www.makemkv.com

I was finally able to get thru my Bitdefender. I had to disable all "protection", reboot the computer, then use makemkv , then turn the stuff back on. I was unable to create the appropriate exception in the software.

Hope this info helps someone else like me who was stuck!

As a simple suggestion, the problem with most protective DNS systems is they latch on to the main domain. It's logical, of course, but a pain in the ass if you have to hide your IP.

You can add to (or create) the hosts file on your computer any host name you don't want to be subject to such security checks. This bypasses MOST DNS-based restrictions. "MOST" because some systems don't do all this, specifically for security reasons, but most consumer systems will.

As of today (2023-10-14) the line you need in your hosts file is:
When your system asks for either of those domains, it will get back "185.84.108.20", without doing any other lookup.

In Linux, this file is found as /etc/hosts. Windows likes to hide it as a system-owned file, %windir%\System32\drivers\etc\hosts (my system sets %windir% equal to "C:\Windows"). so you'll be having to get permission to open/edit it. Not having an extension will be an issue for some editors. I can't tell you where MacOS puts it, but it is probably similarly named, ending with "/etc/hosts".

If you're paranoid or really, really safety conscious, you can comment out the line when you don't think you'll need it. Simply putting a semicolon (;) on the front says "don't read this line", and your system will fall back to doing a DNS lookup and getting security warnings. MakeMKV will, of course, fail it's open of the file, but if you're not having an issue with a really new movie, that isn't an issue, is it?

Copy and pasted as is, (into proxy server, under the generals tab) didn’t work for me.

kfreeb wrote: ↑

Sun Oct 22, 2023 3:50 pm

Copy and pasted as is, (into proxy server) didn’t work for me.

Where were you instructed to do that? I see:

Woodstock wrote: ↑

Sat Oct 14, 2023 3:06 pm

You can add to (or create) the hosts file on your computer any host name you don't want to be subject to such security checks. This bypasses MOST DNS-based restrictions. "MOST" because some systems don't do all this, specifically for security reasons, but most consumer systems will.

As of today (2023-10-14) the line you need in your hosts file is:

Code: Select all

185.84.108.20 hkdata.crabdance.com hkdata.fairuse.org

When your system asks for either of those domains, it will get back "185.84.108.20", without doing any other lookup.

In Linux, this file is found as /etc/hosts. Windows likes to hide it as a system-owned file, %windir%\System32\drivers\etc\hosts (my system sets %windir% equal to "C:\Windows"). so you'll be having to get permission to open/edit it. Not having an extension will be an issue for some editors. I can't tell you where MacOS puts it, but it is probably similarly named, ending with "/etc/hosts".

For MacOS 'hosts' file location, try:

https://www.hostinger.com/tutorials/how ... file-macos

Well finally fixed my problem with MakeMKV. In the security software I use, “Armor” through Netgear, the iPhone app has an area for reporting threats and allows you to turn off Armors blocking of any site it reports as blocked. I use this area but to no avail, then after digging through the other areas of the security software, there was and area that looked at each device on the network and only the sites that, that device was blocked from and low an behold, it had it’s own ability to unblock a site, only the blocked sites reported for single device. When I check if the site that I unblocked in the main reporting area was unblocked for this device, it wasn’t, so I unblocked it for just that device and wala, it now allows MakeMKV to download.
When I checked the main security area, it had added two entries for that site, the first one apparently had been assigned to my server for Plex, and only that device, not be universally applied to all devices. The second one that is now showing after unblocking it for a specific device, is now assigned to my work computer that was having the issue.
Apparently more security software updates are now adding sites like crabdance to malware problematic websites that it tracks.
All’s well in the world now.

https://kb.netgear.com/000061425/How-do ... abase-work

It looks like Netgear Armor uses Bitdefender as a datasource.

For those using Bitdefender's Total Security suite, here's a quick and easy solution. Please note that this will temporarily reduce your system's protection from web attacks, so you may want to close any browsers and/or actively connected chat services while doing this.

1. First, close MakeMKV. We will launch it again momentarily.
2. Next, open Bitdefender and click on the "Protection" shield icon. This will open up the "Protection Feature" section.
3. Click on the "Settings" link on the "Online Threat Prevention" section. This is the service that is actively blocking the connection.
4. Once you see the settings for the "Online Threat Prevention" feature, disable ALL of the switches. (NOTE: You may not actually need to disable all of the switches, but turning them all off will guarantee that Bitdefender is no longer interfering with MakeMKV's ability to access the update URL. So if you're still having issues...it's something else on your end.)
5. Now, open MakeMKV and insert a disc and attempt to open it. This should force MakeMKV to connect to download the latest updates. If not, try using a newer disc that was purchased within the last few weeks. This should work without any issue.
6. Finally, after you've installed the update, go back into Bitdefender and reactivate your security settings to keep your system safe from the stuff that's ACTUALLY bad for your system.

Hope this helps. Cheers!
-Ravik-

For Mullvad VPN users, Mullvad seems causing the application to not download updates despite allowing the site. I'm guessing one of the blockers they recently added thinks its bad.
To avoid issues, I recommend turning off the VPN before ripping a disc and turning it on after.

I think I'm having issues with HKdata. i've added the txt to my etc/hosts file but still no joy.

Is there anyway to check within Makemkv or looking throught file explorer to see any clues wether HKdata is updating/working? I get no information for HKdata in the log.

You can verify if the file is being downloaded by renaming _private_data.tar in your MakeMKV data directory to something else, say "_private_data.rat". MakeMKV will try to replace it It will start at about 1900KB, but grow to a larger size as it pulls in the data from internet.

If it DOESN'T increase in size, it's not making the connection.

Woodstock wrote: ↑

Tue Dec 19, 2023 2:05 pm

You can verify if the file is being downloaded by renaming _private_data.tar in your MakeMKV data directory to something else, say "_private_data.rat". MakeMKV will try to replace it It will start at about 1900KB, but grow to a larger size as it pulls in the data from internet.

If it DOESN'T increase in size, it's not making the connection.

Thanks bud you're a gentleman and a scholar. I got it working now by tethering with my mobile network and bypassing my home network.

cheers

Stumbled across this problem today when trying to rip Oppenheimer UHD.

My DNS resolver returns the IP mentioned above and I can wget/curl from both sites - altough crabdance's TLS cert is expired.
Is there a way to force makemkv to user one or another (or a custom) site to fetch keys?

I can download http://hkdata.fairuse.org/svq/sdf.dat.gz but I dont know how to recreate _private_data.tar from this.
Is there a way to provide the keys manually to makemkv?

I personally wish i never purchased this software, all of this business about keys for each rip and the fact that the sites are blocked and in Russia. This is unbelievable if I can get a refund please let me know. I have not ripped a single movie with this everything fails! I have had this less than 30 days.

We are talking about this here viewtopic.php?f=1&t=23840&start=30. Just trying to point everyone to the same place so there are not multiple topics.