1 .TH IMAGEX 1 "May 2012" "imagex (wimlib @VERSION@)" "User Commands"
3 imagex \- Create, modify, extract, mount, or unmount a WIM (Windows Imaging Format) archive
5 \fBimagex append\fR \fIarguments...\fR
7 \fBimagex apply\fR \fIarguments...\fR
9 \fBimagex capture\fR \fIarguments...\fR
11 \fBimagex delete\fR \fIarguments...\fR
13 \fBimagex dir\fR \fIarguments...\fR
15 \fBimagex export\fR \fIarguments...\fR
17 \fBimagex info\fR \fIarguments...\fR
19 \fBimagex join\fR \fIarguments...\fR
21 \fBimagex mount\fR \fIarguments...\fR
23 \fBimagex mountrw\fR \fIarguments...\fR
25 \fBimagex unmount\fR \fIarguments...\fR
28 \fBimagex\fR is able to deal with archives in the Windows Imaging Format (.wim
29 files). Its interface is meant to be similar to Microsoft's imagex.exe program.
31 To do its work, \fBimagex\fR uses \fBwimlib\fR, a library which provides
32 interfaces for manipulating WIM archives. You could wimlib in your own programs
33 if you wanted to. Wimlib's public interface is documented.
39 There is a separate manual page for each \fBimagex\fR command.
41 .SH SUPPORTED FEATURES
43 The following features are currently supported:
46 Mount an image in a WIM read-only (\fBimagex mount\fR)
48 Mount an image in a WIM read-write (\fBimagex mountrw\fR)
50 LZX decompression and compression
52 XPRESS decompression and compression
56 XML data (parsed and written using \fBlibxml\fR(3))
58 Create a WIM from a directory (\fBimagex capture\fR)
60 Append a directory onto a WIM as a new image (\fBimagex append\fR)
62 Delete image(s) from a WIM (\fBimagex delete\fR)
64 Export image(s) from a WIM (\fBimagex export\fR)
66 Display information about a WIM file (\fBimagex info\fR, \fBimagex dir\fR)
68 Change the name or description of an image in the WIM (\fBimagex info\fR)
70 Change which image in a WIM is bootable (\fBimagex info\fR)
72 Combining split WIMs into one WIM (\fB image join\fR)
74 .SH UNSUPPORTED FEATURES
75 The following features are currently unsupported:
77 File permissions and security descriptors are ignored. The information
78 contained in them in an existing WIM will be lost when wimlib writes a WIM file.
79 This does not seem to matter for Windows PE, but this means that you should not
80 use this program to image a drive containing Windows Vista/7/8 and expect it to
81 be applied with the correct file permissions.
83 Split WIMs are not fully supported. These can be used to split up a WIM to fit
84 on multiple CDs, if you can't use a DVD for some reason. You can use
85 \fBimagex join\fR to combine split WIMs, but you cannot yet create split WIMs.
87 The \fB--verify\fR option, for all commands that use it. Without this option,
88 there theoretically could be a SHA1 hash collision between two files, although
91 The \fB--config\fR option, for all commands that use it.
93 Alternate stream entries
95 Different versions of the WIM file format (if different versions even exist)
97 Also see the Doxygen documentation for Wimlib.
99 .SH DIFFERENCES FROM MICROSOFT IMAGEX
101 See \fBUNSUPPORTED FEATURES\fR.
103 The \fB/scroll\fR and \fB/log\fR switches from Microsoft's version imagex are
104 not planned to be implemented. Note that to scroll the output in the UNIX shell
105 you can just pipe the output into \fBless\fR(1).
107 Some features, such as the ability to keep files hard-linked when they are
108 extracted from a WIM, are not available in Microsoft's version of imagex.
110 See the documentation for each command; in some cases they do not do exactly the
111 same thing as imagex.exe.
113 Obviously, this version of imagex is free software but Microsoft's version is
118 Note: \fBwimlib\fR and \fBimagex\fR are experimental. Use Microsoft's
119 imagex.exe if you have to make sure your WIM files are made correctly. Not all
120 features listed under \fBSUPPORTED FEATURES\fR have been thoroughly tested.
121 Feel free to submit a bug report if you find a bug.
123 Some parts of the WIM file format are poorly documented or even completely
124 undocumented, so these parts had to be reverse engineered for compatibility
129 Report bugs to ebiggers3@gmail.com.
132 .BR imagex-append (1),
133 .BR imagex-apply (1),
134 .BR imagex-capture (1),
135 .BR imagex-delete (1),
137 .BR imagex-export (1),
140 .BR imagex-mount (1),
141 .BR imagex-mountrw (1),
142 .BR imagex-unmount (1),