i just downloaded the mikrotik router for setting up a linux based router. but mikrotik router is a commercial product and requires a serial number.

since i have never cracked a linux app before , so i decided to give it a try.

Since the installation program is very primitive and dd's the image on hard disk. so u cannot create create partition manually.

i have two hard disks,so i installed it one hd and used the explore2fs utility to read the partition from windows xp.

i looked in the rc.d directory to check for startup daemaons.there was a symlink to /nova/bin/login.
so, a quick search for "invalid id", in the folder /nova, listed the following apps:
/nova/bin/login
/nova/bin/key
/nova/bin/unlok
/nova/bin/racoon

so i loaded them into IDA. the program unlok generates the key by using some ioctl calls. it also accese the /nova/etc/serial file. dont know for what.and if the key is correct it stores in /nova/etc/license

so , there are two approaches, either i generate a keygen or either we patch the programs.

so, here i need your help now. some pointer to good linux reversing site will be helpfull.

thanks

This will not help you now, but maybe useful in the future. did you know that if a program uses DD to install itself to a partition as a full operating system, you can mount that file using the mount command by using the loop option ? I use this option for mounting cd images downloaded from the net instead of writing them out. You can then tar the files up, or extract them to a place on your fat32 file system, which makes exploring using a non-linux based os much easier.