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Hiding Remote locations on your PC from crooks!


Ausman

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  • MVP 2023

Hi again all,

In setting up a new little computer that I'll talk about soon in another post, I persevered with an issue I could see arising.  Discussed this with Saragani and eventually arrived at this simple solution.

I was worried that if the tablet was ever lost or stolen, the device had all my ethernet links and passwords to remote sites on it, essentially embedded into Visilogic.  Not really a good thing to have all the client's websites and plc access readily available to the crooks!  I wanted a simple way to have that info somewhere else, like the TF card that I could remove as necessary.

I considered installing the entire program onto the card, but this would then lead to lag as it was accessed for everything.  Instead, I eventually found out about Symbolic Links.  Those of you more into puters than me likely know of them already, but they were news to me, even though I've been using puters from when you ran them by burning a stick!  They work like a shortcut that Windows itself uses.

If Visilogic is being correctly run as Admin, it stores all the ethernet settings in C:\Program Files (X86)\Common Files\Unitronics as a file called Eth_Favorites.evb.  What the link does is leave a "redirection" at that location to the location of the "real" Eth_Favorites.evb.

In my learning curve, I found lots of info, with this site being the best explanation:

https://www.howtogeek.com/howto/16226/complete-guide-to-symbolic-links-symlinks-on-windows-or-linux/

and the little program that I found easiest to use and doesn't install is here:

http://www.softpedia.com/get/PORTABLE-SOFTWARE/System/System-Enhancements/Portable-Symbolic-Link-Creator.shtml

We now come to how to use it all, so have a look at the attached screenshot.

It is all pretty self-explanatory.  The Real info is at E:\Unitest\Eth_Favorites.evb whilst the link is in the correct folder.

If you do it correctly, it all works and is totally transparent.  To make sure of full operation, do a test address to ensure that the real .evb is updated correctly.  Using Notepad++ or similar, you should see the test address has been correctly added after you close the program.

cheers,

Aus

UnitrSymlinks.gif

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