1 .TH WIMLIB-IMAGEX "1" "June 2016" "wimlib 1.9.2" "User Commands"
3 wimlib-imagex-capture, wimlib-imagex-append \- Create or append a WIM image
5 \fBwimlib-imagex capture\fR \fISOURCE\fR \fIWIMFILE\fR [\fIIMAGE_NAME\fR \
6 [\fIIMAGE_DESCRIPTION\fR]] [\fIOPTION\fR...]
8 \fBwimlib-imagex append\fR \fISOURCE\fR \fIWIMFILE\fR [\fIIMAGE_NAME\fR \
9 [\fIIMAGE_DESCRIPTION\fR]] [\fIOPTION\fR...]
11 The \fBwimlib-imagex capture\fR and \fBwimlib-imagex append\fR commands
12 create a Windows Imaging (WIM) image from a directory tree. The
13 \fBwimlib-imagex capture\fR command creates a new WIM file containing the
14 captured image, while the \fBwimlib-imagex append\fR command appends the
15 captured image to an existing WIM file.
16 These commands are also available as simply \fBwimcapture\fR and \fBwimappend\fR
17 if the appropriate hard links or batch files are installed.
19 Background information: A WIM image is an independent directory tree in a WIM
20 file. A WIM file may contain any number of separate images. WIM files are
21 single-instancing with regards to file data, so a file is stored only one time
22 in the entire WIM, regardless of how many images the file appears in.
24 \fISOURCE\fR specifies the location of the files to create the new WIM image
25 from. If \fISOURCE\fR is a directory, the WIM image is captured from that
26 directory (see \fBDIRECTORY CAPTURE (UNIX)\fR or \fBDIRECTORY CAPTURE
27 (WINDOWS)\fR). Alternatively, if the \fB--source-list\fR option is specified,
28 \fISOURCE\fR is interpreted as a file that itself provides a list of
29 files and directories to include in the new WIM image. Still
30 alternatively, only on UNIX-like systems, if \fISOURCE\fR is a
31 regular file or block device, it is interpreted as an NTFS volume from
32 which a WIM image is to be captured using libntfs-3g (see \fBNTFS VOLUME CAPTURE
35 \fIIMAGE_NAME\fR and \fIIMAGE_DESCRIPTION\fR specify the name and description to
36 give the new WIM image. If \fIIMAGE_NAME\fR is not specified, it defaults to
37 the base name (excluding path to parent directory) of \fISOURCE\fR, but if this
38 name already exists in \fIWIMFILE\fR, a unique suffix is added. Otherwise,
39 \fIIMAGE_NAME\fR must be either a name that does not already exist as an image in
40 \fIWIMFILE\fR, or the empty string to create an image with no name. If
41 \fIIMAGE_DESCRIPTION\fR is not specified, no description is given to the new
44 As a special case, if \fIWIMFILE\fR is "-", the \fB--pipable\fR option is
45 assumed and the WIM file is written to standard output in a special pipable
46 format. See the documentation for \fB--pipable\fR for more details.
47 .SH DIRECTORY CAPTURE (UNIX)
48 This section documents how \fBwimlib-imagex\fR captures files from a
49 directory tree on UNIX-like systems. See \fBDIRECTORY CAPTURE (WINDOWS)\fR for
50 the corresponding documentation for Windows.
52 On UNIX-like systems, when \fISOURCE\fR specifies a directory or a symbolic link
53 to a directory, the WIM image will be captured from the directory tree rooted at
54 this directory. This directory can be on any type of filesystem, and
55 mountpoints are followed recursively. In this mode, wimlib will store the
56 following types of information:
58 Directories and regular files, and the contents of regular files
62 Symbolic links (translated losslessly to Windows reparse points)
64 Last modification times (mtime) and last access times (atime) with 100
65 nanosecond granularity
67 With \fB--unix-data\fR: UNIX owners, groups, and modes
69 With \fB--unix-data\fR: device nodes, FIFOs, and UNIX domain sockets
71 There is no support for storing extended attributes (e.g. SELinux security
72 labels and POSIX ACLs), last status change times (ctimes), or hard link
73 information for symbolic link files (each symbolic link will be stored as an
74 independent file). In addition, filenames and symbolic link targets on UNIX
75 filesystems which are not valid UTF-8 with the addition of surrogate codepoints
76 are unsupported. Note: if you have a filesystem containing filenames in another
77 multibyte encoding, such as ISO-8859-1, and you wish to archive it with wimlib,
78 you may be able to mount it with an option which causes its filenames to be
80 .SH NTFS VOLUME CAPTURE (UNIX)
81 This section documents how \fBwimlib-imagex\fR captures files directly from
82 an NTFS volume image on UNIX-like systems.
84 On UNIX-like systems, a special image capture mode is entered when \fISOURCE\fR
85 is a regular file or block device. In this mode, \fISOURCE\fR is assumed to be
86 an NTFS volume or volume image, and \fBwimlib-imagex\fR will capture a WIM
87 image containing the full contents of the NTFS volume, including NTFS-specific
88 data. This is done using libntfs-3g.
90 Note that the NTFS volume capture mode is \fInot\fR entered if \fISOURCE\fR is a
91 directory, even if an NTFS filesystem is mounted on \fISOURCE\fR using ntfs-3g.
92 You must specify the NTFS volume itself (and it must be unmounted, and you must
93 have permission to read from it).
95 The NTFS volume capture mode attempts to capture as much data and metadata as
98 All data streams of all unencrypted files, including the unnamed data stream as
99 well as all named data streams.
101 Reparse points, including symbolic links, junction points, and other reparse
104 File and directory creation, access, and modification timestamps, using the
105 native NTFS resolution of 100 nanoseconds.
107 Windows security descriptors, including all components (owner, group, DACL, and
110 DOS/Windows file attribute flags.
112 All names of all files, including names in the Win32 namespace, DOS namespace,
113 Win32+DOS namespace, and POSIX namespace. This includes hard links.
117 However, the main limitations of this NTFS volume capture mode are:
119 Encrypted files are excluded by default. Although libntfs-3g can read their
120 data, they need to be stored in the WIM file in a special format that wimlib
121 does not yet support (except on Windows, where wimlib can treat the data as
122 opaque and hand it off to the appropriate API function).
124 The sparse attribute on sparse files will be saved, but the data stored will be
125 the full data of the file rather than the "sparse" data. (The data is, however,
126 subject to the WIM format's compression.)
127 .SH DIRECTORY CAPTURE (WINDOWS)
128 On Windows, \fBwimlib-imagex capture\fR and \fBwimlib-imagex append\fR
129 natively support Windows-specific and NTFS-specific data. They therefore act
130 similarly to the corresponding commands of Microsoft's ImageX or DISM. For best
131 results, the directory being captured should be on an NTFS volume and
132 \fBwimlib-imagex\fR should be run with Administrator privileges; however,
133 non-NTFS filesystems and running without Administrator privileges are also
136 On Windows, \fBwimlib-imagex capture\fR and \fBwimlib-imagex append\fR
137 try to archive as much data and metadata as possible, including:
139 All data streams of all files.
141 Reparse points, including symbolic links, junction points, and other reparse
142 points, if supported by the source filesystem. (Note: see \fB--rpfix\fR and
143 \fB--norpfix\fR for documentation on exactly how absolute symbolic links and
144 junctions are captured.)
146 File and directory creation, access, and modification timestamps. These are
147 stored with Windows NT's native timestamp resolution of 100 nanoseconds.
149 Security descriptors, if supported by the source filesystem and \fB--no-acls\fR
150 is not specified. However, beware that unless \fB--strict-acls\fR is specified,
151 the security descriptors for individual files or directories may be omitted or
152 only partially captured if the user does not have permission to read them, which
153 can be a problem if \fBwimlib-imagex\fR is run as a non-Administrator.
155 File attributes, including hidden, sparse, compressed, encrypted, etc.
156 Encrypted files will be stored in encrypted form rather than in plain text.
157 Transparently compressed files will be read as uncompressed and stored subject
158 to the WIM's own compression. There is no special handling for storing sparse
159 files, but they are likely to compress to a small size.
161 DOS names (8.3) names of files; however, the failure to read them is not
162 considered an error condition.
164 Hard links, if supported by the source filesystem.
166 Object IDs, if supported by the source filesystem.
168 There is no support for storing NTFS extended attributes.
170 The capture process is reversible, since when \fBwimlib-imagex apply\fR (on
171 Windows) extracts the captured WIM image, it will extract all of the above
172 information, at least to the extent supported by the destination filesystem.
174 Pedantic note: since Windows is not fully compatible with its own filesystem
175 (NTFS), on Windows wimlib cannot archive certain files that may exist on a valid
176 NTFS filesystem but are inaccessible to the Windows API, for example two files
177 with names differing only in case in the same directory, or a file whose name
178 contains certain characters considered invalid by Windows. If you run into
179 problems archiving such files consider using the \fBNTFS VOLUME CAPTURE
180 (UNIX)\fR mode from Linux.
184 Specifies that the new image is to be made the bootable image of the WIM archive.
187 For \fBwimlib-imagex append\fR, before performing the append operation,
188 check the integrity of \fIWIMFILE\fR if an integrity table is present.
189 Furthermore, include an integrity table in the new WIM file
190 (\fBwimlib-imagex capture\fR) or the modified WIM file (\fBwimlib-imagex
191 append\fR). If this option is not specified, no integrity table is included in
192 a WIM file created with \fBwimlib-imagex capture\fR, while a WIM file
193 updated with \fBwimlib-imagex append\fR will be written with an integrity
194 table if and only if one was present before.
196 \fB--compress\fR=\fITYPE\fR[:\fILEVEL\fR]
197 Specifies the compression format for the new WIM file. \fITYPE\fR may be
198 "none", "XPRESS" (alias: "fast"), "LZX" (alias: "maximum"), or "LZMS" (alias:
199 "recovery"). \fITYPE\fR is matched case-insensitively. The default is "LZX".
201 You can optionally also specify an integer compression \fILEVEL\fR. The
202 compression level specifies how hard the compression algorithm for the specified
203 compression \fITYPE\fR will work to compress the data. The values are scaled so
204 that 20 is quick compression, 50 is medium compression, and 100 is high
205 compression. However, you can choose any value, and not just these particular
206 values. The default is 50.
208 This option only affects the compression type used in non-solid WIM resources.
209 If you are creating a solid WIM (using the \fB--solid\fR option), then you
210 probably want \fB--solid-compress\fR instead.
212 Be careful if you choose LZMS compression. It is not compatible with wimlib
213 before v1.6.0, WIMGAPI before Windows 8, DISM before Windows 8.1, and 7-Zip
216 Also note that choosing LZMS compression does not automatically imply solid-mode
217 compression, as it does with DISM. Use \fB--solid\fR if you want to create a
218 solid WIM, or "ESD file".
220 \fB--chunk-size\fR=\fISIZE\fR
221 Set the compression chunk size to \fISIZE\fR bytes. A larger compression chunk
222 size results in a better compression ratio. wimlib supports different chunk
223 sizes depending on the compression type:
226 XPRESS: 4K, 8K, 16K, 32K, 64K
228 LZX: 32K, 64K, 128K, 256K, 512K, 1M, 2M
230 LZMS: 32K, 64K, 128K, 256K, 512K, 1M, 2M, 4M, 8M, 16M, 32M, 64M, 128M, 256M, 512M, 1G
233 You can provide the full number (e.g. 32768), or you can use one of the K, M, or
234 G suffixes. KiB, MiB, and GiB are also accepted.
236 This option only affects the chunk size used in non-solid WIM resources. If you
237 are creating a solid WIM (using the \fB--solid\fR option), then you probably
238 want \fB--solid-chunk-size\fR instead.
240 Use this option with caution if compatibility with Microsoft's implementation is
241 desired, since their implementation has limited support for non-default chunk
245 Create a "solid" WIM file that compresses files together rather than
246 independently. This results in a significantly better compression ratio, but it
247 comes at the cost of various tradeoffs, including: slow compression with very
248 high memory usage; slow random access to the resulting WIM file; and reduced
251 Compatibility-wise, the first version of Microsoft's WIMGAPI to support solid
252 WIM files was released with Windows 8, and the first version of DISM to do so
253 was released with Windows 8.1.
255 If you want to create an "ESD file", then use this option. An (unencrypted)
256 "ESD file" is a solid WIM file.
258 By default, this option has an effect equivalent to DISM's option
259 \fB/compress:recovery\fR. The options for wimlib-imagex are different because
260 they try not to conflate the compression type (e.g. LZX or LZMS) with solid-mode
261 compression, as these are two different things.
263 \fB--solid-chunk-size\fR=\fISIZE\fR
264 Like \fB--chunk-size\fR, but set the chunk size used in solid resources. The
265 default, assuming LZMS compression, is 64MiB (67108864); this requires about
266 640MiB of memory per thread. This option only has an effect when \fB--solid\fR
267 is also specified. Note: Microsoft's implementation is not compatible with LZMS
268 chunk sizes larger than 64MiB.
270 \fB--solid-compress\fR=\fITYPE\fR[:\fILEVEL\fR]
271 Like \fB--compress\fR, but set the compression type used in solid resources.
272 The default is LZMS compression. This option only has an effect when
273 \fB--solid\fR is also specified.
275 \fB--threads\fR=\fINUM_THREADS\fR
276 Number of threads to use for compressing data. Default: autodetect (number of
280 For \fBwimlib-imagex append\fR: rebuild the entire WIM rather than appending the new
281 data to the end of it. Rebuilding the WIM is slower, but will save a little bit
282 of space that would otherwise be left as a hole in the WIM. Also see \fBwimlib-imagex
285 \fB--flags\fR=\fIEDITIONID\fR
286 Specify a string to use in the <FLAGS> element of the XML data for the new
289 \fB--image-property\fR \fINAME\fR=\fIVALUE\fR
290 Specify an arbitrary per-image property to set in the XML document of the WIM
291 file. \fIVALUE\fR is the string to set as the property value. \fINAME\fR is
292 the name of the image property, for example "NAME", "DESCRIPTION", or
293 "TOTALBYTES". The name can contain forward slashes to indicate a nested XML
294 element; for example, "WINDOWS/VERSION/BUILD" indicates the BUILD element nested
295 within the VERSION element nested within the WINDOWS element. A bracketed
296 number can be used to indicate one of several identically-named elements; for
297 example, "WINDOWS/LANGUAGES/LANGUAGE[2]" indicates the second "LANGUAGE" element
298 nested within the "WINDOWS/LANGUAGES" element. When adding a list of elements
299 in this way, they must be specified in sequential order. Note that element
300 names are case-sensitive. This option may be specified multiple times.
303 (UNIX-like systems only) Follow symbolic links and archive the files they point
304 to, rather than archiving the links themselves.
306 \fB--config\fR=\fIFILE\fR
307 Specifies a configuration file (UTF-8 or UTF-16LE encoded; plain ASCII also
308 works) for capturing the new image. The configuration file specifies files that
309 are to be treated specially during the image capture.
311 The format of the configuration file is INI-style; that is, it is arranged in
312 bracketed sections. Currently, the following sections are recognized:
315 [ExclusionList] --- contains a list of path globs to exclude from capture. If
316 a directory is matched, both the directory and its contents are excluded.
318 [ExclusionException] --- contains a list of path globs to include in the
319 capture, even when the file or directory also matches a glob in [ExclusionList].
321 [PrepopulateList] --- this does not affect capture, but if the image is applied
322 later with \fB--wimboot\fR, these are globs of files that shall be extracted
323 normally, not as WIMBoot "pointer files". If a directory is matched, all files
324 and subdirectories are also matched recursively.
327 Path globs may contain the '*' and '?' meta-characters. Relative globs (e.g.
328 *.mp3) match against a filename in any directory. Absolute globs (e.g.
329 /dir/file), are treated as paths starting at the main directory being captured,
330 or the root of the NTFS volume for NTFS volume capture mode. Do not use drive
331 letters in the paths; they will be ignored. Path separators may be either
332 forwards slashes or backwards slashes.
334 Lines beginning with the '#' or ';' characters are treated as comments and
335 ignored. Globs with whitespace in them need not be quoted; however, if they
336 are, both double and single quotes are accepted.
338 If this option is not specified the following default configuration file is
349 \\System Volume Information
356 However, special behavior applies if \fB--wimboot\fR is also specified. By
357 default, with \fB--wimboot\fR specified, the file
358 Windows/System32/WimBootCompress.ini in the directory being captured will be
359 used as the configuration file. However, this can be overridden using
360 \fB--config\fR; and this also causes the specified configuration file to be
361 saved in the WIM image as Windows/System32/WimBootCompress.ini, overriding any
362 that may be present on the filesystem.
365 (UNIX-like systems only) Store the UNIX owner, group, mode, and device ID (major
366 and minor number) of each captured file. Since wimlib v1.7.0, you can backup
367 and restore not only the standard UNIX file permission information, but also
368 character device nodes, block device nodes, named pipes (FIFOs), and UNIX domain
371 wimlib stores UNIX data by adding a special tagged metadata item to each
372 directory entry of each file that contains this information. This extra
373 information is ignored by the Microsoft implementation. Note: UNIX data stored
374 by wimlib before v1.7.0 used a different format that is no longer supported. If
375 you have old WIM files with UNIX data, apply them with v1.6.2 and recapture them
376 with v1.7.0 or later.
379 Do not capture files' security descriptors.
382 Fail immediately if the full security descriptor of any file cannot be read. On
383 Windows, the default behavior without this option is to first try omitting the
384 SACL from the security descriptor, then to try omitting the security descriptor
385 entirely. The purpose of this is to capture as much data as possible without
386 always requiring Administrator privileges. However, if you desire that all
387 security descriptors be captured exactly, you may wish to provide this option,
388 although the Administrator should have permission to read everything anyway.
390 \fB--rpfix\fR, \fB--norpfix\fR
391 Set whether to fix targets of absolute symbolic links (reparse points in Windows
392 terminology) or not. When enabled (\fB--rpfix\fR), absolute symbolic links that
393 point inside the directory tree being captured will be adjusted to be absolute
394 relative to the root of the directory tree being captured. When disabled
395 (\fB--norpfix\fR), absolute symbolic links will be captured exactly as is.
397 The default behavior for \fBwimlib-imagex capture\fR is equivalent to
398 \fB--rpfix\fR. The default behavior for \fBwimlib-imagex append\fR will be
399 \fB--rpfix\fR if reparse point fixups have previously been done on
400 \fIWIMFILE\fR, otherwise \fB--norpfix\fR.
402 In the case of a multi-source capture, (\fB--source-list\fR specified), passing
403 \fB--norpfix\fR is recommended. Otherwise, reparse point fixups will be
404 disabled on all capture sources destined for non-root locations in the WIM
405 image, while capture sources destined for the WIM root will get the default
406 behavior from the previous paragraph.
409 \fBwimlib-imagex capture\fR and \fBwimlib-imagex append\fR support
410 creating a WIM image from multiple separate files or directories. When
411 \fB--source-list\fR is specified, the \fISOURCE\fR argument specifies the name
412 of a text file, each line of which is either 1 or 2 whitespace separated file
413 paths. The first file path, the source, specifies the path to a file or
414 directory to capture into the WIM image. It may be either absolute or relative
415 to the current working directory. The second file path, if provided, is the
416 target and specifies the path in the WIM image that this file or directory will
417 be saved as. Leading and trailing slashes in the target are ignored, except if
418 it consists entirely of slashes (e.g. "/"), which indicates that the directory
419 is to become the root of the WIM image. If omitted, the target string defaults
420 to the same as the source string.
422 An example source list file is as follows:
427 # Make the WIM image from the 'winpe' directory
430 # Send the 'overlay' directory to '/overlay' in the WIM image
433 # Overlay a separate directory directly on the root of the WIM image.
439 Subdirectories in the WIM are created as needed. Multiple source directories
440 may share the same target, which implies an overlay. In the event that this
441 results a nondirectory file being added to the WIM image multiple times, the
442 last version (as listed in the source list file) overrides any earlier version.
444 File paths containing whitespace may be quoted with either single quotes or
445 double quotes. Quotes may not be escaped.
447 Lines consisting only of whitespace and lines beginning with '#' preceded by
448 optional whitespace are ignored.
450 As a special case, if \fISOURCE\fR is "-", the source list is read from standard
451 input rather than an external file.
453 The NTFS volume capture mode on UNIX-like systems cannot be used with
454 \fB--source-list\fR, as only capturing a full NTFS volume is supported.
457 Create a "pipable" WIM, which can be applied fully sequentially, including from
458 a pipe. An image in the resulting WIM can be applied with \fBwimlib-imagex
459 apply\fR, either normally by specifying the WIM file name, or with
460 \fBwimlib-imagex apply -\fR to read the WIM from standard input. See
461 \fBwimlib-imagex apply\fR(1) for more details.
463 For append operations, this option will result in a full rebuild of the WIM to
464 make it pipable. For capture operations, the captured WIM is simply created as
465 pipable. Beware that the more images you add to a pipable WIM, the less
466 efficient piping it will be, since more unneeded data will be sent through the
469 When wimlib creates a pipable WIM, it carefully re-arranges the components of
470 the WIM so that they can be read sequentially and also makes several other
471 modifications. As a result, these "pipable" WIMs are \fInot compatible with
472 Microsoft's software\fR, so keep this in mind if you're going to use them. If
473 desired, you can use \fBwimlib-imagex optimize --not-pipable\fR to re-write
474 a pipable WIM as a regular WIM. (\fBwimlib-imagex export\fR also provides
475 the capability to export images from a pipable WIM into a non-pipable WIM, or
478 For the most part, wimlib operates on pipable WIMs transparently. You can
479 modify them, add or delete images, export images, and even create split pipable
480 WIMs. The main disadvantages are that appending is (currently) less efficient
481 (\fB--rebuild\fR is always implied), and also they aren't compatible with
482 Microsoft's software.
484 \fBwimlib-imagex capture\fR and \fBwimlib-imagex append\fR can both
485 write a pipable WIM directly to standard output; this is done automatically if
486 \fIWIMFILE\fR is specified as "-". (In that case, \fB--pipable\fR is assumed.)
489 Ensure the resulting WIM is in the normal, non-pipable WIM format. This is the
490 default for \fBwimlib-imagex capture\fR, except when writing to standard
491 output (\fIWIMFILE\fR specified as "-"), and also for \fBwimlib-imagex
492 append\fR, except when appending to a WIM that is already pipable.
494 \fB--update-of\fR=[\fIWIMFILE\fR:]\fIIMAGE\fR
495 Declares that the image being captured or appended from \fISOURCE\fR is mostly the same as
496 the existing image \fIIMAGE\fR in \fIWIMFILE\fR, but captured at a later point
497 in time, possibly with some modifications in the intervening time. This is
498 designed to be used in incremental backups of the same filesystem or directory
499 tree. \fIIMAGE\fR can be a 1-based index or name of an existing image in
500 \fIWIMFILE\fR. It can also be a negative integer to index backwards into the
501 images (e.g. -1 means the last existing image in \fIWIMFILE\fR).
503 When this option is provided, the capture or append of the new image will be
504 optimized by not reading files that, based on metadata such as timestamps,
505 appear not to have been modified since they were archived in the existing
506 \fIIMAGE\fR. Barring manipulation of timestamps, this option only affects
507 performance and does not change the resulting WIM image (but see note below).
509 As shown, the full syntax for the argument to this option is to specify the WIM
510 file, a colon, and the image; for example, "--update-of mywim.wim:1". However,
511 the WIM file and colon may be omitted, in which case the WIM file will default
512 to the WIM file being appended to for append operations, or the WIM file from
513 which a delta is being taken (only if \fB--delta-from\fR is specified exactly
514 once) for capture operations.
516 Note: in the Windows version of wimlib, it has been observed that
517 \fB--update-of\fR mode is not completely reliable at detecting changes in file
518 contents, sometimes causing the old contents of a few files to be archived
519 rather than the current contents. The cause of this problem is that Windows
520 does not immediately update a file's last modification timestamp after every
521 write to that file. Unfortunately, there is no known way for applications like
522 wimlib to automatically work around this bug. Manual workarounds are possible;
523 theoretically, taking any action that causes the problematic files to be closed,
524 such as restarting applications or the computer itself, should cause the files'
525 last modification timestamps to be updated. Also note that wimlib compares file
526 sizes as well as timestamps in determining whether a file has changed, which
527 helps make the problem less likely to occur; and the problem does not occur on
528 other operating systems such as Linux which maintain files' last modification
529 timestamps correctly.
531 \fB--delta-from\fR=\fIWIMFILE\fR
532 For \fBwimlib-imagex capture\fR only: capture the new WIM as a "delta" from
533 \fIWIMFILE\fR. Any streams that would ordinarily need to be archived in the new
534 WIM are omitted if they are already present in the \fIWIMFILE\fR on which the
535 delta is being based. The new WIM will still contain a full copy of the image
536 metadata, but this is typically only a small fraction of a WIM's total size.
538 This option can be specified multiple times, in which case the resulting delta
539 WIM will only contain streams not present in any of the specified base WIMs.
541 To operate on the resulting delta WIM using other commands such as
542 \fBwimlib-imagex apply\fR, you must specify the delta WIM as the WIM file to
543 operate on, but also reference the base WIM(s) using the \fB--ref\fR option.
544 Beware: to retain the proper functioning of the delta WIM, you can only add, not
545 delete, files and images to the base WIM(s) following the capture of a delta
548 \fB--delta-from\fR may be combined with \fB--update-of\fR to increase the
549 speed of capturing a delta WIM.
551 As an example, consider the following backup and restore sequence:
557 $ wimcapture /some/directory bkup-base.wim
559 (some days later, create second backup as delta from first)
561 $ wimcapture /some/directory bkup-2013-08-20.dwm \\
562 --update-of bkup-base.wim:-1 --delta-from bkup-base.wim
564 (restoring the second backup)
566 $ wimapply bkup-2013-08-20.dwm --ref=bkup-base.wim 1 \\
571 However, note that as an alternative to the above sequence that used a delta
572 WIM, the second backup could have simply been appended to the WIM as new image
573 using \fBwimlib-imagex append\fR. Delta WIMs should be used only if it's
574 desired to base the backups or images on a separate, large file that is rarely
577 Note: unlike "pipable" WIMs (created with the \fB--pipable\fR option), "delta"
578 WIMs (created with the \fB--delta-from\fR option) are compatible with
579 Microsoft's software. For example, you can use the /ref option of ImageX to
580 reference the base WIM(s), similar to above.
582 Additional note: \fBwimlib-imagex\fR is generalized enough that you can in
583 fact combine \fB--pipable\fR and \fB--delta-from\fR to create pipable delta
584 WIMs. In such cases, the base WIM(s) must be captured as pipable as well as the
585 delta WIM, and when applying an image, the base WIM(s) must be sent over the
586 pipe after the delta WIM.
589 Mark the image as WIMBoot-compatible. See Microsoft's
590 documentation for more information about WIMBoot. This option will, by default,
591 set the compression type to XPRESS and the chunk size to 4096 bytes; these
592 can, however, still be overridden through the \fB--compress\fR and
593 \fB--chunk-size\fR parameters, respectively. In addition, this option will, by
594 default, set the configuration file to
595 \fISOURCE\fR\\Windows\\System32\\WimBootCompress.ini if present and accessible;
596 however, this may still be overridden through the \fB--config\fR parameter.
598 \fB--unsafe-compact\fR
599 For \fBwimlib-imagex append\fR: compact the WIM archive in-place and append any
600 new data, eliminating "holes". In general, this option should \fInot\fR be used
601 because a failed or interrupted compaction will corrupt the WIM archive. For
602 more information, see the documentation for this option in
603 \fBwimlib-imagex-optimize\fR (1).
606 Create a temporary filesystem snapshot of the source directory and capture the
607 files from it. Currently, this option is only supported on Windows, where it
608 uses the Volume Shadow Copy Service (VSS). Using this option, you can create a
609 consistent backup of the system volume of a running Windows system without
610 running into problems with locked files. For the VSS snapshot to be
611 successfully created, \fBwimlib-imagex\fR must be run as an Administrator, and
612 it cannot be run in WoW64 mode (i.e. if Windows is 64-bit, then
613 \fBwimlib-imagex\fR must be 64-bit as well).
615 \fBwimlib-imagex append\fR does not support appending an image to a split WIM.
617 Except when using \fB--unsafe-compact\fR, it is safe to abort a \fBwimlib-imagex
618 append\fR command partway through; however, after doing this, it is recommended
619 to run \fBwimlib-imagex optimize\fR to remove any data that was appended to the
620 physical WIM file but not yet incorporated into the structure of the WIM, unless
621 the WIM was being fully rebuilt (e.g. with \fB--rebuild\fR), in which case you
622 should delete the temporary file left over.
624 \fBwimlib-imagex\fR creates WIMs compatible with Microsoft's software
625 (WIMGAPI, ImageX, DISM), with some caveats:
627 With \fBwimlib-imagex\fR on UNIX-like systems, it is possible to create a
628 WIM image containing files with names differing only in case, or files with
629 names containing the characters ':', '*', '?', '"', '<', '>', '|', or '\\',
630 which are valid on POSIX-compliant filesystems but not Windows. Be warned that
631 such files will not be extracted by default by the Windows version of
632 \fBwimlib-imagex\fR, and (even worse) Microsoft's ImageX can be confused by
633 such names and quit extracting the image partway through. (It perhaps is worth
634 pointing out that Windows' own default filesystem, NTFS, supports these
635 characters, although Windows does not!)
637 Pipable WIMs are incompatible with Microsoft's software. Pipable WIMs are
638 created only if \fIWIMFILE\fR was specified as "-" (standard output) or if
639 the \fB--pipable\fR flag was specified.
641 WIMs captured with a non-default chunk size (with the \fB--chunk-size\fR option)
642 or as solid archives (with the \fB--solid\fR option) or with LZMS
643 compression (with \fB--compress\fR=LZMS or \fB--compress\fR=recovery) have
644 varying levels of compatibility with Microsoft's software. Generally, more
645 recent versions of Microsoft's software are more compatible.
647 First example: Create a new WIM 'mywim.wim' with LZX ("maximum") compression
648 that will contain a captured image of the directory tree 'somedir'. Note that
649 the image name need not be specified and will default to 'somedir':
652 wimlib-imagex capture somedir mywim.wim
655 or, if the \fBwimcapture\fR hard link or batch file has been installed, the
656 abbreviated form can be used:
659 wimcapture somedir mywim.wim
662 The remaining examples will use the long form, however. Next, append the image
663 of a different directory tree to the WIM created above:
666 wimlib-imagex append anotherdir mywim.wim
669 Easy enough, and the above examples of imaging directory trees work on both
670 UNIX-like systems and Windows. Next, capture a WIM with several non-default
671 options, including XPRESS ("fast") compression, an integrity table, no messing
672 with absolute symbolic links, and an image name and description:
675 wimlib-imagex capture somedir mywim.wim --compress=fast \\
677 --check --norpfix "Some Name" "Some Description"
681 Capture an entire NTFS volume into a new WIM file and name the image "Windows
682 7". On UNIX-like systems, this requires using the special mode described in
683 \fBNTFS VOLUME CAPTURE (UNIX)\fR where \fISOURCE\fR is a file or block device
684 containing an NTFS filesystem:
687 wimlib-imagex capture /dev/sda2 windows7.wim "Windows 7"
690 or, on Windows, to capture a full NTFS volume you instead need to specify the
691 root directory of the mounted volume, for example:
694 wimlib-imagex capture E:\\ windows7.wim "Windows 7"
697 Same as above example with capturing an NTFS volume from \fBwimlib-imagex\fR
698 running on a UNIX-like system, but capture the WIM in the wimlib-specific
699 "pipable" format that can be piped to \fBwimlib-imagex apply\fR:
702 wimlib-imagex capture /dev/sda2 windows7.wim "Windows 7" \\
709 Same as above, but instead of writing the pipable WIM to the file
710 "windows7.wim", write it directly to standard output through a pipe into some
711 other program "someprog", which could, for example, be a program or script that
712 streams the data to a server. Note that \fB--pipable\fR need not be explicitly
713 specified when using standard output as the WIM "file":
716 wimlib-imagex capture /dev/sda2 - "Windows 7" | someprog
719 .BR wimlib-imagex (1),
720 .BR wimlib-imagex-apply (1)
git://wimlib.net / wimlib / blob