How do you determine whether a given exe or dll or sys file is actually a driver?
I mean what differentiates a driver from a normal executable?
The Image of a driver is always marked as IMAGE_SUBSYSTEM_NATIVE (IMAGE_OPTIONAL_HEADER.Subsystem - See the Microsoft Portable Executable specification) while the image of an application is typically marked as IMAGE_SUBSYSTEM_WINDOWS_GUI or IMAGE_SUBSYSTEM_WINDOWS_CUI.
A normal executable runs in user-mode while a driver runs in kernel mode.
A normal executable typically interacts with the desktop while a driver cannot interact with the desktop (has no user interface).
A normal executable interacts with the Windows API while a driver cannot interact with the Windows API.
#mox - this is correct however it means delving in with a debugger/hex editor/other PE header reading tool. Instead you could always look at the file's dependencies (with Dependency Walker) and if the file depends on NTOSKRNL.EXE then is most probably a driver.
Related
I'm working on a project which uses the D2XX drivers from FTDI chip.
We are delivering the ftd2xx.dll file as part of our application. As far as I understand, the other files (e.g. ftdibus.sys) are installed on the system (at least for Windows) where the application runs. Linux is also a target for us, but let's ignore that for simplicity now.
My question is regarding the relation between these files? If, for example, I upgrade the ftd2xx.dll file delivered with our application, will users have to install the newest drivers? What if they do not?
In addition to the specific FTDI drivers, any general source of information on this area is also very welcome.
I used to work on a project that made use of FTDI's D2XX library.
There is no tight coupling between the exact version of ftd2xx.dll and ftdibus.sys. I believe the interface between ftd2xx.dll and the kernel mode driver is version independent at the basic feature level (at least since version 2.04.06 or so). There is even functions in the DLL to query DLL and driver versions respectively.
Thus, it can happen that they are 'out of sync'. I.e. ftd2xx.dll could be one from a more recent release than ftdibys.sys or vice versa. That is not a problem as such.
You are of course in complete control of the ftd2xx.dll version, but how does the driver package get installed? Is it installed as part of your application, or do you rely on the user obtaining the driver from another source? If your application has an installer, it could be an option to include FTDI's driver package in the installation. Thereby you will know which driver version is available.
What can be really tricky (and what has caused me headaches) is if there are other devices on the PC that use FTDI's chip. If such a device is supplied with media containing an older version of the driver and the user chooses to install this driver, it will simply overwrite any existing version of the driver (e.g. the version that your installer provided). This is a potential cause of regression, because FTDI has resolved a lot of bugs in the driver over the years.
If I were you, I would check the driver version at runtime and compare it to a version that is known to work (the version that you tested your application with). If the driver is older, suggest the user to upgrade it. Otherwise I would assume it is compatible.
We have a device that requires we install drivers before it's plugged in, otherwise we need to remove the drivers that Windows 8 and 10 automatically download.
How do we make a USB driver installer that can install correctly whether it's plugged in first or not?
On Windows 10, my simple driver for usbser.sys with just an INF file and a CAT file will automatically take precedence over Microsoft's usbser.inf that they supply in Windows 10. But if that doesn't happen for your particular driver/device, you might look into using DevCon, an open source utility from Microsoft that can be used to list devices and update their drivers. I have never used DevCon in an installer, but I think I have noticed other installers that use it. There is an MSYS2 package for DevCon.
We use DPinst which is a Driver Package installer program that Microsoft supply. It is quite flexible & straightforward to use & can give you a pretty standard wizard UI.
Is there a way I can use selenium without having to install java runtime on my remote machine?(the machine where the browser is)
The machine that automates the process( where the tests run will have java) but the remote machine where the browser is does not have java. is it possible? and if yes how ?
You can try using Launch4j for embedding JRE into your java application package.
Useful links:
1. Launch4J
2. A SO post for how to do it.
3. Another SO answer which describes how to do it on different OSes
Currently I use to create and run scripts using java +eclipse+ junit+ webdriver in windows platform.Now if i shift to Ubuntu platform do i need to make any changes in configuration to run all supported browser.
Thanks
Yes it will work.But you need to check the browser for which scripts are designed.As it may be possible that you need to do code changes for web browser drivers for respective operating system.
Also make sure that all the software's java/eclipse/junit/web driver are configured on the linux machine.
Is Selenium paltform specific. If yes then how can I develop a cross-platform specific application with it by first identifying the platform and then call the platform-specific selenium routines.
The IDE is a firefox plugin, but you can develop tests in multiple languages, which run on and against multiple platforms (including multiple browsers). Not really sure what you're trying to accomplish, but hopefully that helps.
Selenium is platform independent. This is because you run a Selenium RC server (which is a java application and hence can be run on any platform). Then you send selenese commands to the server which controls the testing activity on the browser. To send the selenese commands you can use any language (such as Java, PHP, Ruby etc). Now this again does not limit you in any way to a certain OS.
If you are using the Firefox plugin IDE to run the test cases then of course the platforms supported would be limited to platforms supported by Firefox.
Hope that answers.
I may be misunderstanding your question, but:
With Selenium RC (or Grid, more specifically), you can specify what platform you want your test to run on. Each node registers with the hub under a particular platform, and each test's DesiredCapabilities can request a platform.
As the other answers have stated, Selenium itself is platform independent but you can run your tests on a by-platform by-browser basis. Either way, the tests (in theory) should look the same and use the same native Selenium commands.
I am not so familiar with Selenium, but it looks to me that it works almost everywhere where you can install Firefox 2+.
Platforms Supported by Selenium
I'm using Selenium for a project that runs under Windows and Ubuntu. The only platform specific code is for starting the environment where it executes (headless X server under Ubuntu) and starting the Selenium jar file. The rest is all platform independent. I don't know if this will also work as smoothly when you try to use different browsers (I'm using Firefox on both platforms).