3 This is wimlib version 1.4.1 (May 2013). wimlib is a C library for creating,
4 modifying, extracting, and mounting files in the Windows Imaging Format (WIM
5 files). These files are normally created by using the `imagex.exe' utility on
6 Windows, but wimlib is distributed with a free implementation of ImageX called
7 "wimlib-imagex" for both UNIX and Windows.
11 To install wimlib and wimlib-imagex on Windows you simply need to download and
12 extract the ZIP file containing the latest binaries from the SourceForge page
13 (http://sourceforge.net/projects/wimlib/), which you may have already done.
15 To install wimlib and wimlib-imagex on UNIX (with Linux being the primary
16 supported and tested platform), you must compile it from the source code. At
17 some point I might start posting RPMs and Debian packages for convenience.
21 A Windows Imaging (WIM) file is an archive designed primarily for archiving
22 Windows filesystems. However, it can be used on other platforms as well, with
23 some limitations. Like some other archive formats such as ZIP, files in WIM
24 archives may be compressed. WIM files support two compression formats: LZX and
25 XPRESS. Both are supported by wimlib.
27 A WIM file consists of one or more "images". Each image is an independent
28 top-level directory structure and is logically separate from all other images in
29 the WIM. Each image has a name as well as a 1-based index in the WIM file. To
30 save space, WIM archives automatically combine all duplicate files across all
33 A WIM file may be either stand-alone or split into multiple parts. Split WIMs
34 are read-only and cannot be modified.
38 wimlib itself is a C library, and it provides a documented public API (See:
39 http://wimlib.sourceforge.net) for other programs to use. However, it is also
40 distributed with a command-line program called "wimlib-imagex" that uses this
41 library to implement an imaging tool similar to Microsoft's ImageX.
42 wimlib-imagex supports almost all the capabilities of Microsoft's ImageX as well
43 as additional capabilities. wimlib-imagex works on both UNIX and Windows,
44 although some features differ between the platforms.
46 Run `wimlib-imagex' with no arguments to see an overview of the available
47 commands and their syntax. For additional documentation:
49 * If you have installed wimlib-imagex on UNIX, you will find further
50 documentation in the man pages; run `man wimlib-imagex' to get started.
52 * If you have downloaded the Windows binary distribution, you will find the
53 documentation for wimlib-imagex in PDF format in the "doc" directory,
54 ready for viewing with any PDF viewer. Please note that although the PDF
55 files are converted from UNIX-style "man pages", they do document
56 Windows-specific behavior when appropriate.
60 wimlib (and wimlib-imagex) can create XPRESS or LZX compressed WIM archives.
61 Currently, the XPRESS compression ratio is slightly better than that provided by
62 Microsoft's software, while the LZX compression ratio is approaching that of
63 Microsoft's software but is not quite there yet. Running time is as good as or
64 better than Microsoft's software, especially with multithreaded compression,
65 available in wimlib v1.1.0 and later.
67 The following tables compare the compression ratio and performance for creating
68 a compressed x86_64 Windows PE image. Note: these timings were done on Windows
69 7 so that the times would be fully comparable; however, wimlib-imagex may have
70 even better performance on Linux.
74 XPRESS Compression LZX Compression
75 wimlib-imagex (v1.4.0): 165,301,379 bytes 155,254,385 bytes
76 Microsoft imagex.exe: 167,212,939 bytes 149,973,212 bytes
78 Table 2. Time to create WIM
80 XPRESS Compression LZX Compression
81 wimlib-imagex (v1.4.0, 2 threads): 18 sec 51 sec
82 Microsoft imagex.exe: 25 sec 93 sec
86 WIM images may contain data, such as alternate data streams and
87 compression/encryption flags, that are best represented on the NTFS filesystem
88 used on Windows. Also, WIM images may contain security descriptors which are
89 specific to Windows and cannot be represented on other operating systems.
90 wimlib handles this NTFS-specific or Windows-specific data in a
91 platform-dependent way:
93 * In the Windows version of wimlib and wimlib-imagex, NTFS-specific and
94 Windows-specific data are supported natively.
96 * In the UNIX version of wimlib and wimlib-imagex, NTFS-specific and
97 Windows-specific data are ordinarily ignored; however, there is also special
98 support for capturing and extracting images directly to/from unmounted NTFS
99 volumes. This was made possible with the help of libntfs-3g from the
102 For both platforms the code for NTFS capture and extraction is complete enough
103 that it is possible to apply an image from the "install.wim" contained in recent
104 Windows installation media (Vista, Windows 7, or Windows 8) directly to a NTFS
105 filesystem, and then boot Windows from it after preparing the Boot Configuration
106 Data. In addition, a Windows installation can be captured (or backed up) into a
107 WIM file, and then re-applied later.
111 A major use for wimlib and wimlib-imagex is to create customized images of
112 Windows PE, the Windows Preinstallation Environment, on either UNIX or Windows
113 without having to rely on Microsoft's software and its restrictions and
116 Windows PE is a lightweight version of Windows that can run entirely from memory
117 and can be used to install Windows from local media or a network drive or
118 perform maintenance. It is the operating system that runs when you boot from
119 the Windows installation media.
121 You can find Windows PE on the installation DVD for Windows Vista, Windows 7, or
122 Windows 8, in the file `sources/boot.wim'. Windows PE can also be found in the
123 Windows Automated Installation Kit (WAIK), which is free to download from
124 Microsoft, inside the `WinPE.cab' file, which you can extract natively on
125 Windows, or on UNIX if you install either the `cabextract' or `p7zip' programs.
127 In addition, Windows installations and recovery partitions frequently contain a
128 WIM containing an image of the Windows Recovery Environment, which is similar to
131 A shell script `mkwinpeimg' is distributed with wimlib on UNIX to ease the
132 process of creating and customizing a bootable Windows PE image.
136 This section documents the dependencies of wimlib and the programs distributed
137 with it, when building for UNIX from source. If you have downloaded the Windows
138 binary distribution of wimlib and wimlib-imagex then all dependencies were
139 already included and this section is irrelevant.
142 This is a commonly used free library to read and write XML files. You
143 likely already have it installed as a dependency for some other program.
144 For more information see http://xmlsoft.org/.
146 * libfuse (optional but highly recommended)
147 Unless configured with --without-fuse, wimlib requires a non-ancient
148 version of libfuse to be installed. Most Linux distributions already
149 include this, but make sure you have the libfuse package installed, and
150 also libfuse-dev if your distribution distributes header files
151 separately. FUSE also requires a kernel module. If the kernel module
152 is available it will automatically be loaded if you try to mount a WIM
153 file. For more information see http://fuse.sourceforge.net/. FUSE is
154 also available for FreeBSD.
156 * libntfs-3g (optional but highly recommended)
157 Unless configured with --without-ntfs-3g, wimlib requires the library
158 and headers for libntfs-3g version 2011-4-12 or later to be installed.
159 Versions dated 2010-3-6 and earlier do not work because they are missing
160 the header xattrs.h (and the file xattrs.c, which contains functions we
161 need). libntfs-3g version 2013-1-13 is compatible only with wimlib
164 * OpenSSL / libcrypto (optional)
165 wimlib can use the SHA1 message digest code from OpenSSL instead of
166 compiling in yet another SHA1 implementation. (See LICENSE section.)
170 * syslinux (optional)
171 * cabextract (optional)
172 The `mkwinpeimg' shell script will look for several other programs
173 depending on what options are given to it. Depending on your Linux
174 distribution, you may already have these programs installed, or they may
175 be in the software repository. Making an ISO filesystem requires
176 `mkisofs' from `cdrkit' (http://www.cdrkit.org). Making a disk image
177 requires `mtools' (http://www.gnu.org/software/mtools) and `syslinux'
178 (http://www.syslinux.org). Retrieving files from the Windows Automated
179 Installation Kit requires `cabextract' (http://www.cabextract.org.uk).
183 This section documents the most important options that may be passed to the
184 "configure" script when building the UNIX version from source:
187 If libntfs-3g is not available or is not version 2011-4-12 or later,
188 wimlib can be built without it, in which case it will not be possible to
189 apply or capture images directly to/from NTFS volumes.
192 If libfuse or the FUSE kernel module is not available, wimlib can be
193 compiled with --without-fuse. This will remove the ability to mount and
197 Build in functions for SHA1 rather than using external SHA1 functions
198 from libcrypto (part of OpenSSL). The default is to use libcrypto if it
199 is found on the system.
201 --enable-xattr, --disable-xattr
202 Enable or disable support for the extended-attributes interface to NTFS
203 alternate data streams in mounted WIMs. To support these, wimlib
204 requires that the setxattr() function and the attr/xattr.h header are
205 available. The default is to autodetect whether support is possible.
207 --disable-multithreaded-compression
208 By default, data will be compressed using multiple threads when writing
209 a WIM, unless only 1 processor is detected. Specify this option to
210 disable support for this.
213 Use a very fast assembly language implementation of SHA1 from Intel.
214 Only use this if the build target supports the SSSE3 instructions.
216 --disable-error-messages
217 Save some space by removing all error messages from the library.
220 Remove assertions included by default.
224 wimlib has primarily been tested on Linux and Windows (primarily Windows 7, but
225 also Windows XP and Windows 8).
227 wimlib may work on FreeBSD and Mac OS X. However, this is not well tested. If
228 you do not have libntfs-3g 2011-4-12 or later available, you must configure
229 wimlib with --without-ntfs-3g. On FreeBSD, before mounting a WIM you need to
230 load the POSIX message queue module (run `kldload mqueuefs').
232 wimlib has not been tested on big-endian CPU architectures.
236 The WIM file format is specified in a document that can be found in the
237 Microsoft Download Center. There is a similar document that specifies the LZX
238 compression format, and a document that specifies the XPRESS compression format.
239 However, many parts of these formats are poorly documented, and some parts have
240 no documentation whatsoever. Some particularly poorly documented parts of the
241 formats have had comments added in various places in the library code. Please
242 see the code and/or ask me if you have any questions about the WIM file format
243 as it exists in reality and not as it exists in Microsoft's poorly written
246 The code in ntfs-3g_apply.c and ntfs-3g_capture.c uses the NTFS-3g library,
247 which is a library for reading and writing to NTFS filesystems (the filesystem
248 used by recent versions of Windows). See
249 http://www.tuxera.com/community/ntfs-3g-download/ for more information.
251 lzx-decompress.c, the code to decompress WIM file resources that are compressed
252 using LZX compression, was originally based on code from the cabextract project
253 (http://www.cabextract.org.uk) but has been rewritten.
255 lzx-compress.c, the code to compress WIM file resources using LZX compression,
256 was originally based on code written by Matthew Russotto (www.russotto.net/chm/)
257 but has been rewritten.
259 lz77.c, the code to find LZ77 matches (used for both XPRESS and LZX
260 compression), is based on code from zlib but has been rewritten.
262 A limited number of other free programs can handle some parts of the WIM
265 * 7-zip is able to extract and create WIMs (as well as files in many
266 other archive formats). However, wimlib is designed specifically to handle
267 WIM files and provides features previously only available in Microsoft's
268 imagex.exe, such as the ability to mount WIMs read-write as well as
269 read-only, the ability to create LZX or XPRESS compressed WIMs, and the
270 correct handling of security descriptors and hard links.
271 * ImagePyX (https://github.com/maxpat78/ImagePyX) is a Python program that
272 provides similar capabilities to wimlib-imagex. One thing to note, though,
273 is that it does not support compression and decompression by itself, but
274 instead relies on external native code, such as the codecs from wimlib.
276 A very early version of wimlib is being used to deploy Windows 7 from the
277 Ultimate Deployment Appliance. For more information see
278 http://www.ultimatedeployment.org/.
280 You can see the documentation about Microsoft's version of ImageX at
281 http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc749447(v=ws.10).aspx, so you can
282 see how it compares to wimlib-imagex.
284 If you are looking for a UNIX archive format that provides features similar to
285 WIM, I recommend you take a look at SquashFS (http://squashfs.sourceforge.net/).
289 As of version 1.0.0, wimlib and all programs and scripts distributed with it are
290 released under the GNU GPL version 3.0 or later.
292 wimlib is independently developed and does not contain any code, data, or files
293 copyrighted by Microsoft. It is not known to be affected by any patents.
295 On UNIX, if you do not want wimlib to be dynamically linked with libcrypto
296 (OpenSSL), configure with --without-libcrypto. This replaces the SHA1
297 implementation with built-in code and there will be no difference in
302 wimlib comes with no warranty whatsoever. Use Microsoft's `imagex.exe' if you
303 want to make sure your WIM files are made "correctly" (but beware: Microsoft's
304 version contains some bugs).
306 Please submit a bug report (to ebiggers3@gmail.com) if you find a bug in wimlib
307 and/or wimlib-imagex.
309 Be aware that some parts of the WIM file format are poorly documented or even
310 completely undocumented, so I've just had to do the best I can to read and write
311 WIMs that appear to be compatible with Microsoft's software.