NAME¶
hivexsh - Windows Registry hive shell
SYNOPSIS¶
hivexsh [-options] [hivefile]
DESCRIPTION¶
This program provides a simple shell for navigating Windows Registry 'hive'
files. It uses the hivex library for access to these binary files.
Firstly you will need to provide a hive file from a Windows operating system.
The hive files are usually located in "C:\Windows\System32\Config"
and have names like "software", "system" etc (without any
file extension). For more information about hive files, read
hivex(3).
For information about downloading files from virtual machines, read
virt-cat(1) and
guestfish(1).
You can provide the name of the hive file to examine on the command line. For
example:
hivexsh software
Or you can start "hivexsh" without any arguments, and immediately use
the "load" command to load a hive:
$ hivexsh
Welcome to hivexsh, the hivex interactive shell for examining
Windows Registry binary hive files.
Type: 'help' for help with commands
'quit' to quit the shell
> load software
software\>
Navigate through the hive's keys using the "cd" command, as if it
contained a filesystem, and use "ls" to list the subkeys of the
current key. Other commands are listed below.
OPTIONS¶
- -d
- Enable lots of debug messages. If you find a Registry file
that this program cannot parse, please enable this option and post the
complete output and the Registry hive file in your bug report.
- -f filename
- Read commands from "filename" instead of stdin.
To write a hivexsh script, use:
#!/usr/bin/hivexsh -f
- -w
- If this option is given, then writes are allowed to the
hive (see "commit" command below, and the discussion of
modifying hives in "WRITING TO HIVE FILES" in hivex(3)).
Important Note: Even if you specify this option, nothing is written
to a hive unless you call the "commit" command. If you exit the
shell without committing, all changes will be discarded.
If this option is not given, then write commands are disabled.
COMMANDS¶
- add name
- Add a subkey named "name" below the current node.
The name may contain spaces and punctuation characters, and does not need
to be quoted.
The new key will have no subkeys and no values (see "setval").
There must be no existing subkey called "name", or this command
will fail. To replace an existing subkey, delete it first like this:
cd name
del
- cd path
- Change to the subkey "path". Use Windows-style
backslashes to separate path elements, and start with a backslash in order
to start from the root of the hive. For example:
cd \Classes\*
moves from the root node, to the "Classes" node, to the
"*" node. If you were already at the root node, you could do
this instead:
cd Classes\*
or even:
cd Classes
cd *
Path elements (node names) are matched case insensitively, and characters
like space, "*", and "?" have no special
significance.
"cd .." may be used to go to the parent directory.
"cd" without any arguments prints the current path.
Be careful with "cd \" since the readline library has an
undocumented behaviour where it will think the final backslash is a
continuation (it reads the next line of input and appends it). Put a
single space after the backslash.
- close | unload
- Close the currently loaded hive.
If you modified the hive, all uncommitted writes are lost when you call this
command (or if the shell exits). You have to call "commit" to
write changes.
- commit [newfile]
- Commit changes to the hive. If the optional
"newfile" parameter is supplied, then the hive is written to
that file, else the original file is overwritten.
Note that you have to specify the "-w" flag, otherwise no writes
are allowed.
- del
- Delete the current node and everything beneath it. The
current directory is moved up one level (as if you did "cd ..")
after this command.
You cannot delete the root node.
- exit | quit
- Exit the shell.
- load hivefile
- Load the binary hive named "hivefile". The
currently loaded hive, if any, is closed. The current directory is changed
back to the root node.
- ls
- List the subkeys of the current hive Registry key. Note
this command does not take any arguments.
- lsval [key]
- List the (key, value) pairs of the current hive Registry
key. If no argument is given then all pairs are displayed. If
"key" is given, then the value of the named key is displayed. If
"@" is given, then the value of the default key is
displayed.
- setval nrvals
- This command replaces all (key, value) pairs at the current
node with the values in subsequent input. "nrvals" is the number
of values (ie. (key, value) pairs), and any existing values at this node
are deleted. So "setval 0" just deletes any values at the
current node.
The command reads 2 * nrvals lines of input, with each pair of lines of
input corresponding to a key and a value to add.
For example, the following setval command replaces whatever is at the
current node with two (key, value) pairs. The default key is set to the
UTF16-LE-encoded string "abcd". The other value is named
"ANumber" and is a little-endian DWORD 0x12345678.
setval 2
@
string:abcd
ANumber
dword:12345678
The first line of each pair is the key (the special key "@" means
the default key, but you can also use a blank line).
The second line of each pair is the value, which has a special format
"type:value" with possible types summarized in the table below:
none No data is stored, and the type is set to 0.
string:abc "abc" is stored as a UTF16-LE-encoded
string (type 1). Note that only 7 bit
ASCII strings are supported as input.
expandstring:... Same as string but with type 2.
dword:0x01234567 A DWORD (type 4) with the hex value
0x01234567. You can also use decimal
or octal numbers here.
qword:0x0123456789abcdef
A QWORD (type 11) with the hex value
0x0123456789abcdef. You can also use
decimal or octal numbers here.
hex:<type>:<hexbytes>
hex:1:41,00,42,00,43,00,44,00,00,00
This is the generic way to enter any
value. <type> is the integer value type.
<hexbytes> is a list of pairs of hex
digits which are treated as bytes.
(Any non-hex-digits here are ignored,
so you can separate bytes with commas
or spaces if you want).
EXAMPLE¶
$ guestfish --ro -i Windows7
><fs> download win:c:\windows\system32\config\software software
><fs> quit
$ hivexsh software
Welcome to hivexsh, the hivex interactive shell for examining
Windows Registry binary hive files.
Type: 'help' for help with commands
'quit' to quit the shell
software\> ls
ATI Technologies
Classes
Clients
Intel
Microsoft
ODBC
Policies
RegisteredApplications
Sonic
Wow6432Node
software\> quit
SEE ALSO¶
hivex(3),
hivexget(1),
hivexml(1),
virt-win-reg(1),
guestfs(3), <
http://libguestfs.org/>,
virt-cat(1),
virt-edit(1).
AUTHORS¶
Richard W.M. Jones ("rjones at redhat dot com")
COPYRIGHT¶
Copyright (C) 2009-2010 Red Hat Inc.
This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under
the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the Free Software
Foundation; either version 2 of the License, or (at your option) any later
version.
This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT ANY
WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR
A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU General Public License for more details.
You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License along with
this program; if not, write to the Free Software Foundation, Inc., 51 Franklin
Street, Fifth Floor, Boston, MA 02110-1301 USA.