Anyone familiar with a program called "dbase iv"

[Red Squirrel]

This appears to be a program used for bloodbanks. A user is trying to access it but it's prompting for a password. Nobody knows what it is. aparantly it used to just let them through without any password. Anyone know how I could recover this? it is stored on a network drive, what is weird is it works for me, but not for the user who needs it (ain't it always this way :/ ).

Besides trying to brute force it, I need a way to crack this. I'm not trying to break into anything, this is actually for work. Nothing is documented around here, it's brutal. This is a password that should have been put down somewhere safe.

 

[MrChad]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DBase

It's an older DBMS.

 

[bruceb]

If you can get into the database, see if your credentials are an Admin .. If so, you should be able to Change the password. Unless you need to know what it is before it will let you change it. What about copying the data over to a new DB4 file and saving it without needing a password ? ?? Or exporting the DB4 file to another program like Access or Excel and using that from now on ? ?

 

[EagleKeeper]

The DB files can be dumped without any problems - it sounds like there is some DBase code for the overall application (similar to Access) that is driving user input/verification and reporting

 

[Red Squirrel]

Originally posted by: bruceb
If you can get into the database, see if your credentials are an Admin .. If so, you should be able to Change the password. Unless you need to know what it is before it will let you change it. What about copying the data over to a new DB4 file and saving it without needing a password ? ?? Or exporting the DB4 file to another program like Access or Excel and using that from now on ? ?

Hmm how would that be done? There are about 100 files in this folder, is there a way to convert to access? That would truely rock. They probably wont like it because it "wont be like it was, and it worked before!" but too bad. Time to upgrade.

 

[EagleKeeper]

Access can import the .dbf files directly.

You may have to do each file on its own orwrite a small script to do so.

 

[WildHorse]

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[Nothinman]

Anyway, for a modern rdbms see MySQL.

For varying degrees of modern. MySQL works in a lot of places but I don't think it's fully ACID compliant yet, although I could be wrong. Generally PostgreSQL is consider a much better free option.

 

[Red Squirrel]

Actually I opened some of the files in notepad and it's clear text! Anyway to just blank out the password for the system and stick to this old system? That will be the easiest for the user. I did manage to convert some to access but the program is a demo and only will do 50 rows so I need to find an app that is free.

 

[corkyg]

dBase IV is a DOS program, and the password used to be kept in the CONFIG.INC file in plain text.

 

[Red Squirrel]

Thanks, I'll check for that file when I get back to work. Hopefully it's the case.