ASTRIBANK_ALLOW(8)

💖 ASTRIBANK_ALLOW — the manual page, but make it a group chat 💖

okay bestie, pull up a chair, we're reading ASTRIBANK_ALLOW(8) together and honestly? it's giving ✨device licensing✨ and it's more fun than it sounds. lowkey iconic. let's go 🫶

✨ NAME ✨

astribank_allow — the girl whose whole job is licensing Xorcom Astribank (xpp) capabilities. that's it. that's the name. 💅

🌸 SYNOPSIS 🌸

here's how you slide into her DMs:

astribank_allow -D device-path [ options ]

and if you just wanna see the menu:

astribank_allow [-h]

🦋 DESCRIPTION 🦋

so. modern Astribanks (the ones with USB product id's 116x) come with capabilities that may be licensed. yes bestie, some of them are locked behind a license, that's the vibe. 🔐

astribank_allow is the tool you use to upload/download the licensing information to/from the device. bidirectional communication, we love to see it 💖

Uploading a valid license file to an Astribank changes its capabilities. periodt. but here's the tea ☕ — the change only becomes effective after a firmware reset, either by:

• powering the device off and on again, or
• using the astribank_tool full reset option.

so don't come crying to me if you uploaded the license and nothing happened yet, you gotta reset her first 😭

Downloading the license from the device produces a valid license file for its current capabilities. this is so clutch because you can back it up, and then later restore the device to its previous capabilities. archival queen behavior 👑

and what's in a license file, you ask? two things:

1. a human readable description of the device capabilities for the end user, and
2. a hash of the licensing information used by Xorcom to generate/modify licensed capabilities.

(the hash is the secret sauce, we don't touch it, we don't question it 🧚)

💅 OPTIONS 💅

one bullet per option, no skipping, we read every single one like the good students we are:

• -D device-path — Required, bestie, do not forget this one. this is the device to read from/write to. it's bus_num/device_num, where bus_num and device_num are the first two numbers in the output of lsusb(8) or dahdi_hardware(8). heads up: on older versions of this tool you needed a complete path to the device, which would be /dev/bus/usb/bus_num/device_num, or /proc/bus/usb/bus_num/device_num. glow-up behavior honestly.
• -w — write capabilities to EEPROM. if you don't pass this, you read capabilities instead. write vs read, choose your fighter 🥊
• -f filename — license filename. and if you don't specify one? it uses stdin/stdout. casual. lowkey convenient.
• -m num — choose the numeric code of license markers to generate. this code selects the type of BEGIN.../END... strings that delimit the license body. valid marker codes are listed with the -h option, so go look if you're curious 👀. the default (and first) code is 1. and zero is an illegal value — do not try it, it's not that girl 💀
• -v — increase verbosity. may be used multiple times, so you can just keep stacking them if you want maximum yapping 📢
• -d mask — set debug mask to mask. default is 0, and 0xFF is "everything". yes, capital-E Everything, the whole buffet 🍓
• -h — displays usage message. the classic. the comfort option. the "help me bestie" button 🆘

🔥 SEE ALSO 🔥

go read these too, they're all in the same friend group:

fxload(8), lsusb(8), astribank_hexload(8), astribank_tool(8)

👑 AUTHOR 👑

Alex Landau — the original author, the blueprint, we stan 🌈

and that's the whole page, no notes. this manual page is dated 29 March 2009 and it's filed under ASTRIBANK_ALLOW(8) — yeah, the same name as the top, that's just how manpages do, it's their thing 💜. love that for her. mwah, bye bestie! 🎀✨