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Fix Update KB5060999 Not Installing On Windows 11 Version 23H2/22H2 / Fix windows Update failed

Thursday, July 24th, 2025

fix-Update-KB5060999-Not_Installing_On_Windows_11_Version_23H2_22H2-howto-update-screenshot

 

Recently I've stumbled across a very annoying issue on my work Laptop. Suddenly windows stopped being upadted it took me really long time of hours of researching to find out how to resolve the error:

Fix Update KB5060999 Not Installing On Windows 11 Version 23H2/22H2 / Fix windows Update failed

After a lot of catch / tries I can manage to Find a fix Thanks God! 

Here are the few steps I took to resolve it, first I've taken all the steps pointed at the Complete Guide Windows Problems it took really long time but even thouigh I did not manage to resolve the issue it give a lot of understanding on different ways of how windows components stick together and how to debug and solve errors if such ones occurs. Thus I warmly recommend it to anyone working as HelpDesk support admin within corporation or if you are a Windows specialist who makes a living from resolving weird unexpected Windows errors for some little money.

Once I went through a lot of underwater stones and nothing word finally  I managed to solve it by following these concrete steps:

1. Check logs and find error message / problems in CBS.log

C:\> notepad c:\windows\Logs\CBS\CBS.log

The root of the issue I found there as a repeating error messages is:

"InternalOpenPackage failed for Package_for_KB3025096~31bf3856ad364e35~amd64~~6.4.1.0 [HRESULT = 0x800f0805 – CBS_E_INVALID_PACKAGE]"

 

2. Download from Windows catalog the Update


windows11.0-kb5049624-x64-ndp481_6990e824379adc100fd7895adb30e692697381d7.msu to C:\User\myuser\Downloads

3. Use Winrar or 7Zip to extract the msu in local Directory

E.g.open Administrator command line cmd.exe extract  in lets say in \Users\Username\Downloads\
windows11.0-kb5049624-x64-ndp481_6990e824379adc100fd7895adb30e692697381d7

C:\Users/a768839/Downloads/windows11.0-kb5049624-x64-ndp481_6990e824379adc100fd7895adb30e692697381d7 > dir
WSUSSCAN.cab             

4. Remove old package existing on the Windows 11 OS with the same name using DISM tool with /online /remove-package options

C:\Users\myuser\Downloads\windows11.0-kb5049624-x64-ndp481_6990e824379adc100fd7895adb30e692697381d7>DISM /online /remove-package /packagepath:C:\Users\a768839\Downloads\windows11.0-kb5049624-x64-ndp481_6990e824379adc100fd7895adb30e692697381d7\Windows11.0-KB5049624-x64-NDP481.cab                                                                                                                                                                    Deployment Image Servicing and Management tool                                                                                                                                                                                                                                            Version: 10.0.22621.2792                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                           Image Version: 10.0.22631.5335                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                 Processing 1 of 1 – Removing package Package_for_DotNetRollup_481~31bf3856ad364e35~amd64~~10.0.9294.1                                                                                                                                                                                     [==========================100.0%================]                                                                                                                                                                                                                            
 The operation completed successfully.      

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                              5. Use DISM /online /add-package to manually insatall  windows11.0-kb5049624-x64-ndp481_6990e824379adc100fd7895adb30e692697381d7\Windows11.0-KB5049624-x64-NDP481.cab   
                                             

  Assuming you have already downloaded previously and exctracted the .msu file and you have the .cab file at hand run again as cmd.exe Admin                                                                                                                                                                                       

C:\Users\myuser\Downloads\windows11.0-kb5049624-x64-ndp481_6990e824379adc100fd7895adb30e692697381d7>DISM /online /add-package /packagepath:C:\Users\a768839\Downloads\windows11.0-kb5049624-x64-ndp481_6990e824379adc100fd7895adb30e692697381d7\Windows11.0-KB5049624-x64-NDP481.cab                                                                                                                                                                                           Deployment Image Servicing and Management tool                                                                                                                                                                                                                                            Version: 10.0.22621.2792                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                Image Version: 10.0.22631.5335                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                  Processing 1 of 1 – Adding package Package_for_DotNetRollup_481~31bf3856ad364e35~amd64~~10.0.9294.1                                                                                                                                                                                       [==========================100.0%==========================]                                                                                                                                                                                                                              The operation completed successfully.    


The idea to remove and install the failing package found in the CBS.log was initially found on                                                                   
 http://datadump.ru/windows-update-error-800f0831/
 

6. Force a Windows chkdsk (Check disk on next restart) to make sure no physical hard drive or some other inode Windows Filesystem errors are there

Within same Admin cmd.exe

C:\Users\myuser\> chkdsk /f C:\


Once command executes reboot the PC and wait for the chkdsk scan to complete and PC to Boot as usual

7. Stop / start wuauserv and do sfc /scannow to refresh some Windows update components

Run following set of commands within Admin cmd

C:\> net stop wuauserv
C:\> command prompt in admin mode
C:\>  dism /online /cleanup-image /startcomponentcleanup
C:\>  sfc /scannow
C:\> restart
C:\> sfc /scannow
C:\> net start wuauserv

8. Download Manually failing update from Windows catalog download site:

As of time of writting this article the URL to download is https://catalog.update.microsoft.com/Search.aspx?q=KB5049624%20%20

C:\Users\myuser\Downloads> dir *.msu
windows11.0-kb5060999-x64_99e39c1cf8a8976d9b3313efb38069876c417f70.msu

9. Run Manually again failing Update from command line

Run cmd as Administrator and exec the file:

C:\Users\myuser\Downloads\windows11.0-kb5060999-x64_99e39c1cf8a8976d9b3313efb38069876c417f70.msu

Wait for the install to complete The computer will need to restart

10. Resync the device to the Computer Domain (mandatory step) only if your PC is part of large organizational Domain

Open Microsoft Store / Company Portal and Sync the device (if necessery)

Settings -> Sync

11. Force the PC to sync itself with remote Global Domain policies (mandatory only if PC is part of Domain)

C:\Users\myuser> gpupdate /force
C:\Users\myuser> repadmin /showrepl

Wait for Synchronization and wait for some time for computer compliancy to get back to normal (Computer compliancy might not be an issue if this is a Personal Windows installation) but for computers part of Larger Windows Domains, where a Domain policy requires a compliancy to set of rules)

To come up with this guide and better understand what is going on to resolve it I have to thank my colleague Eduard for assisting me to read the CBS.log and analyze it and also the following forum thread reading explaining what causes the mysterious windows update Update KB5060999 Not Installing On Windows 11 Version 23H2/22H2 to fail.
 

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Posted in Everyday Life, Hacks, System Administration, Windows | No Comments »

How to disable tidy HTML corrector and validator to output error and warning messages

Sunday, March 18th, 2012

I've noticed in /var/log/apache2/error.log on one of the Debian servers I manage a lot of warnings and errors produced by tidy – HTML syntax checker and reformatter program.

There were actually quite plenty frequently appearing messages in the the log like:

...
To learn more about HTML Tidy see http://tidy.sourceforge.net
Please fill bug reports and queries using the "tracker" on the Tidy web site.
Additionally, questions can be sent to html-tidy@w3.org
HTML and CSS specifications are available from http://www.w3.org/
Lobby your company to join W3C, see http://www.w3.org/Consortium
line 1 column 1 - Warning: missing <!DOCTYPE> declaration
line 1 column 1 - Warning: plain text isn't allowed in <head> elements
line 1 column 1 - Info: <head> previously mentioned
line 1 column 1 - Warning: inserting implicit <body>
line 1 column 1 - Warning: inserting missing 'title' element
Info: Document content looks like HTML 3.2
4 warnings, 0 errors were found!
...

I did a quick investigation on where from this messages are logged in error.log, and discovered few .php scripts in one of the websites containing the tidy string.
I used Linux find + grep cmds find in all php files the "tidy "string, like so:

server:~# find . -iname '*.php'-exec grep -rli 'tidy' '{}' ;
find . -iname '*.php' -exec grep -rli 'tidy' '{}' ; ./new_design/modules/index.mod.php
./modules/index.mod.php
./modules/index_1.mod.php
./modules/index1.mod.php

Opening the files, with vim to check about how tidy is invoked, revealed tidy calls like:

exec('/usr/bin/tidy -e -ashtml -utf8 '.$tmp_name,$rett);

As you see the PHP programmers who wrote this website, made a bigtidy mess. Instead of using php5's tidy module, they hard coded tidy external command to be invoked via php's exec(); external tidy command invocation.
This is extremely bad practice, since it spawns the command via a pseudo limited apache shell.
I've notified about the issue, but I don't know when, the external tidy calls will be rewritten.

Until the external tidy invocations are rewritten to use the php tidy module, I decided to at least remove the tidy warnings and errors output.

To remove the warning and error messages I've changed:

exec('/usr/bin/tidy -e -ashtml -utf8 '.$tmp_name,$rett);

exec('/usr/bin/tidy --show-warnings no --show-errors no -q -e -ashtml -utf8 '.$tmp_name,$rett);

The extra switches meaning is like so:

q – instructs tidy to produce quiet output
-e – show only errors and warnings
–show warnings no && –show errors no, completely disable warnings and error output

Onwards tidy no longer logs junk messages in error.log Not logging all this useless warnings and errors has positive effect on overall server performance especially, when the scripts, running /usr/bin/tidy are called as frequently as 1000 times per sec. or more

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Posted in System Administration, Web and CMS | No Comments »

Linux: How to change recursively directory permissions to executable (+x) flag

Monday, September 2nd, 2013

change recursively permissions of directories and subdirectories Linux and Unix with find command
I had to copy large directory from one Linux server to windows host via SFTP proto (with WinSCP). However some of directories to be copied lacked executable flag, thus WinSCP failed to list and copy them.

Therefore I needed way to set recursively, all sub-directories under directory /mirror (located on Linux server) to +x executable flag.

There are two ways to do that one is directly through find cmd, second by using find with xargs
Here is how to do it with find:

# find /mirror -type d -exec chmod 755 {} + Same done with find + xargs:

# find /path/to/base/dir -type d -print0 | xargs -0 chmod 755
To change permissions only to all files under /mirror server directory with find

# find /path/to/base/dir -type f -exec chmod 644 {} +
Same done with find + xargs:
# find /path/to/base/dir -type f -print0 | xargs -0 chmod 644

Also, tiny shell script that recursively changes directories permissions (autochmod_directories.sh) is here

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Posted in Linux, System Administration | No Comments »

Windows how to check which process locks file command – A M$ Windows equivalent of lsof command

Monday, February 23rd, 2015

windows-how-to-check-which-process-locks-file-command-a-ms-windows-equivalent-of-lsof-command

I've had a task today to deploy a new WAR (Web Application Archive) Tomcat file on Apache Tomcat server running  on Windows server 2008 R2 UAT environment.
The client Tomcat application within war is providing a frontend to an proprietary Risk Analysis application called Risiko Management (developed by a German vendor called Schleupen).
The update of WAR file was part of a version upgrade of application so, both "Risk Analysis" desktop standalone server RiskKit and the Web frontend was developed by Schleupen had to be updated.
In order to update I followed the usual .WAR Tomcat Javafile upadate Tomcat process.

1. Stopped Tomcat running service Instance via services.msc command e.g.
 

Start (menu) -> Run
 

services.msc

 

stopping-tomcat-application-howto-stop-service-ms-windows-screenshot
 


2. Move (by Renaming) old risk-analysis.war to risk-analysis_backup_2015.war

and also rename the automatically Tomcat extracted folder (named same name as the WAR archive file directory – D:\web\Apache-Tomcat-7.0.33\webapps\Risiko-Analysis\ to :\web\Apache-Tomcat-7.0.33\webapps\Risiko-Analysis_backup_2015, i.e. run:
 

C:\Users\risk-analysis> D:
D:\>
D:\> CD \Web\Apache-Tomcat-7.0.33\webapps\
D:\Web\Apache-Tomcat-7.0.33\webapps> move risk-analysis.war risk-analysis_2015.war
D:\Web\Apache-Tomcat-7.0.33\webapps> move  Risiko-Analysis\  Risiko-Analysis_backup_2015\


But unfortunately I couldn't rename it and I got below error:

move-windows-command-access-is-denied-tiny-screenshot

Also I tried copying it using Windows Explorer Copy / Paste but this didn't worked either, and I got below error :

cant-move-risk-analysis-tomcat-java-application-error-ms-windows-screenshot

3. Finding what Locks a directory or File on M$ Windows


Obviously, the reason for unable to copy the directory was something was locking it. Actually there are plenty of locked files many running applications like Explorer do. A good example for all time locked file is Windows (swap file) pagefile.sys – this is Windows Linux equivalent of swap filesystem (enabled / disabled with spapon / swapoff commands). 

Having the directory locked was a strange problem, because the Tomcat process was not running as I checked closely both in Windows taskmgr GUI interface and manually grepped for the process with tasklist command like so:

 

d:\>tasklist /m|find /i "tomcat"


tomcat7.exe                   4396 ntdll.dll, kernel32.dll, KERNELBASE.dll,

For people like me who use primary Linux , above command shows you very precious debugging information, it shows which Windows libraries (DLL) are loaded in memory and used by the process 

 

(Note that when Tomcat is running, it is visible with command)
 

D:\> wmic.exe process list brief | find /i "tomcat"
526          tomcat7.exe          8         4396       49           156569600


Just for those wondering the 156569600 number is number of bytes loaded in Windows memory used by Tomcat.

After tomcat was stopped above command returned empty string meaning obviously that tomcat is stopped ..

BTW, wmic command is very useful to get a list of process names (to list all running processes):

 D:> wmic.exe process list brief

get-all-process-names-in-command-line-with-windows-wmic-command-screenshot

Well obviously something was locking this directory (some of its subdirectories or a file name within the directory / folder), so I couldn't rename it just like that.
In Linux finding which daemon (service) is locking a file is pretty easy with lsof command (for those new to lsof check my previous article how to how to check what process listens on network port in Linux), however it was unknown to me how I can check which running service is locking a file and did a quick google search which pointed me to the famous handle part of SysInternals tools.
The command tool Handle.exe was exactly what I was looking for. 

handle-sysinternals-tool-to-windows-see-all-locked-files-and-what-is-locking-them-ms-windows-screenshot

To get list of all opened (locked) files and see which application has opened it just exec command without arguments, you will get
plenty of useful info which will help you to better understand what Windows OS is doing invisible in the background and what app uses what.

handle-command-part-of-sysinternals-witout-any-arguments-display-opened-locked-files-in-windows

handle is pretty much Windows equivalent command of Linux lsof

To get which file was locked by Tomcat I used handle in conjuntion with find /i command which is pretty much like Linux's grep equivalent

 

C:\TEMP> Handle.exe | FIND /I "Tomcat"
   1C: File  (RW-)   D:\Web\Apache-Tomcat-7.0.33\webapps\Risk-Analysis\images\app


Alternatively if you have sysinternals and prefer GUI environment you can use SysInternals Process Explorer (press CTRL + F) and look for a string:

process-explorer-toolbar-find-what-is-locking-a-file-or-directory-windows

Next to handle I found also another GUI program (Internet Explorer extension) WhoLockMe, that can be used to show you all running programs and locked files by this programs.
WhoLockMe is pretty straight forward to use, though it shows GUI output you have to run the command from cmd line. Below is sample output screenshot of wholockme.


who-lock-me-windows-screenshot-see-which-files-running-programs-are-locking-on-ms-windows

 

To Install Wholockme 


Unzip "WhoLockMe.zip" in a directory (for exemple : "C:\Program Files\WhoLockMe")
Launch "Install.bat" or execute this Windows registry modification command :
 

regsvr32 "C:\Program Files\WhoLockMe\WhoLockMe.dll"


To Uninstall WhoLockMe – if you need to later:

 

Execute command :
 

regsvr32 /u "C:\Program Files\WhoLockMe\WhoLockMe.dll"


Reboot (Or Kill Explorer.exe).

Removes the "C:\Program Files\WhoLockMe" directory and its contents.

Probably there are other ways to find out what is locking a file or direcotry using powershell scripts or .bat (batch) scripting. If you know of other way using default Windows embedded commands, please share in comments.

 

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Posted in Curious Facts, System Administration, Various, Web and CMS, Windows | No Comments »

Find all hidden files in Linux, Delete, Copy, Move all hidden files

Tuesday, April 15th, 2014

search-find-all-hidden-files-linux-delete-all-hidden-files
Listing hidden files is one of the common thing to do as sys admin. Doing manipulations with hidden files like copy / delete / move is very rare but still sometimes necessary here is how to do all this.

1. Find and show (only) all hidden files in current directory

find . -iname '.*' -maxdepth 1

maxdepth – makes files show only in 1 directory depth (only in current directory), for instance to list files in 2 subdirectories use -maxdepth 3 etc.

echo .*;

Yeah if you're Linux newbie it is useful to know echo command can be used instead of ls.
echo * command is very useful on systems with missing ls (for example if you mistakenly deleted it 🙂 )

2. Find and show (only) all hidden directories, sub-directories in current directory

To list all directories use cmd:

find /path/to/destination/ -iname ".*" -maxdepth 1 -type d

3. Log found hidden files / directories

find . -iname ".*" -maxdept 1 -type f | tee -a hidden_files.log

find . -iname ".*" -maxdepth 1 type d | tee -a hidden_directories.log
4. Delete all hidden files in current directory

cd /somedirectory
find . -iname ".*" -maxdepth 1 -type f -delete

5. Delete all hidden files in current directory

cd /somedirectory
find . -iname ".*" -maxdepth 1 -type d -delete

6. Copy all hidden files from current directory to other "backup" dir

find . -iname ".*" -maxdepth 1 -type f -exec cp -rpf '{}' directory-to-copy-to/ ;

7. Copy and move all hidden sub-directories from current directory to other "backup" dir

find . -iname ".*" -maxdepth 1 -type d -exec cp -rpf '{}' directory-to-copy-to/ ;

– Moving all hidden sub-directories from current directory to backup dir

find . -iname ".*" -maxdepth 1 -type d -exec mv '{}' directory-to-copy-to/ ;

 

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How to set a crontab to execute commands on a seconds time interval on GNU / Linux and FreeBSD

Sunday, October 30th, 2011

crontab-execute-cron-jobs-every-second-on-linux-cron-logo
Have you ever been in need to execute some commands scheduled via a crontab, every let’s say 5 seconds?, naturally this is not possible with crontab, however adding a small shell script to loop and execute a command or commands every 5 seconds and setting it up to execute once in a minute through crontab makes this possible.
Here is an example shell script that does execute commands every 5 seconds:

#!/bin/bash
command1_to_exec='/bin/ls';
command2_to_exec='/bin/pwd';
for i in $(echo 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11); do
sleep 5;
$command1_to_exec; $command2_to_exec;
done

This script will issue a sleep every 5 seconds and execute the two commands defined as $command1_to_exec and $command2_to_exec

Copy paste the script to a file or fetch exec_every_5_secs_cmds.sh from here

The script can easily be modified to execute on any seconds interval delay, the record to put on cron to use with this script should look something like:

# echo '* * * * * /path/to/exec_every_5_secs_cmds.sh' | crontab -

Where of course /path/to/exec_every_5_secs_cmds.sh needs to be modified to a proper script name and path location.

Another way to do the on a number of seconds program / command schedule without using cron at all is setting up an endless loop to run/refresh via /etc/inittab with a number of predefined commands inside. An example endless loop script to run via inittab would look something like:

while [ 1 ]; do
/bin/ls
sleep 5;
done

To run the above sample never ending script using inittab, one needs to add to the end of inittab, some line like:

mine:234:respawn:/path/to/script_name.sh

A quick way to add the line from consone would be with echo:

echo 'mine:234:respawn:/path/to/script' >> /etc/inittab

Of course the proper paths, should be put in:

Then to load up the newly added inittab line, inittab needs to be reloaded with cmd:

# init q

I've also red, some other methods suggested to run programs on a periodic seconds basis using just cron, what I found in stackoverflow.com's  as a thread proposed as a solution is:

* * * * * /foo/bar/your_script
* * * * * sleep 15; /foo/bar/your_script
* * * * * sleep 30; /foo/bar/your_script
* * * * * sleep 45; /foo/bar/your_script

One guy, even suggested a shorted way with cron:

0/15 * * * * * /path/to/my/script

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Posted in Linux, Linux and FreeBSD Desktop, System Administration, Various | 1 Comment »

Linux PHP Disable chmod() and chown() functions for better Apache server security

Monday, July 15th, 2013

php_tighten_security_by_enabling_safe_mode-php-ini-function-prevent-crackers-break-in-your-server
I have to administer few inherited Linux servers with Ubuntu and Debian Linux. The servers hosts mainly websites with regularly un-updated Joomlas and some custom developed websites which were developed pretty unsecure. To mitigate hacked websites I already disabled some of most insecure functions like system(); eval etc. – I followed literally my previous tutorial PHP Webhosting security disable exec();, system();, open(); and eval();. 
Still in logs I see shits like:
 

[error] [client 66.249.72.100] PHP Warning:  mkdir(): No such file or directory in /var/www/site/plugins/system/jfdatabase/intercept.jdatabasemysql.php on line 161

Hence to prevent PHP mkdir(); and chown(); functiosn being active, I had to turn on in /etc/php5/apache2/php.ini – safe_mode . For some reason whoever configured Apache leave it off.

safe_mode = on

Hopefully by disabling this functions will keep cracker bot scripts to not create some weird directory structures on HDD or use it as mean to DoS overflow servers filesystem.

Hope this help others stabilize their servers too. Enjoy ! 🙂

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Posted in Various, Web and CMS | 1 Comment »

PHP: Better Webhosting Security – Disable exec(), exec_shell(), system(), popen(), eval() … shell fork functions

Sunday, June 23rd, 2013

increase php security better php security by disabling fork shell system and eval functions

If you work as System Administrator of WebHosting company, you definitely know how often it is that some automated cracker scripts (working as worms) intrude through buggy old crappy custom coded sites or unupdated obsolete Joomla / WordPress etc. installs. and run themselves trying to harvest for other vulnerable hosts. By default PHP enables running commands via shell with PHP functions like exec();, shell_exec(); , system();. and those script kiddie scripts use mainly this functions to spawn shell via vulnerable PHP app. Then scripts use whether php curl support is installed (i.e. php5-curl) to download and replicate itself to next vulnerable hop.

With that said it is a must after installing new Linux based server for hosting to disable this functions, to save yourself from future hassles …
Earlier, I blogged how to disable PHP system system(); and exec(); functions to raise Apache security using suhosin however this method requires php suhosin being used.

Yesterday, I had to configure new web hosting server with Debian 7, so I tried installing suhosin to use it to protect PHP from having enabled dangerous system();, eval(); exec(); .
I remember disabling system(); using suhosin php extension was working fine on older Debian releases, however in Debian 6.0, php5-suhosin package was causing severe Apache crashes and probably that's why in latest Debian Wheezy 7.0, php suhosin extension is no longer available. Therefore using suhosin method to disable system();, exec(); and other fork functions is no longer possible in Debian.

Since, suhosin is no longer there, I decided to use conventional PHP method via php.ini.

Here is how to do it

Edit:

/etc/php5/apache2/php.ini

debian:~# vim /etc/php5/apache2/php.ini
 And near end of file placed:

disable_functions =exec,passthru,shell_exec,system,proc_open,
popen,curl_exec, curl_multi_exec,parse_ini_file,show_source

allow_url_fopen Off
allow_url_include Off

It is good to explain few of above functions – shell_exec, proc_open, popen, allow_url_fopen, show_source  and allow_url_include.

Disabling shell_exec – disables from PHP scripts executing commands with bash slash ` `, i.e. `ls`. proc_open and popen allows reading files from file system.

show_source – makes possible also reading other PHP source files or can be used to display content of other files from fs.

To read newly placed config vars in php.ini usual apache restart is necessary:

debian:~# /etc/init.d/apache2 restart
[….] Restarting web server: apache2
. ok

Further on tо test whether system();, exec();, passthru(); … etc. are disabled. Make new PHP file with content:

<?php
error_reporting(E_ALL);
$disabled_functions = ini_get('disable_functions');
if ($disabled_functions!='')
{
    $arr = explode(',', $disabled_functions);
    sort($arr);
    echo 'Disabled Functions:
        ';
    for ($i=0; $i<count($arr); $i++)
    {
        echo $i.' - '.$arr[$i].'<br />';
    }
}
else
{
    echo 'No functions disabled';
}
?>

php show disabled functions screenshot improve php security by disabling shell spawn functions

Copy of above source code show_disabled_php_functions.php is here for download
. To test your Apache PHP configuration disabled functions download it with wget or curl and rename it to .php:

# cd /var/www # wget -q https://www.pc-freak.net/files/show_disabled_php_functions.php.txt
mv show_disabled_php_functions.php.txt show_disabled_php_functions.php
After disabling functions on those newly setup Debian hosting Apache webserver, I remembered, same functions were still active on another CentOS Linux server.

To disable it there as well, had to edit:

/etc/php.ini

[root@centos:~]# vim /etc/php.ini

And again place after last file line;

disable_functions =exec,passthru,shell_exec,system,proc_open,popen,
curl_exec, curl_multi_exec,parse_ini_file,show_source

allow_url_fopen Off
allow_url_include Off

Finally on CentOS host, had to restart Apache:

[root@centos:~]# /etc/init.d/httpd restart

For Security paranoids, there are plenty of other PHP functions to disable including, basic functions like ln, mv, mkdir, cp, cat etc.

Below is list of all functions to disable – only disable this whether you you're a PHP security freak and you're 100% some server hosted website will not use it:

disable_functions = "ln, cat, popen, pclose, posix_getpwuid, posix_getgrgid, posix_kill, parse_perms, system, dl, passthru, exec, shell_exec, popen, proc_close, proc_get_status, proc_nice, proc_open, escapeshellcmd, escapeshellarg, show_source, posix_mkfifo, mysql_list_dbs, get_current_user, getmyuid, pconnect, link, symlink, pcntl_exec, ini_alter, pfsockopen, leak, apache_child_terminate, posix_kill, posix_setpgid, posix_setsid, posix_setuid, proc_terminate, syslog, fpassthru, stream_select, socket_select, socket_create, socket_create_listen, socket_create_pair, socket_listen, socket_accept, socket_bind, socket_strerror, pcntl_fork, pcntl_signal, pcntl_waitpid, pcntl_wexitstatus, pcntl_wifexited, pcntl_wifsignaled, pcntl_wifstopped, pcntl_wstopsig, pcntl_wtermsig, openlog, apache_get_modules, apache_get_version, apache_getenv, apache_note, apache_setenv, virtual, chmod, file_upload, delete, deleted, edit, fwrite, cmd, rename, unlink, mkdir, mv, touch, cp, cd, pico"

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Posted in Computer Security, Web and CMS | No Comments »

How to manually disable Windows Genuine Advantage on Windows XP SP2

Wednesday, May 25th, 2011

WGA Notification message popup message

I have a pirate version of Windows XP Pro 2 installer CD which does automatically turn on Windows Genuine Advantage

This is kind of annoying as the computer gets really slow and the hard disk drive activite gets intensive as well as an annoying popup message that the Windows XP copy is not genuine does appear periodically

In order to get rid of the message I had to do the following steps:

1. Get into Windows Safe Mode without Networking

As most of the people knows this is achieved by pressing F8 keyboard key right before the Windows bootup screen appears.

After in Safe mode it’s necessery to,

2. Run Windows Command Line (cmd.exe)

To do so follow, the menus:

Windows (Start Menu) -> Run -> cmd.exe

3. In the command prompt window issue the commands:

C:Documents and SettingsUser> cd WindowsSystem32
C:WindowsSystem32> taskkill -IM wgatray.exe
C:WindowsSystem32> del wgatray.exe
C:WindowsSystem32> move wgalogon.dll wgalogon.dll.old
C:WindowsSystem32> del wgalogon.dll.old

Something to mention is you have to be really quick, with deleting wgalogon.dll, cause wgatray.exe is scheduled to run every 1 / 2 seconds 🙂 It is a bit of situation of type “be quick or be dead” as Maiden used to sing 🙂
A Windows system restart and Hooray the Windows Genuine message is gone 🙂

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Posted in Windows | 2 Comments »

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