-
- WIMLIB
-
-This is wimlib version 0.6.2 (April 2012). wimlib can be used to read, write,
-and mount files in the Windows Imaging Format (WIM files). These files are
-normally created by using the `imagex.exe' utility on Windows, but this library
-provides a free implementetion of imagex for UNIX-based systems.
-
-The main use of this library is to create customized images of Windows PE, the
-Windows Preinstallation Environment, without having to rely on Windows. Windows
-PE is a lightweight version of Windows that can run entirely from memory and can
-be used to install Windows from local media or a network drive or perform
-maintenance. Windows PE is the operating systems runs when you boot from the
-Windows DVD.
-
-You can find Windows PE on the ISO filesystem on the installation DVD for both
-Windows 7 and Windows 8. I don't have a DVD for Vista but it should be on there
-too. The Windows PE image a WIM file, `sources/boot.wim', on the ISO
-filesystem. Windows PE can also be found in the Windows Automated Installation
-Kit (WAIK), which is free to download from Microsoft, inside the `WinPE.cab'
-file, which you can extract if you install the `cabextract' program.
-
-wimlib provides a public API for other programs to use, but also comes with two
-programs: `imagex' and `mkwinpeimg'.
-
-`imagex' is intended to be like the imagex.exe program from Windows. `imagex'
-can be used to create, extract, and mount WIM files. Both read-only and
-read-write mounts are supported. See the man page `doc/imagex.1' for more
-details.
-
-`mkwinpeimg' is shell script that makes it easy to create a customized bootable
-image of Windows PE that can be put on a CD or USB drive, or published on a
-server for PXE booting. See the main page `doc/mkwinpeiso.1' for more details.
-
-Wimlib can also be used to handle larger WIM files such as the `install.wim'
-file that comes on the Windows DVD; however, this has not been well tested.
-
-An earlier version of Wimlib is being used to deploy Windows 7 from the Ultimate
-Deployment Appliance. For more information see
-http://www.ultimatedeployment.org/.
-
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
-
- CONFIGURATION
-
-Besides the various well-known options, the following options can be passed to
-wimlib's `configure' script:
+ INTRODUCTION
+
+This is wimlib version 1.6.0 (January 2014). wimlib is a C library for
+creating, modifying, extracting, and mounting files in the Windows Imaging
+Format (WIM files). These files are normally created using the ImageX
+(imagex.exe) or Dism (Dism.exe) utilities on Windows, but wimlib is distributed
+with a free implementation of ImageX called "wimlib-imagex" for both UNIX-like
+systems and Windows.
+
+ INSTALLATION
+
+To install wimlib and wimlib-imagex on Windows you simply need to download and
+extract the ZIP file containing the latest binaries from the SourceForge page
+(http://sourceforge.net/projects/wimlib/), which you may have already done.
+
+To install wimlib and wimlib-imagex on UNIX-like systems (with Linux being the
+primary supported and tested platform), you must compile the source code, which
+is also available at http://sourceforge.net/projects/wimlib/. Alternatively,
+check if a package has been prepared for your Linux distribution. Example files
+for Debian and RPM packaging are in the debian/ and rpm/ directories.
+
+ WIM FILES
+
+A Windows Imaging (WIM) file is an archive designed primarily for archiving
+Windows filesystems. However, it can be used on other platforms as well, with
+some limitations. Like some other archive formats such as ZIP, files in WIM
+archives may be compressed. WIM files support multiple compression formats,
+including LZX, XPRESS, and LZMS. All these formats are supported by wimlib.
+
+A WIM file consists of one or more "images". Each image is an independent
+top-level directory structure and is logically separate from all other images in
+the WIM. Each image has a name as well as a 1-based index in the WIM file. To
+save space, WIM archives automatically combine all duplicate files across all
+images.
+
+A WIM file may be either stand-alone or split into multiple parts. Split WIMs
+are read-only and cannot be modified.
+
+ IMAGEX IMPLEMENTATION
+
+wimlib itself is a C library, and it provides a documented public API (See:
+http://wimlib.sourceforge.net) for other programs to use. However, it is also
+distributed with a command-line program called "wimlib-imagex" that uses this
+library to implement an imaging tool similar to Microsoft's ImageX.
+wimlib-imagex supports almost all the capabilities of Microsoft's ImageX as well
+as additional capabilities. wimlib-imagex works on both UNIX-like systems and
+Windows, although some features differ between the platforms.
+
+Run `wimlib-imagex' with no arguments to see an overview of the available
+commands and their syntax. For additional documentation:
+
+ * If you have installed wimlib-imagex on a UNIX-like system, you will find
+ further documentation in the man pages; run `man wimlib-imagex' to get
+ started.
+
+ * If you have downloaded the Windows binary distribution, you will find the
+ documentation for wimlib-imagex in PDF format in the "doc" directory,
+ ready for viewing with any PDF viewer. Please note that although the PDF
+ files are converted from UNIX-style "man pages", they do document
+ Windows-specific behavior when appropriate.
+
+ COMPRESSION RATIO
+
+wimlib (and wimlib-imagex) can create XPRESS, LZX, or LZMS compressed WIM
+archives. The following tables compare the compression ratio and performance
+for creating a compressed x86_64 Windows PE image with XPRESS and LZX. Note:
+these timings were done on Windows so that the times would be fully comparable;
+however, wimlib may have even better performance on other operating systems such
+as Linux. Timings were done with 2 CPUs available, both of which automatically
+are used by wimlib for both XPRESS and LZX, and also by imagex.exe but
+apparently only for LZX.
+
+ Table 1. WIM size
+
+ XPRESS Compression LZX Compression
+ wimlib-imagex (v1.5.3): 207,444,390 bytes 188,106,091 bytes
+ Microsoft imagex.exe (Windows 7): 209,960,209 bytes 188,224,481 bytes
+
+ Table 2. Time to create WIM
+
+ XPRESS Compression LZX Compression
+ wimlib-imagex (v1.5.3): 73 sec 202 sec
+ Microsoft imagex.exe (Windows 7): 90 sec 149 sec
+
+The above LZX data are using explicitly specified maximum compression
+('--compress=maximum') as of wimlib v1.5.3. If `wimlib-imagex capture' or
+`wimlib-imagex capture' is instead run with no '--compress' argument, then a
+faster LZX compressor is used; it will produce results in between those given
+for XPRESS and LZX above.
+
+Note: if the absolute maximum but still compatible (i.e. not changing the
+compression chunk size) LZX compression ratio is desired, `wimlib-imagex
+optimize WIMFILE --recompress --compress-slow' on one of the above
+LZX-compressed WIMs produces a WIM of 187,089,943 bytes in about 400 seconds.
+
+ NTFS SUPPORT
+
+WIM images may contain data, such as alternate data streams and
+compression/encryption flags, that are best represented on the NTFS filesystem
+used on Windows. Also, WIM images may contain security descriptors which are
+specific to Windows and cannot be represented on other operating systems.
+wimlib handles this NTFS-specific or Windows-specific data in a
+platform-dependent way:
+
+ * In the Windows version of wimlib and wimlib-imagex, NTFS-specific and
+ Windows-specific data are supported natively.
+
+ * In the UNIX version of wimlib and wimlib-imagex, NTFS-specific and
+ Windows-specific data are ordinarily ignored; however, there is also special
+ support for capturing and extracting images directly to/from unmounted NTFS
+ volumes. This was made possible with the help of libntfs-3g from the
+ NTFS-3g project.
+
+For both platforms the code for NTFS capture and extraction is complete enough
+that it is possible to apply an image from the "install.wim" contained in recent
+Windows installation media (Vista, Windows 7, or Windows 8) directly to a NTFS
+filesystem, and then boot Windows from it after preparing the Boot Configuration
+Data. In addition, a Windows installation can be captured (or backed up) into a
+WIM file, and then re-applied later.
+
+ WINDOWS PE
+
+A major use for wimlib and wimlib-imagex is to create customized images of
+Windows PE, the Windows Preinstallation Environment, on either UNIX-like systems
+or Windows without having to rely on Microsoft's software and its restrictions
+and limitations.
+
+Windows PE is a lightweight version of Windows that can run entirely from memory
+and can be used to install Windows from local media or a network drive or
+perform maintenance. It is the operating system that runs when you boot from
+the Windows installation media.
+
+You can find Windows PE on the installation DVD for Windows Vista, Windows 7, or
+Windows 8, in the file `sources/boot.wim'. Windows PE can also be found in the
+Windows Automated Installation Kit (WAIK), which is free to download from
+Microsoft, inside the `WinPE.cab' file, which you can extract natively on
+Windows, or on UNIX-like systems if you install either the `cabextract' or
+`p7zip' programs.
+
+In addition, Windows installations and recovery partitions frequently contain a
+WIM containing an image of the Windows Recovery Environment, which is similar to
+Windows PE.
+
+A shell script `mkwinpeimg' is distributed with wimlib on UNIX-like systems to
+ease the process of creating and customizing a bootable Windows PE image.
+
+ DEPENDENCIES
+
+This section documents the dependencies of wimlib and the programs distributed
+with it, when building for a UNIX-like system from source. If you have
+downloaded the Windows binary distribution of wimlib and wimlib-imagex then all
+dependencies were already included and this section is irrelevant.
+
+* libxml2 (required)
+ This is a commonly used free library to read and write XML files. You
+ likely already have it installed as a dependency for some other program.
+ For more information see http://xmlsoft.org/.
+
+* libfuse (optional but highly recommended)
+ Unless configured with --without-fuse, wimlib requires a non-ancient
+ version of libfuse to be installed. Most Linux distributions already
+ include this, but make sure you have the libfuse package installed, and
+ also libfuse-dev if your distribution distributes header files
+ separately. FUSE also requires a kernel module. If the kernel module
+ is available it will automatically be loaded if you try to mount a WIM
+ file. For more information see http://fuse.sourceforge.net/. FUSE is
+ also available for FreeBSD.
+
+* libntfs-3g (optional but highly recommended)
+ Unless configured with --without-ntfs-3g, wimlib requires the library
+ and headers for libntfs-3g version 2011-4-12 or later to be installed.
+ Versions dated 2010-3-6 and earlier do not work because they are missing
+ the header xattrs.h (and the file xattrs.c, which contains functions we
+ need). libntfs-3g version 2013-1-13 is compatible only with wimlib
+ 1.2.4 and later.
+
+* OpenSSL / libcrypto (optional)
+ wimlib can use the SHA1 message digest code from OpenSSL instead of
+ compiling in yet another SHA1 implementation. (See LICENSE section.)
+
+* cdrkit (optional)
+* mtools (optional)
+* syslinux (optional)
+* cabextract (optional)
+ The `mkwinpeimg' shell script will look for several other programs
+ depending on what options are given to it. Depending on your Linux
+ distribution, you may already have these programs installed, or they may
+ be in the software repository. Making an ISO filesystem requires
+ `mkisofs' from `cdrkit' (http://www.cdrkit.org). Making a disk image
+ requires `mtools' (http://www.gnu.org/software/mtools) and `syslinux'
+ (http://www.syslinux.org). Retrieving files from the Windows Automated
+ Installation Kit requires `cabextract' (http://www.cabextract.org.uk).
+
+ CONFIGURATION
+
+This section documents the most important options that may be passed to the
+"configure" script when building from source:
+
+--without-ntfs-3g
+ If libntfs-3g is not available or is not version 2011-4-12 or later,
+ wimlib can be built without it, in which case it will not be possible to
+ apply or capture images directly to/from NTFS volumes.