.\" Copyright (c) 2014-2017 Jody Bruchon
.\" Licensed under the GNU General Public License v2
.\"
.TH winregfs 8 "10 Mar 2017" "mount.winregfs"
.SH NAME
winregfs \- Windows registry FUSE filesystem
.SH SYNOPSIS
.B mount.winregfs
\fB[\fIfuse_options\fP\fB[,...]]\fR
.I hivefile mountpoint
.SH DESCRIPTION
\fBwinregfs\fR is a FUSE-based filesystem driver that enables accessing of 
Windows registry hive files as ordinary filesystems. Registry hive file 
editing can be performed with ordinary shell scripts and command-line tools 
once mounted.

Registry values are shown as files with a file extension corresponding to
the data type of the value. These are generally named after the REG_* types
seen in the Windows registry editor. For example, \fBdw\fP is a DWORD,
\fBsz\fP is a string, \fBesz\fP is an expanding string, \fBbin\fP is a raw
binary value, and \fBmsz\fP is a multi-line string. Types different from
the "standard" types may appear in rare instances.

Because registry keys and values can have forward slashes in their names,
there is a special word \fB_SLASH_\fP that is used in place of any real
slashes and is converted back-and-forth automatically.

Opening a value's name without the extension is supported, but you should
always use the extension if possible to avoid ambiguity issues.
.SH KNOWN ISSUES
\fBwinregfs\fP does not currently support writing value data greater than 
8,192 bytes (8 KiB) in size. If such a write occurs, the data will be 
truncated and an error will be returned. Unicode data is not currently 
supported, partly due to a lack of support in the ntreg library.

Incorrect or unrecognized structures in a registry file may cause this
program to crash. It is not recommended for use on important data and
while most operations generally work as expected, you use it at your own
risk. Please report any bugs you encounter.

\fBwinregfs\fP loads the entire hive file into one large chunk of memory.
This is a side effect of adopting the low-level registry library from the
program \fBchntpw\fP. There is a silent delay as the hive is loaded and
if the file is large enough there is a chance of failure due to being
unable to allocate enough contiguous memory. Changing this behavior is a
very difficult task due to how the ntreg library works with the data.
.SH SEE ALSO
.BR fusermount (8), 
.BR fsck.winregfs (8)