Move README, LICENSE files to the toplevel directory.

[hivex.git] / README

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+hivex - by Richard W.M. Jones, rjones@redhat.com
+Copyright (C) 2009-2010 Red Hat Inc.
+----------------------------------------------------------------------
+
+This is a self-contained library for reading Windows Registry "hive"
+binary files.
+
+Unlike many other tools in this area, it doesn't use the textual .REG
+format for output, because parsing that is as much trouble as parsing
+the original binary format.  Instead it makes the file available
+through a C API, or there is a separate program to export the hive as
+XML.
+
+This library was derived from several sources:
+
+ . NTREG registry reader/writer library by Petter Nordahl-Hagen
+    (LGPL v2.1 licensed library and program)
+ . http://pogostick.net/~pnh/ntpasswd/WinReg.txt
+ . dumphive (a BSD-licensed Pascal program by Markus Stephany)
+ . http://www.sentinelchicken.com/data/TheWindowsNTRegistryFileFormat.pdf
+ . editreg program from Samba - this program was removed in later
+   versions of Samba, so you have to go back in the source repository
+   to find it (GPLv2+)
+ . http://amnesia.gtisc.gatech.edu/~moyix/suzibandit.ltd.uk/MSc/
+ . reverse engineering the format (see hivex/tools/visualizer.ml)
+
+Like NTREG, this library only attempts to read Windows NT registry
+files (ie. not Windows 3.1 or Windows 95/98/ME).  See the link above
+for documentation on the older formats if you wish to read them.
+
+Unlike NTREG, this code is much more careful about handling error
+cases, corrupt and malicious registry files, and endianness.
+
+The license for this library is LGPL v2.1, but not later versions.
+For full details, see the file LICENSE in this directory.