasn't even been released when DOS was written). It's kinda like the SCO vs. Linux situation, except it happened 20 years earlier.

Interesting.