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Using Nu-coder, from a practical perspective


Joined: 03 Feb 2008
Posts: 42
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On the surface it seems like Nu-coder is a fine tool. But let's get down to the real world. Please correct any misconceptions I may have formed. All the below concerns the license generator.

1) Let's say I want to set my scripts to expire in 14 days. It appears I have to continuously regenerate license files for each new day in order to get the full 14 days worth of licensing. It is a pain to have to generate license files each new day. Yes, I suppose I could set up a cron job or a batch file to make it easier to generate new licenses each day. Am I missing something?

2) Nu-coder keeps people from seeing or modifying my code. But unless I use something like the HOST ID protection or specific IP specification, Nu-coder does not stop anyone from transferring my scripts to other people who can then use them, no problem. Am I missing something?

3) Will Nu-coder protected files run properly if PhpExpressXX.YYY is in the same directory as the .php script? Or is it absolutely imperative that PhpExpressXX.YYY be copied into the same directory where all the other PHP extensions are kept? I ask this because of the following in the manual, "Note: If an attempt is made to execute the files encoded with Nu-Coder on the system without PhpExpress installed, the system will search for PhpExpress module in the web folders under Document Root (recursively) and try to load it if found." This above note seems to conflict with this note in the manual - "Copy phpexpress-php-x.x.dll or phpexpress-php-x.x.so into the PHP extensions
directory specified in php.ini file".

4) I am not sure what the following mean. Can you make this a little more clear? Why should I ever think about fooling with the "header"? What is possible changing hte file's headers (I am not sure what the header actually is)?

• Encode the file without the header using --noheader command line option. In this case the server will use the default file handler to serve the encoded script .
• Use custom header (--header command line option) and take control over the handling of this situation.

5) I see I can add a custom header to the license file. What might a custom header look like and what purpose might it serve?

Thank you.
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Joined: 13 Jul 2003
Posts: 8334
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It appears I have to continuously regenerate license files for each new day in order to get the full 14 days worth of licensing. Am I missing something?

Sure! You can create just ONE license which will cover full 14 days. But you can do this only with commercial version of nucoder. Trial won't let you generate any licenses for more than 2 days and it does warn you about this limitation.

Quote:
But unless I use something like the HOST ID protection or specific IP specification, Nu-coder does not stop anyone from transferring my scripts to other people who can then use them, no problem

Sometimes it's sufficient to protect sources only. For example if you have trial version with trial license that will expire in 14days, why not to let people share the files?
If you need to stop people from doing this, locking the license to specific HOST IDs, IPs, MACs, and/or VHOSTs is what you have to use and finally that's what this feature is for.

Quote:
Will Nu-coder protected files run properly if PhpExpressXX.YYY is in the same directory as the .php script? Or is it absolutely imperative that PhpExpressXX.YYY be copied into the same directory where all the other PHP extensions are kept?

It depends on two things:
1) php version. If you have 5.2.5 or higher, you have no options but copy php extension to the extension_dir. This is how php works now.
2) with earlier versions php allows to dl() modules located in the directories other than extension_dir and nucoder 2.0 uses this feature by default. You can stop it from doring this by supplying --nodl or --noheader command line options.


Quote:
Why should I ever think about fooling with the "header"?


header is a little script or just html that will work if phpexpress is not installed in the system.
By default nucoder 2.0 uses header that will find and load phpexpress.
It may make sense not to use headers if you're sure that the system have phpexpress installed, for example if target server is in your corporate intranet.


Quote:
I see I can add a custom header to the license file. What might a custom header look like and what purpose might it serve?

This header is completely ignored by phpexpress and you can have there any text you want.

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Joined: 03 Feb 2008
Posts: 42
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>> Sure! You can create just ONE license which will cover full 14 days.

Is the script smart enough to know the start date if I specify 14 days? I mean if I do the license preparation on June 1 and someone downloads that license on June 10, is the script smart enough to know that 14 days is 14 days from June 10 and not June 1? And if this is so, what is to keep the user from setting his computer date back so the script never runs out of time? Is this situation protected against?

BTW, I have the commercial version.

Thank you.
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Joined: 13 Jul 2003
Posts: 8334
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Is the script smart enough to know the start date if I specify 14 days?

Script? I'm not sure what script you mean.
If you use expiry trigger, license knows both start and end dates.

Quote:
what is to keep the user from setting his computer date back so the script never runs out of time? Is this situation protected against?

Actually it can never be protected against. Right now you can set your machine clock to whatsoever date/time you want. It's your machine and why would anybody or anything protect your machine from your own actions? But if you do this you'll get many problems with other software. So it's not that comfortable to change the time everytime.

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Using Nu-coder, from a practical perspective
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