Due to some constraints, at Ticketsolve we sometimes need to work with an ancient file format: the Paradox Database.
This file format was in use between the 80s and 90s. In order to perform some operations on Paradox databases, nowadays, there are libraries based on the file format reverse engineering work by individual open source programmers, or ad hoc commercial programs.
Additionally, one can use Paradox 7, the reference commercial software originally published in 1992, now abandoned.
This software works good enough in Wine, however, the installer generally raises an error on installation, complaining that there isn’t enough disk space.
In this post we’ll use Radare2, one of the most powerful open source reverse engineering frameworks, in order to statically analyze and patch the installation binary, so that the pesky error is not triggered anymore.
There are no requirements for the reader; knowing x86/32 assembler and the PE executable format will improve the understanding, but it’s not a requirement by any means.
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