3 This is wimlib version 1.0.0 (September 2012). wimlib can be used to read,
4 write, and mount files in the Windows Imaging Format (WIM files). These
5 files are normally created by using the `imagex.exe' utility on Windows,
6 but this library provides a free implementetion of imagex for UNIX-based
11 A Windows Imaging (WIM) file is an archive. Like some other archive formats
12 such as ZIP, files in WIM archives may be compressed. WIM archives support two
13 Microsoft-specific compression formats: LZX and XPRESS. Both are based on LZ77
14 and Huffman encoding, and both are supported by wimlib.
16 Unlike ZIP files, WIM files can contain multiple independent toplevel directory
17 trees known as images. While each image has its own metadata describing a
18 directory tree and file access modes, files are not duplicated for each image;
19 instead, each file is included only once in the entire WIM. Microsoft did this
20 so that in one WIM file, they could do things like have 5 different versions of
21 Windows that are almost exactly the same.
23 Microsoft provides documentation for the WIM file format, XPRESS compression
24 format, and LZX compression format. The XPRESS documentation is acceptable, but
25 the LZX documentation is not entirely correct, and the WIM documentation itself
26 is very incomplete and is of unacceptable quality.
30 A major use for this library is to create customized images of Windows PE, the
31 Windows Preinstallation Environment, without having to rely on Windows. Windows
32 PE is a lightweight version of Windows that can run entirely from memory and can
33 be used to install Windows from local media or a network drive or perform
34 maintenance. Windows PE is the operating system that runs when you boot from
35 the Windows installation media.
37 You can find Windows PE on the installation DVD for Windows Vista, Windows 7, or
38 Windows 8, in the file `sources/boot.wim'. Windows PE can also be found in the
39 Windows Automated Installation Kit (WAIK), which is free to download from
40 Microsoft, inside the `WinPE.cab' file, which you can extract if you install
41 either the `cabextract' or `p7zip' programs.
43 In addition, Windows installations and recovery partitions frequently contain a
44 WIM containing an image of the Windows Recovery Environment, which is similar to
49 As of version 1.0.0, wimlib supports capturing and applying images directly to
50 NTFS volumes. This was made possible with the help of libntfs-3g from the
51 NTFS-3g project. This feature supports capturing and restoring NTFS-specific
52 data such as security descriptors, alternate data streams, and reparse point
55 The code for NTFS image capture and image application is complete enough that it
56 is possible to apply an image from the "install.wim" contained in recent Windows
57 installation media (Vista, Windows 7, or Windows 8) directly to a NTFS volume,
58 and then boot Windows from it after preparing the Boot Configuration Data. In
59 addition, a Windows installation can be captured (or backed up) into a WIM file,
60 and then re-applied later.
64 wimlib provides a public API for other programs to use, but also comes with two
65 programs: `imagex' and `mkwinpeimg'.
67 `imagex' is intended to be like the imagex.exe program from Windows. `imagex'
68 can be used to create, extract, and mount WIM files. Both read-only and
69 read-write mounts are supported. See the man page `doc/imagex.1' for more
72 `mkwinpeimg' is shell script that makes it easy to create a customized bootable
73 image of Windows PE that can be put on a CD or USB drive, or published on a
74 server for PXE booting. See the main page `doc/mkwinpeiso.1' for more details.
79 This is a commonly used free library to read and write XML files. You
80 likely already have it installed as a dependency for some other program.
81 For more information see http://xmlsoft.org/.
84 Unless configured with --without-fuse, wimlib requires a non-ancient
85 version of libfuse to be installed. see above). Most GNU/Linux
86 distributions already include this, but make sure you have the libfuse
87 package installed (libfuse-dev if your distribution distributes header
88 files separately). FUSE also requires a kernel module.
89 If the kernel module is available it will automatically be loaded if you
90 try to mount a WIM file. For more information see
91 http://fuse.sourceforge.net/. FUSE is also available for FreeBSD.
94 Unless configured with --without-ntfs-3g, wimlib requires the library
95 and headers for libntfs-3g to be installed. Currently, the version
96 dated 2012-1-15 is required because I've cloned some of the code from
101 * syslinux (optional)
102 * cabextract (optional)
103 The `mkwinpeimg' shell script will look for several other programs
104 depending on what options are given to it. Depending on your GNU/Linux
105 distribution, you may already have these programs installed, or they may
106 be in the software repository. Making an ISO filesystem requires
107 `mkisofs' from `cdrkit' (http://www.cdrkit.org). Making a disk image
108 requires `mtools' (http://www.gnu.org/software/mtools) and `syslinux'
109 (http://www.syslinux.org). Retrieving files from the Windows Automated
110 Installation Kit requires `cabextract' (http://www.cabextract.org.uk).
115 Besides the various well-known options, the following options can be passed to
116 wimlib's `configure' script:
119 If libntfs-3g is not available or is not the correct version, we can
120 build without it. wimlib will then not be able to apply or capture
121 images directly to NTFS volumes.
124 If libfuse or the FUSE kernel module is not available, wimlib can be
125 compiled with --without-fuse. This will remove the ability to mount and
126 unmount WIM files. wimlib_mount() and wimlib_unmount() will fail with
127 WIMLIB_ERR_UNSUPPORTED.
130 Build in functions for SHA1 rather than using external SHA1 functions
131 from libcrypto (part of OpenSSL). The default is to use libcrypto if it
132 is found on the system.
134 --enable-xattr, --disable-xattr
135 Enable or disable support for the extended-attributes interface to NTFS
136 alternate data streams in mounted WIMs. To support these, we require
137 the setxattr() function and the attr/xattr.h header be available. The
138 default is to autodetect whether support is possible.
141 Use a very fast assembly language implementation of SHA1 from Intel.
142 Only use this if the build target supports the SSSE3 instructions.
144 --disable-custom-memory-allocator
145 If this option is given, MALLOC(), FREE(), CALLOC(), and STRDUP() will
146 directly call the appropriate functions in the C library.
147 wimlib_set_memory_allocator() will fail with WIMLIB_ERR_UNSUPPORTED.
149 --disable-verify-compression
150 Unless this option is given, every time wimlib compresses a data block
151 it will decompress it into a temporary buffer and abort() the program
152 with an error message if the decompressed data does not exactly match
153 the original data. This is to find bugs.
155 --disable-error-messages
156 Removes all error messages from the library. If left in, they still
157 have to explicitly turned on with wimlib_set_print_errors() in order to
158 see them. Also, error codes will still be returned regardless of
159 whether error messages are printed or not.
161 If --disable-error-messages is given, wimlib_set_print_errors() will
162 fail with WIMLIB_ERR_UNSUPPORTED if the action is to turn error messages
166 Remove all assertions. Without this option, wimlib will abort() the
167 program if an assertion fails. An assertion failure should only occur
168 if there is a bug in wimlib.
171 Include debugging messages. Only use this option if you have found a
175 Include more debugging messages. Only use this option if you have found
176 a bug in the library.
180 wimlib has mostly been developed and tested on x86_64 (64-bit) GNU/Linux.
182 It has been tested on x86 (32-bit) GNU/Linux occasionally.
184 I have tested a previous version of wimlib on FreeBSD and it worked, but this is
185 not well tested, especially with the more recent versions of this software.
187 wimlib should work on big endian machines but it has not been tested.
189 There are no plans to port wimlib to Windows since the programming interface on
190 Windows is very different and Microsoft's imagex.exe is already available.
194 The WIM file format is specified in a document that can be found in the
195 Microsoft Download Center. There is a similar document that specifies the LZX
196 compression format, and a document that specifies the XPRESS compression format.
197 However, many parts of these formats are poorly documented, and some parts have
198 no documentation whatsoever. Some particularly poorly documented parts of the
199 formats have had comments added in various places in the library. Please see
200 the code and/or ask me if you have any questions about the WIM file format as it
201 exists in reality and not as it exists in Microsoft's poorly written
204 The code in ntfs-apply.c and ntfs-capture.c uses the NTFS-3g library, which is a
205 library for reading and writing to NTFS filesystems (the filesystem used by
206 recent versions of Windows). Additionally, the code in ntfs-3g-security.c is
207 mostly copied from NTFS-3g, but I'm hoping to get rid of this file eventually.
208 See http://www.tuxera.com/community/ntfs-3g-download/ for more information.
210 lzx-decomp.c, the code to decompress WIM file resources that are compressed
211 using LZX compression, is originally based on code from the cabextract project
212 (http://www.cabextract.org.uk).
214 lzx-comp.c, the code to compress WIM file resources using LZX compression, is
215 originally based on code written by Matthew Russotto (www.russotto.net/chm/).
217 lz.c, the code to find LZ77 matches (used for both XPRESS and LZX compression),
218 is based on code from zlib.
220 A very limited number of other free programs can handle some parts of the WIM
221 file format. 7-zip is able to extract and create WIMs (as well as files in many
222 other archive formats). However, wimlib is designed specifically to handle WIM
223 files and provides features previously only available in Microsoft's imagex.exe,
224 such as the ability to mount WIMs read-write as well as read-only, and the
225 ability to create LZX or XPRESS compressed WIMs.
227 An earlier version of wimlib is being used to deploy Windows 7 from the Ultimate
228 Deployment Appliance. For more information see
229 http://www.ultimatedeployment.org/.
231 You can see the documentation about Microsoft's version of the imagex program at
232 http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc749447(v=ws.10).aspx, so you can
237 See the manual pages for `imagex', the manual pages for the subcommands of
238 `imagex', and the manual page for `mkwinpeimg'.
240 As of version 0.5.0, wimlib's public API is documented. Doxygen is required to
241 build the documentation. To build the documentation, run `configure', then
242 enter the directory `doc' and run `doxygen'. The HTML documentation will be
243 created in a directory named `html'.
247 As of version 1.0.0, wimlib is released under the GNU GPL version 3.0 or later.
248 This includes the files in the `programs' directory.
252 wimlib is experimental. Use Microsoft's `imagex.exe' if you want to make sure
253 your WIM files are made correctly (but beware: Microsoft's version contains some
256 Please submit a bug report (to ebiggers3@gmail.com) if you find a bug in wimlib.
258 Some parts of the WIM file format are poorly documented or even completely
259 undocumented, so I've just had to do the best I can to read and write WIMs that
260 appear to be compatible with Microsoft's software.
git://wimlib.net / wimlib / blob