Authorization fails on Linux after kernel 4.5, rgsmbiosreader error

[mostlyharmless]

Lately I noticed that both older versions of RGS Receiver eg 7.2.3, as well as newer eg 7.3.2 no longer can authenticate advanced features for Linux kernels 4.5 and over.  I've only managed to narrow it down between a change in kernel 4.5.0rc1 and 4.5.0, but, sadly I don't have the source or patches around this release in order to bisect it further.  

The failiure occurs because the HP binary rgsmbiosreader fails to run under the newer kernels.  The error is

Exception Caught. Failed to initialize WSTL. Are you running with administrator privlidges? Error mapping memory! Address: ac3fb000 size: 4096

Note that the binary has to be run as root to get this message.  Not running as root gets the usual error of "Must be administrator/root to run"  This is NOT a permissions error.  Running the binary, as root, under kernels <4.5 provides the system uuid.  Apparently the system ID is placed in the file opt/hpremote/registration/H264. 

There is a workaround.  Executing the following code

sudo dmidecode -t 1 | grep UUID | tr A-z a-z | tr -d - | cut -c8-80 > opt/hpremote/registration/H264

duplicates the output of "#rgsmbiosreader -u""  Then one can replace the binary rgsmbiosreader with a simple script that simply echoes this file, ie

#!/bin/sh
cat /opt/hpremote/registration/H264

Name the script rgsmbiosreader (you can save the original binary under some other name) and make it executable with chmod +x rgsmbiosreader

Now authenticating works again.  Needless to say, it'd be nice to have HP fix their binary, or better yet, use dmidecode to get the system uuid if they want instead of their (broken) binary.

[KellyRGS]

Thank you for the information.  I have copied your question and looking into this.  What version of Linux are you using, and what kernel?

I work on the behalf of HP.

[mostlyharmless]

Client side, I'm using Arch, but have duplicated this issue with Ubuntu and a few others. As I mentioned, the change occurred during the kernel 4.5.0 development, and should be distro independent. Arch is rolling release, and is currently on kernel 4.9 or 4.10. The server is Windows 7.

The same problem occurs in a virtual machine under KVM with any Linux version I've tested.

[KellyRGS]

Thank you for the additional information.  Will look into this.

I work on the behalf of HP.