Create an encrypted 7zip archive with encrypted header as well (no filenames are visible)

In case you come to a scenario where you need to encrypt, password protect the contents of a 7zip archive and make sure that not even the filenames of the contents are visible, 7zip has your back! As you can see in the following example you can implement the above requirements very easily.

7z a -p"pbVfdPs27Dc" -mhe hello.7z file1.bin file2.doc files.*

The structure of the above 7z command is the following:

#Based on: 7z <command> [<switches>...] <archive_name> [<file_names>...]
7z a -p"Some Password!.32@" -mhe <archive_name> [<file_names>...]

To break it down, it goes like this:

  • We used the <command> a, which instructs the tool to add the listed files to the listed archive (if the archive does not exist, it will create it).
  • The <switch> -p, allows you to set the password for the archive.
  • The second <switch> -mhe (or -mhe=on) it enables data and header archive encryption.
    In case you cannot find this switch at the manual, check the examples in the man page (This command works on GNU/Linux, it was tested on Fedora).

Thank You!

You may now continue to use the internet.

Starting XAMPP with port 80 on Windows 10 Professional 1

Recently we were asked to have a look at a XAMPP installation on a Windows 10 Professional machine which would not start while giving the following error:

Problem detected!
Port 80 in use by "Unable to open process" with PID 4!
Apache WILL NOT start without the configured ports free!
You need to uninstall/disable/reconfigure the blocking application
or reconfigure Apache and the Control Panel to listen on a different port

The culprit of this problem was a module of the IIS (Internet Information Services for Windows Server) that is named World Wide Web Publishing Service (WWW service or W3SVC service). Apparently, the W3SVC was hoarding port 80 even though IIS was not executing. To provide a quick solution, we decided to stop the W3SVC and get over this difficulty in a jiffy.

As you can see in the following video, to stop the World Wide Web Publishing Service (WWW service or W3SVC service) we performed the next steps:

  1. Clicked on the Start button
  2. Typed in the word services, which showed the Services link which we clicked to start the windows services  manager
  3. Then, we scrolled down in the Services window until we found the World Wide Web Publishing Service
  4. Finally, we right clicked on it and selected Stop.

After that, XAMPP was able to start Apache on port 80 with no issues.