3 This is wimlib version 1.0.2 (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 implementation 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.
28 A WIM file may be either stand-alone or split into multiple parts.
32 A major use for this library is to create customized images of Windows PE, the
33 Windows Preinstallation Environment, without having to rely on Windows. Windows
34 PE is a lightweight version of Windows that can run entirely from memory and can
35 be used to install Windows from local media or a network drive or perform
36 maintenance. Windows PE is the operating system that runs when you boot from
37 the Windows installation media.
39 You can find Windows PE on the installation DVD for Windows Vista, Windows 7, or
40 Windows 8, in the file `sources/boot.wim'. Windows PE can also be found in the
41 Windows Automated Installation Kit (WAIK), which is free to download from
42 Microsoft, inside the `WinPE.cab' file, which you can extract if you install
43 either the `cabextract' or `p7zip' programs.
45 In addition, Windows installations and recovery partitions frequently contain a
46 WIM containing an image of the Windows Recovery Environment, which is similar to
51 As of version 1.0.0, wimlib supports capturing and applying images directly to
52 NTFS volumes. This was made possible with the help of libntfs-3g from the
53 NTFS-3g project. This feature supports capturing and restoring NTFS-specific
54 data such as security descriptors, alternate data streams, and reparse point
57 The code for NTFS image capture and image application is complete enough that it
58 is possible to apply an image from the "install.wim" contained in recent Windows
59 installation media (Vista, Windows 7, or Windows 8) directly to a NTFS volume,
60 and then boot Windows from it after preparing the Boot Configuration Data. In
61 addition, a Windows installation can be captured (or backed up) into a WIM file,
62 and then re-applied later.
66 wimlib provides a public API for other programs to use, but also comes with two
67 programs: `imagex' and `mkwinpeimg'.
69 `imagex' is intended to be like the imagex.exe program from Windows. `imagex'
70 can be used to create, extract, and mount WIM files. Both read-only and
71 read-write mounts are supported. See the man page `doc/imagex.1' for more
74 `mkwinpeimg' is shell script that makes it easy to create a customized bootable
75 image of Windows PE that can be put on a CD or USB drive, or published on a
76 server for PXE booting. See the main page `doc/mkwinpeiso.1' for more details.
81 This is a commonly used free library to read and write XML files. You
82 likely already have it installed as a dependency for some other program.
83 For more information see http://xmlsoft.org/.
86 Unless configured with --without-fuse, wimlib requires a non-ancient
87 version of libfuse to be installed. Most GNU/Linux distributions
88 already include this, but make sure you have the libfuse package
89 installed, and also libfuse-dev if your distribution distributes header
90 files separately. FUSE also requires a kernel module. If the kernel
91 module is available it will automatically be loaded if you try to mount
92 a WIM file. For more information see http://fuse.sourceforge.net/.
93 FUSE is also available for FreeBSD.
96 Unless configured with --without-ntfs-3g, wimlib requires the library
97 and headers for libntfs-3g version 2011-4-12 or later to be installed.
98 Versions dated 2010-3-6 and earlier do not work because they are missing
99 the header xattrs.h (and the file xattrs.c, which contains functions we
104 * syslinux (optional)
105 * cabextract (optional)
106 The `mkwinpeimg' shell script will look for several other programs
107 depending on what options are given to it. Depending on your GNU/Linux
108 distribution, you may already have these programs installed, or they may
109 be in the software repository. Making an ISO filesystem requires
110 `mkisofs' from `cdrkit' (http://www.cdrkit.org). Making a disk image
111 requires `mtools' (http://www.gnu.org/software/mtools) and `syslinux'
112 (http://www.syslinux.org). Retrieving files from the Windows Automated
113 Installation Kit requires `cabextract' (http://www.cabextract.org.uk).
118 Besides the various well-known options, the following options can be passed to
119 wimlib's `configure' script:
122 If libntfs-3g is not available or is not the correct version, we can
123 build without it. wimlib will then not be able to apply or capture
124 images directly to NTFS volumes.
127 If libfuse or the FUSE kernel module is not available, wimlib can be
128 compiled with --without-fuse. This will remove the ability to mount and
129 unmount WIM files. wimlib_mount() and wimlib_unmount() will fail with
130 WIMLIB_ERR_UNSUPPORTED.
133 Build in functions for SHA1 rather than using external SHA1 functions
134 from libcrypto (part of OpenSSL). The default is to use libcrypto if it
135 is found on the system.
137 --enable-xattr, --disable-xattr
138 Enable or disable support for the extended-attributes interface to NTFS
139 alternate data streams in mounted WIMs. To support these, we require
140 the setxattr() function and the attr/xattr.h header be available. The
141 default is to autodetect whether support is possible.
144 Use a very fast assembly language implementation of SHA1 from Intel.
145 Only use this if the build target supports the SSSE3 instructions.
147 --disable-custom-memory-allocator
148 If this option is given, MALLOC(), FREE(), CALLOC(), and STRDUP() will
149 directly call the appropriate functions in the C library.
150 wimlib_set_memory_allocator() will fail with WIMLIB_ERR_UNSUPPORTED.
152 --disable-verify-compression
153 Unless this option is given, every time wimlib compresses a data block
154 it will decompress it into a temporary buffer and abort() the program
155 with an error message if the decompressed data does not exactly match
156 the original data. This is to find bugs.
158 --disable-error-messages
159 Removes all error messages from the library. If left in, they still
160 have to explicitly turned on with wimlib_set_print_errors() in order to
161 see them. Also, error codes will still be returned regardless of
162 whether error messages are printed or not.
164 If --disable-error-messages is given, wimlib_set_print_errors() will
165 fail with WIMLIB_ERR_UNSUPPORTED if the action is to turn error messages
169 Remove all assertions. Without this option, wimlib will abort() the
170 program if an assertion fails. An assertion failure should only occur
171 if there is a bug in wimlib.
174 Include debugging messages. Only use this option if you have found a
178 Include more debugging messages. Only use this option if you have found
179 a bug in the library.
183 wimlib has mostly been developed and tested on x86_64 (64-bit) GNU/Linux.
185 It has been tested on x86 (32-bit) GNU/Linux occasionally.
187 wimlib may work on FreeBSD. However, this is not well tested. If you do not
188 have libntfs-3g 2011-4-12 or later available, you must configure with
189 --without-ntfs-3g. Also, GNU coreutils is needed to run the test suite. Before
190 mounting a WIM you need to load the POSIX message queue module (run `kldload
193 wimlib should work on big endian machines but it has not been tested.
195 There are no plans to port wimlib to Windows since the programming interface on
196 Windows is very different and Microsoft's imagex.exe is already available.
200 The WIM file format is specified in a document that can be found in the
201 Microsoft Download Center. There is a similar document that specifies the LZX
202 compression format, and a document that specifies the XPRESS compression format.
203 However, many parts of these formats are poorly documented, and some parts have
204 no documentation whatsoever. Some particularly poorly documented parts of the
205 formats have had comments added in various places in the library. Please see
206 the code and/or ask me if you have any questions about the WIM file format as it
207 exists in reality and not as it exists in Microsoft's poorly written
210 The code in ntfs-apply.c and ntfs-capture.c uses the NTFS-3g library, which is a
211 library for reading and writing to NTFS filesystems (the filesystem used by
212 recent versions of Windows). Additionally, the code in ntfs-3g-security.c is
213 mostly copied from NTFS-3g, but I'm hoping to get rid of this file eventually.
214 See http://www.tuxera.com/community/ntfs-3g-download/ for more information.
216 lzx-decomp.c, the code to decompress WIM file resources that are compressed
217 using LZX compression, is originally based on code from the cabextract project
218 (http://www.cabextract.org.uk).
220 lzx-comp.c, the code to compress WIM file resources using LZX compression, is
221 originally based on code written by Matthew Russotto (www.russotto.net/chm/).
223 lz.c, the code to find LZ77 matches (used for both XPRESS and LZX compression),
224 is based on code from zlib.
226 A very limited number of other free programs can handle some parts of the WIM
227 file format. 7-zip is able to extract and create WIMs (as well as files in many
228 other archive formats). However, wimlib is designed specifically to handle WIM
229 files and provides features previously only available in Microsoft's imagex.exe,
230 such as the ability to mount WIMs read-write as well as read-only, and the
231 ability to create LZX or XPRESS compressed WIMs.
233 An earlier version of wimlib is being used to deploy Windows 7 from the Ultimate
234 Deployment Appliance. For more information see
235 http://www.ultimatedeployment.org/.
237 You can see the documentation about Microsoft's version of the imagex program at
238 http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc749447(v=ws.10).aspx, so you can
243 See the manual pages for `imagex', the manual pages for the subcommands of
244 `imagex', and the manual page for `mkwinpeimg'.
246 As of version 0.5.0, wimlib's public API is documented. Doxygen is required to
247 build the documentation. To build the documentation, run `configure', then
248 enter the directory `doc' and run `doxygen'. The HTML documentation will be
249 created in a directory named `html'.
253 As of version 1.0.0, wimlib is released under the GNU GPL version 3.0 or later.
254 This includes the files in the `programs' directory as well as the files in the
257 wimlib is independently developed and does not contain any code, data, or files
258 copyrighted by Microsoft. It is not known to be affected by any patents.
262 wimlib is experimental. Use Microsoft's `imagex.exe' if you want to make sure
263 your WIM files are made correctly (but beware: Microsoft's version contains some
266 Please submit a bug report (to ebiggers3@gmail.com) if you find a bug in wimlib.
268 Some parts of the WIM file format are poorly documented or even completely
269 undocumented, so I've just had to do the best I can to read and write WIMs that
270 appear to be compatible with Microsoft's software.
git://wimlib.net / wimlib / blob