X-Git-Url: https://wimlib.net/git/?a=blobdiff_plain;f=README;h=6715a1f669d9b1223e8fa69327ab0652bef76bae;hb=HEAD;hp=e74c23f603b1c4a07dc205a9dcfb780aa8ae1e00;hpb=aa4181df46a32e7818ff982c57acbb1e5c4c8c85;p=wimlib diff --git a/README b/README deleted file mode 100644 index e74c23f6..00000000 --- a/README +++ /dev/null @@ -1,341 +0,0 @@ - WIMLIB - -This is wimlib version 1.0.4 (October 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 implementation of imagex for UNIX-based -systems. - - WIM FILES - -A Windows Imaging (WIM) file is an archive. Like some other archive formats -such as ZIP, files in WIM archives may be compressed. WIM archives support two -Microsoft-specific compression formats: LZX and XPRESS. Both are based on LZ77 -and Huffman encoding, and both are supported by wimlib. - -Unlike ZIP files, WIM files can contain multiple independent toplevel directory -trees known as images. While each image has its own metadata describing a -directory tree and file access modes, files are not duplicated for each image; -instead, each file is included only once in the entire WIM. Microsoft did this -so that in one WIM file, they could do things like have 5 different versions of -Windows that are almost exactly the same. - -Microsoft provides documentation for the WIM file format, XPRESS compression -format, and LZX compression format. The XPRESS documentation is acceptable, but -the LZX documentation is not entirely correct, and the WIM documentation itself -is very incomplete and is of unacceptable quality. - -A WIM file may be either stand-alone or split into multiple parts. - - PROGRAMS - -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/mkwinpeimg.1' for more details. - - COMPRESSION RATIO - -wimlib can create XPRESS or LZX compressed WIM archives. As of wimlib v1.0.3, -the XPRESS compression ratio is slightly better than that provided by -Microsoft's software, while the LZX compression ratio is approaching that of -Microsoft's software but is not quite there yet. Running time is as good as or -better than Microsoft's software. - -The following tables compare the compression ratio and performance for creating -a compressed Windows PE image (disk usage of about 524 MB, uncompressed WIM size -361 MB): - - Table 1. WIM size - - XPRESS Compression LZX Compression - wimlib imagex (v1.0.2): 145,283,871 bytes 139,288,293 bytes - wimlib imagex (v1.0.3): 139,288,293 bytes 131,379,869 bytes - Microsoft imagex.exe: 140,406,981 bytes 127,249,176 bytes - - Table 2. Time to create WIM - - XPRESS Compression LZX Compression - wimlib imagex (v1.0.2): 18 sec 49 sec - wimlib imagex (v1.0.3): 19 sec 30 sec - Microsoft imagex.exe: 25 sec 89 sec - - NTFS SUPPORT - -As of version 1.0.0, wimlib supports capturing and applying images directly to -NTFS volumes. This was made possible with the help of libntfs-3g from the -NTFS-3g project. This feature supports capturing and restoring NTFS-specific -data such as security descriptors, alternate data streams, and reparse point -data. - -The code for NTFS image capture and image application 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 volume, -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 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 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 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. - - DEPENDENCIES - -* 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 GNU/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). - -* 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 GNU/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 - -Besides the various well-known options, the following options can be passed to -wimlib's `configure' script: - ---without-ntfs-3g - If libntfs-3g is not available or is not version 2011-4-12 or later, we - can build without it. wimlib will then not be able to apply or capture - images directly to NTFS volumes. - ---without-fuse - If libfuse or the FUSE kernel module is not available, wimlib can be - compiled with --without-fuse. This will remove the ability to mount and - unmount WIM files. wimlib_mount() and wimlib_unmount() will fail with - WIMLIB_ERR_UNSUPPORTED. - ---without-libcrypto - Build in functions for SHA1 rather than using external SHA1 functions - from libcrypto (part of OpenSSL). The default is to use libcrypto if it - is found on the system. - ---enable-xattr, --disable-xattr - Enable or disable support for the extended-attributes interface to NTFS - alternate data streams in mounted WIMs. To support these, we require - the setxattr() function and the attr/xattr.h header be available. The - default is to autodetect whether support is possible. - ---enable-ssse3-sha1 - Use a very fast assembly language implementation of SHA1 from Intel. - Only use this if the build target supports the SSSE3 instructions. - ---disable-custom-memory-allocator - If this option is given, MALLOC(), FREE(), CALLOC(), and STRDUP() will - directly call the appropriate functions in the C library. - wimlib_set_memory_allocator() will fail with WIMLIB_ERR_UNSUPPORTED. - ---disable-verify-compression - Unless this option is given, every time wimlib compresses a data block - it will decompress it into a temporary buffer and abort() the program - with an error message if the decompressed data does not exactly match - the original data. This is to find bugs. - ---disable-error-messages - Removes all error messages from the library. If left in, they still - have to explicitly turned on with wimlib_set_print_errors() in order to - see them. Also, error codes will still be returned regardless of - whether error messages are printed or not. - - If --disable-error-messages is given, wimlib_set_print_errors() will - fail with WIMLIB_ERR_UNSUPPORTED if the action is to turn error messages - on. - ---disable-assertions - Remove all assertions. Without this option, wimlib will abort() the - program if an assertion fails. An assertion failure should only occur - if there is a bug in the library. - ---enable-debug - Include debugging messages. Only use this option if you have found a - bug in the library. - ---enable-more-debug - Include more debugging messages. Only use this option if you have found - a bug in the library. - - PORTABILITY - -wimlib has mostly been developed and tested on x86_64 (64-bit) GNU/Linux. - -It has been tested on x86 (32-bit) GNU/Linux occasionally. - -wimlib may work on FreeBSD. However, this is not well tested. If you do not -have libntfs-3g 2011-4-12 or later available, you must configure with ---without-ntfs-3g. Also, GNU coreutils is needed to run the test suite. Before -mounting a WIM you need to load the POSIX message queue module (run `kldload -mqueuefs'). - -wimlib should work on big endian machines but it has not been tested. - -There are no plans to port wimlib to Windows since the programming interface on -Windows is very different and Microsoft's imagex.exe is already available. - - REFERENCES - -The WIM file format is specified in a document that can be found in the -Microsoft Download Center. There is a similar document that specifies the LZX -compression format, and a document that specifies the XPRESS compression format. -However, many parts of these formats are poorly documented, and some parts have -no documentation whatsoever. Some particularly poorly documented parts of the -formats have had comments added in various places in the library. Please see -the code and/or ask me if you have any questions about the WIM file format as it -exists in reality and not as it exists in Microsoft's poorly written -documentation. - -The code in ntfs-apply.c and ntfs-capture.c uses the NTFS-3g library, which is a -library for reading and writing to NTFS filesystems (the filesystem used by -recent versions of Windows). See -http://www.tuxera.com/community/ntfs-3g-download/ for more information. - -lzx-decomp.c, the code to decompress WIM file resources that are compressed -using LZX compression, is originally based on code from the cabextract project -(http://www.cabextract.org.uk). - -lzx-comp.c, the code to compress WIM file resources using LZX compression, is -originally based on code written by Matthew Russotto (www.russotto.net/chm/). - -lz.c, the code to find LZ77 matches (used for both XPRESS and LZX compression), -is based on code from zlib. - -A very limited number of other free programs can handle some parts of the WIM -file format. 7-zip is able to extract and create WIMs (as well as files in many -other archive formats). However, wimlib is designed specifically to handle WIM -files and provides features previously only available in Microsoft's imagex.exe, -such as the ability to mount WIMs read-write as well as read-only, and the -ability to create LZX or XPRESS compressed WIMs. - -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/. - -You can see the documentation about Microsoft's version of the imagex program at -http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc749447(v=ws.10).aspx, so you can -see how it compares. - - GNU/Linux equivalents of WIM format - -What's the equivalent way to capture the filesystem of a GNU/Linux operating -system into an archive file? You have a few options: - -SquashFS: - SquashFS (http://squashfs.sourceforge.net/) provides a compressed, - read-only filesystem for Linux, and it's probably the closest equivalent - of the WIM format and better designed. Although you can't mount - SquashFS read-write, when wimlib does this for WIM files it's really an - illusion since the WIM isn't actually modified until the image is - unmounted. Multiple top-level images in SquashFS files are not - supported, although nothing stops you from just putting each image in a - separate directory. - -FSArchiver: - FSArchiver (http://www.fsarchiver.org/Main_Page) is not widely used, but - it appears to have some features quite similar to the WIM format. - -Tar: - The well-known tar format can usually capture a UNIX filesystem just - fine, and compressing the tar file produces a good compression ratio - (better than WIM, especially if using XZ compression), but there is no - support for random access, file deduplication, multiple images per - archive, or extended attributes. - -Zip: - Zip shares some features with WIM but is not designed to store entire - filesystems. - -7z: - The 7z format has some nice features but is unfortunately not designed - with UNIX in mind. - - MORE INFORMATION - -See the manual pages for `imagex', the manual pages for the subcommands of -`imagex', and the manual page for `mkwinpeimg'. - -As of version 0.5.0, wimlib's public API is documented. Doxygen is required to -build the documentation. To build the documentation, run `configure', then -enter the directory `doc' and run `doxygen'. The HTML documentation will be -created in a directory named `html'. - - LICENSE - -As of version 1.0.0, wimlib is released under the GNU GPL version 3.0 or later. -This includes the files in the `programs' directory as well as the files in the -`src' directory. - -wimlib is independently developed and does not contain any code, data, or files -copyrighted by Microsoft. It is not known to be affected by any patents. - -By default, wimlib will be linked to the system library "libcrypto", which -probably will be OpenSSL. Some people believe that GPL code cannot be linked to -OpenSSL without a linking exception. As far as I know, I cannot officially -include a linking exception with the license of this library because several -files could be considered derived works of LGPL code copyrighted by others. If -you believe this to be a problem, configure with --without-libcrypto to avoid -linking with OpenSSL. There is no difference in functionality--- there will -just be stand-alone SHA1 message digest code built into the library. - - DISCLAIMER - -wimlib is experimental. Use Microsoft's `imagex.exe' if you want to make sure -your WIM files are made correctly (but beware: Microsoft's version contains some -bugs). - -Please submit a bug report (to ebiggers3@gmail.com) if you find a bug in wimlib. - -Some parts of the WIM file format are poorly documented or even completely -undocumented, so I've just had to do the best I can to read and write WIMs that -appear to be compatible with Microsoft's software.