GNU Linux/Useful Commands
File Conversion
Batch Convert Man Pages into HTML files
Requires the mandoc program to be installed.
mkdir html && for x in .; do mandoc -Thtml -O man=./html/%N.%S.html,toc $x > html/$x.html; done
Virtual Machines
I've found this to be more useful than guestmount (provided by the libguestfs-tools package for Ubuntu), because it does not require superuser privileges to execute, and is easy to unmount afterwards. Based on the answer provided on Super User: https://superuser.com/a/1548983.
mkdir -p ~/tmp/windows10-vm
nbdfuse ~/tmp/windows10-vm [ qemu-nbd path_to_disk_image ] &
fusermount -u ~/tmp/windows10-vm
An alternative is to let QEMU mount the virtual machine disk image with the NBD driver. Enable the nbd kernel module, mount the image, and then mount the partition with flags to make it accessible to other users without superuser privileges.
With fdisk, you can identify the device file pertaining to the partition you want to mount (I've used /dev/nbd0p1 for example). The dmask and fmask, are for the octal permission bits of directories and files.
Don't forget to run umount when finished.
modprobe nbd qemu-nbd --connect=/dev/nbd0 <path to VM disk image> fdisk -l /dev/nbd0 mount /dev/nbd0p1 /mnt/vhd1 -o dmask=000,fmask=000 umount /mnt/vhd1
NVIDIA
To workaround a bug where the frame rate drops for Mutter and other applications, when they are viewed on an external monitor, boost the memory clock speed with this command below. The two values after lmc are the minimum and maximum memory clock speeds in MHz.
sudo nvidia-smi -lmc 2000,6000
Making Changes to Windows Registry Hive Files
NB: It is recommended that you should make backup copies of any hive files you intend to edit, and store them on a separate partition.
The Windows registry consists of keys and values, belonging to hives. These hives are stored under C:\Windows\system32\config
According to Microsoft's official documentation (https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/win32/sysinfo/registry-hives), these are the root keys and the hive file names which they correspond to:
| Registry hive | Supporting files |
|---|---|
| HKEY_CURRENT_CONFIG | System, System.alt, System.log, System.sav |
| HKEY_CURRENT_USER | Ntuser.dat, Ntuser.dat.log |
| HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SAM | Sam, Sam.log, Sam.sav |
| HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Security | Security, Security.log, Security.sav |
| HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software | Software, Software.log, Software.sav |
| HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System | System, System.alt, System.log, System.sav |
| HKEY_USERS\.DEFAULT | Default, Default.log, Default.sav |
I find it useful to browse through sub-keys and values with hivexsh <path to hive> , then export a key from the hive file (using the file for HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software for example):
hivexregedit --export ./SOFTWARE Microsoft\\Windows\\CurrentVersion\\Policies\\Explorer > explorer-policies.reghivexregedit --merge ./SOFTWARE ./explorer-policies.reg
I've left out the conversion of the exported registry file from Windows UTF-16 to UTF-8, and back again to UTF-16 before the merge, as I've found through testing that this isn't needed (with hivex version 1.3.23).