How To Install hivex on CentOS 8

hivex is Read and write Windows Registry binary hive files

Introduction

In this tutorial we learn how to install hivex on CentOS 8.

What is `hivex`

Hive files are the undocumented binary files that Windows uses to store the Windows Registry on disk. Hivex is a library that can read and write to these files. ‘hivexsh’ is a shell you can use to interactively navigate a hive binary file. ‘hivexregedit’ (in perl-hivex) lets you export and merge to the textual regedit format. ‘hivexml’ can be used to convert a hive file to a more useful XML format. In order to get access to the hive files themselves, you can copy them from a Windows machine. They are usually found in %systemroot%\system32\config. For virtual machines we recommend using libguestfs or guestfish to copy out these files. libguestfs also provides a useful high-level tool called ‘virt-win-reg’ (based on hivex technology) which can be used to query specific registry keys in an existing Windows VM. For OCaml bindings, see ‘ocaml-hivex-devel’. For Perl bindings, see ‘perl-hivex’. For Python 3 bindings, see ‘python3-hivex’. For Ruby bindings, see ‘ruby-hivex’.

We can use yum or dnf to install hivex on CentOS 8. In this tutorial we discuss both methods but you only need to choose one of method to install hivex.

Install hivex on CentOS 8 Using dnf

Update yum database with dnf using the following command.

sudo dnf makecache --refresh

The output should look something like this:

CentOS Linux 8 - AppStream                                       43 kB/s | 4.3 kB     00:00    
CentOS Linux 8 - BaseOS                                          65 kB/s | 3.9 kB     00:00    
CentOS Linux 8 - ContinuousRelease                               43 kB/s | 3.0 kB     00:00    
CentOS Linux 8 - Extras                                          23 kB/s | 1.5 kB     00:00    
CentOS Linux 8 - FastTrack                                       40 kB/s | 3.0 kB     00:00    
CentOS Linux 8 - HighAvailability                                36 kB/s | 3.9 kB     00:00    
CentOS Linux 8 - Plus                                            24 kB/s | 1.5 kB     00:00    
CentOS Linux 8 - PowerTools                                      50 kB/s | 4.3 kB     00:00    
Extra Packages for Enterprise Linux Modular 8 - x86_64           13 kB/s | 9.2 kB     00:00    
Extra Packages for Enterprise Linux 8 - x86_64                   24 kB/s | 8.5 kB     00:00    
Metadata cache created.

After updating yum database, We can install hivex using dnf by running the following command:

sudo dnf -y install hivex

Install hivex on CentOS 8 Using yum

Update yum database with yum using the following command.

sudo yum makecache --refresh

The output should look something like this:

CentOS Linux 8 - AppStream                                       43 kB/s | 4.3 kB     00:00    
CentOS Linux 8 - BaseOS                                          65 kB/s | 3.9 kB     00:00    
CentOS Linux 8 - ContinuousRelease                               43 kB/s | 3.0 kB     00:00    
CentOS Linux 8 - Extras                                          23 kB/s | 1.5 kB     00:00    
CentOS Linux 8 - FastTrack                                       40 kB/s | 3.0 kB     00:00    
CentOS Linux 8 - HighAvailability                                36 kB/s | 3.9 kB     00:00    
CentOS Linux 8 - Plus                                            24 kB/s | 1.5 kB     00:00    
CentOS Linux 8 - PowerTools                                      50 kB/s | 4.3 kB     00:00    
Extra Packages for Enterprise Linux Modular 8 - x86_64           13 kB/s | 9.2 kB     00:00    
Extra Packages for Enterprise Linux 8 - x86_64                   24 kB/s | 8.5 kB     00:00    
Metadata cache created.

After updating yum database, We can install hivex using yum by running the following command:

sudo yum -y install hivex

How To Uninstall hivex on CentOS 8

To uninstall only the hivex package we can use the following command:

sudo dnf remove hivex

hivex Package Contents on CentOS 8

/usr/bin/hivexget
/usr/bin/hivexml
/usr/bin/hivexsh
/usr/lib/.build-id
/usr/lib/.build-id/12
/usr/lib/.build-id/12/4323a68d49eba4ca8d48f59be98823dd66b662
/usr/lib/.build-id/3b
/usr/lib/.build-id/3b/e4bca623e017fc8db50ff402f462c0a9a60aed
/usr/lib/.build-id/c6
/usr/lib/.build-id/c6/481cbaeaecad2564a76f3fcd5276157d45a106
/usr/lib64/libhivex.so.0
/usr/lib64/libhivex.so.0.0.0
/usr/share/doc/hivex
/usr/share/doc/hivex/LICENSE
/usr/share/doc/hivex/README
/usr/share/locale/ca/LC_MESSAGES/hivex.mo
/usr/share/locale/de/LC_MESSAGES/hivex.mo
/usr/share/locale/es/LC_MESSAGES/hivex.mo
/usr/share/locale/eu/LC_MESSAGES/hivex.mo
/usr/share/locale/fr/LC_MESSAGES/hivex.mo
/usr/share/locale/gu/LC_MESSAGES/hivex.mo
/usr/share/locale/hi/LC_MESSAGES/hivex.mo
/usr/share/locale/hu/LC_MESSAGES/hivex.mo
/usr/share/locale/ja/LC_MESSAGES/hivex.mo
/usr/share/locale/kn/LC_MESSAGES/hivex.mo
/usr/share/locale/ml/LC_MESSAGES/hivex.mo
/usr/share/locale/mr/LC_MESSAGES/hivex.mo
/usr/share/locale/nl/LC_MESSAGES/hivex.mo
/usr/share/locale/or/LC_MESSAGES/hivex.mo
/usr/share/locale/pl/LC_MESSAGES/hivex.mo
/usr/share/locale/pt/LC_MESSAGES/hivex.mo
/usr/share/locale/pt_BR/LC_MESSAGES/hivex.mo
/usr/share/locale/ru/LC_MESSAGES/hivex.mo
/usr/share/locale/sr/LC_MESSAGES/hivex.mo
/usr/share/locale/uk/LC_MESSAGES/hivex.mo
/usr/share/locale/zh_CN/LC_MESSAGES/hivex.mo
/usr/share/man/man1/hivexget.1.gz
/usr/share/man/man1/hivexml.1.gz
/usr/share/man/man1/hivexsh.1.gz

References

hivex website

Summary

In this tutorial we learn how to install hivex on CentOS 8 using yum and dnf.