password retrieval

I did a recent update to the new vassal engine. Of course when I did that I had to remember my old password, which I didn’t. Now what is unusual about my case is that I tried to remember it and thought I knew what it might have been so I went on ahead and entered what evidently was a “new” password, because it doesn’t recognize me in my games with that password.

Now what I’m wondering is since the correct password is evidently stored in games that I’ve played and since I’ve entered (apparently) a new one, can my old password be retrieved through the old games that have that information stored in them? And if so how would I go about retrieving that information. Thanks in advance.

I’m pretty sure that your password is not stored in the game, but only a hash of your password. A hash is a one-way function which is easy to process in one direction but prohibitively hard to process in the other direction - so if your password was ‘cat’ it might be translated into ‘mWk33faLt0si’, and that would be what is stored in the game. If you enter the password ‘cat’ again, it will again be translated into ‘mWk33faLt0si’, and this is what is compared against the save game when you try to log in - but you would be hard-pressed to come up with ‘cat’ from ‘mWk33faLt0si’.

Thus spake dbane:

I did a recent update to the new vassal engine.

From which version to which version? On what OS?


J.

I updated from 3.1.18 to the latest 3.1.19 engine.

I have:
Windows XP Pro
AMD sempron 3300+
2.0 Gig.

Thus spake dbane:

I updated from 3.1.18 to the latest 3.1.19 engine.

Are you able to access your saved games from 3.1.18 if you reinstall it?


J.

I haven’t tried, looked for it, but… Almost embarrassed to admit it, but I can’t find the older version to download. Am more than willing to try it. Just point me in the right direction.

I found the download files… And downloaded it. Tried it and it worked. Thanks much. Now I have the added problem if I ever want to download a newer version of the engine, I still wont know what that password is. Any ideas there? If not, I’m satisfied with the results as they are and appreciate your help and thank you for it.

Thus spake dbane:

I haven’t tried, looked for it, but… Almost embarrassed to admit it,
but I can’t find the older version to download. Am more than willing to
try it. Just point me in the right direction.

sourceforge.net/projects/vassal … AL-3.1.18/

The reason I’d like you to try this is that where we store preferences
data on Windows changed with 3.1.19, and this will tell us whether the
problem is your preferences data not being migrated to the new location.


J.

Yup it works, as I indicated in the post above. Changed it back to 3.1.18 and its running just fine. Evidently it didn’t migrate to the new version. If it had of, that would have solved the problem without a murmur. Happy it worked! Thanks! Now if I can just figure out what that password was?

Thus spake dbane:

Yup it works, as I indicated in the post above. Changed it back to
3.1.18 and its running just fine. Evidently it didn’t migrate to the
new version. If it had of, that would have solved the problem without a
murmur. Happy it worked! Thanks! Now if I can just figure out what
that password was?

  1. Delete the configuration directory from 3.1.19. This directory is
    %APPDATA%\VASSAL. To find out what %APPDATA% is, run “echo %APPDATA%”
    from the terminal you get by running cmd.exe. (You might also be able
    to simply type %APPDATA%\VASSAL somewhere into the Windows file
    manager, but I’m not running Windows myself so can’t check this at
    the moment.)

  2. Install this development build:

vassalengine.org/~uckelman/b … indows.exe

  1. Let us know whether this version finds your preferences.


J.

Yes of course you can! This is Windows we’re talking about, not some barbaric throwback operating system.