INTRODUCTION This is wimlib version 1.8.1 (May 2015). wimlib is a C library for creating, modifying, extracting, and mounting files in the Windows Imaging Format (WIM files). wimlib and its command-line frontend 'wimlib-imagex' provide a free and cross-platform alternative to Microsoft's WIMGAPI, ImageX, and DISM. INSTALLATION To install wimlib and wimlib-imagex on Windows, simply download and extract the ZIP file containing the latest binaries from the SourceForge page (http://sourceforge.net/projects/wimlib/). You probably have already done this! To install wimlib and wimlib-imagex on UNIX-like systems (with Linux being the primary supported and tested platform), you must compile the source code, which is also available at http://sourceforge.net/projects/wimlib/. Alternatively, check if a package has been prepared for your Linux distribution. Example files for Debian and RPM packaging are in the debian/ and rpm/ directories. WIM FILES A Windows Imaging (WIM) file is an archive designed primarily for archiving Windows filesystems. However, it can be used on other platforms as well, with some limitations. Like some other archive formats such as ZIP, files in WIM archives may be compressed. WIM files support multiple compression formats, including LZX, XPRESS, and LZMS. All these formats are supported by wimlib. A WIM file consists of one or more "images". Each image is an independent top-level directory structure and is logically separate from all other images in the WIM. Each image has a name as well as a 1-based index in the WIM file. To save space, WIM archives automatically combine all duplicate files across all images. A WIM file may be either stand-alone or split into multiple parts. Split WIMs are read-only and cannot be modified. Since version 1.6.0, wimlib also supports ESD (.esd) files, except when encrypted. These are still WIM files but they use a newer version of the file format. IMAGEX IMPLEMENTATION wimlib itself is a C library, and it provides a documented public API (See: http://wimlib.sourceforge.net) for other programs to use. However, it is also distributed with a command-line program called "wimlib-imagex" that uses this library to implement an imaging tool similar to Microsoft's ImageX. wimlib-imagex supports almost all the capabilities of Microsoft's ImageX as well as additional capabilities. wimlib-imagex works on both UNIX-like systems and Windows, although some features differ between the platforms. Run `wimlib-imagex' with no arguments to see an overview of the available commands and their syntax. For additional documentation: * If you have installed wimlib-imagex on a UNIX-like system, you will find further documentation in the man pages; run `man wimlib-imagex' to get started. * If you have downloaded the Windows binary distribution, you will find the documentation for wimlib-imagex in PDF format in the "doc" directory, ready for viewing with any PDF viewer. Please note that although the PDF files are converted from UNIX-style "man pages", they do document Windows-specific behavior when appropriate. COMPRESSION RATIO wimlib (and wimlib-imagex) can create XPRESS, LZX, or LZMS compressed WIM files. wimlib's compression codecs usually outperform and outcompress their Microsoft equivalents. Although results will vary depending on the data being compressed, the table below shows results for a common use case: creating an x86 Windows PE image ("boot.wim"). Each row shows the compression type, the size of the resulting WIM file in bytes, and the time it took to create the file. When possible, the results with the Microsoft equivalent are included. ============================================================================= | Compression || wimlib (v1.8.0) | WIMGAPI (Windows 8.1) | ============================================================================= | None [1] || 361,314,224 in 2.4s | 361,315,338 in 4.5s | | XPRESS [2] || 138,218,750 in 3.0s | 140,457,436 in 6.0s | | XPRESS (slow) [3] || 135,173,511 in 8.9s | N/A | | LZX (quick) [4] || 130,207,195 in 3.8s | N/A | | LZX (normal) [5] || 126,522,539 in 10.4s | 127,293,240 in 19.2s | | LZX (slow) [6] || 126,042,313 in 17.3s | N/A | | LZMS (non-solid) [7] || 116,150,682 in 25.3s | N/A | | LZMS (solid) [8] || 88,107,484 in 61.7s | 88,769,830 in 102.3s | | "WIMBoot" [9] || 167,023,719 in 3.5s | 169,109,211 in 10.4s | | "WIMBoot" (slow) [10] || 165,027,583 in 7.9s | N/A | ============================================================================= Notes: [1] '--compress=none' for wimlib-imagex; '/compress:none' for DISM. [2] '--compress=XPRESS' for wimlib-imagex; '/compress:fast' for DISM. Compression chunk size defaults to 32768 bytes in both cases. [3] '--compress=XPRESS:80' for wimlib-imagex; no known equivalent for DISM. Compression chunk size defaults to 32768 bytes. [4] '--compress=LZX:20' for wimlib-imagex; no known equivalent for DISM. Compression chunk size defaults to 32768 bytes. [5] '--compress=LZX' or '--compress=LZX:50' or no option for wimlib-imagex; '/compress:maximum' for DISM. Compression chunk size defaults to 32768 bytes in both cases. [6] '--compress=LZX:100' for wimlib-imagex; no known equivalent for DISM. Compression chunk size defaults to 32768 bytes. [7] '--compress=LZMS' for wimlib-imagex; no known equivalent for DISM. Compression chunk size defaults to 131072 bytes. [8] '--solid' for wimlib-imagex. Should be '/compress:recovery' for DISM, but only works for /Export-Image, not /Capture-Image. Compression chunk size in solid resources defaults to 67108864 bytes in both cases. [9] '--wimboot' for wimlib-imagex; '/wimboot' for DISM. This is really XPRESS compression with 4096 byte chunks, so the same as '--compress=XPRESS --chunk-size=4096'. [10] '--wimboot --compress=XPRESS:80' for wimlib-imagex; no known equivalent for DISM. Same format as [9], but trying harder to get a good compression ratio. Note: wimlib-imagex's --compress option also accepts the "fast", "maximum", and "recovery" aliases for XPRESS, LZX, and LZMS, respectively. Testing environment: - 64 bit binaries - Windows 8.1 virtual machine running on Linux with VT-x - 4 CPUs and 4 GiB memory given to virtual machine - SSD-backed virtual disk - All tests done with page cache warmed The compression ratio provided by wimlib is also competitive with commonly used archive formats. Below are file sizes that result when the Canterbury corpus is compressed with wimlib (v1.8.0), WIMGAPI (Windows 8.1), and some other formats/programs: ===================================================== | Format | Size (bytes) | ===================================================== | tar | 2,826,240 | | WIM (WIMGAPI, None) | 2,814,254 | | WIM (wimlib, None) | 2,814,216 | | WIM (WIMGAPI, XPRESS) | 825,536 | | WIM (wimlib, XPRESS) | 789,296 | | tar.gz (gzip, default) | 738,796 | | ZIP (Info-ZIP, default) | 735,334 | | tar.gz (gzip, -9) | 733,971 | | ZIP (Info-ZIP, -9) | 732,297 | | WIM (wimlib, LZX quick) | 690,110 | | WIM (WIMGAPI, LZX) | 651,866 | | WIM (wimlib, LZX normal) | 624,634 | | WIM (wimlib, LZX slow) | 620,728 | | WIM (wimlib, LZMS non-solid) | 581,046 | | tar.bz2 (bzip, default) | 565,008 | | tar.bz2 (bzip, -9) | 565,008 | | WIM (WIMGAPI, LZMS solid) | 521,366 | | WIM (wimlib, LZMS solid) | 515,800 | | tar.xz (xz, default) | 486,916 | | tar.xz (xz, -9) | 486,904 | | 7z (7-zip, default) | 484,700 | | 7z (7-zip, -9) | 483,239 | ===================================================== Note: WIM does even better on directory trees containing duplicate files, which the Canterbury corpus doesn't have. NTFS SUPPORT WIM images may contain data, such as alternate data streams and compression/encryption flags, that are best represented on the NTFS filesystem used on Windows. Also, WIM images may contain security descriptors which are specific to Windows and cannot be represented on other operating systems. wimlib handles this NTFS-specific or Windows-specific data in a platform-dependent way: * In the Windows version of wimlib and wimlib-imagex, NTFS-specific and Windows-specific data are supported natively. * In the UNIX version of wimlib and wimlib-imagex, NTFS-specific and Windows-specific data are ordinarily ignored; however, there is also special support for capturing and extracting images directly to/from unmounted NTFS volumes. This was made possible with the help of libntfs-3g from the NTFS-3g project. For both platforms the code for NTFS capture and extraction 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 an NTFS filesystem, 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 wimlib and wimlib-imagex is to create customized images of Windows PE, the Windows Preinstallation Environment, on either UNIX-like systems or Windows without having to rely on Microsoft's software and its restrictions and limitations. 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. It 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 natively on Windows, or on UNIX-like systems 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. A shell script `mkwinpeimg' is distributed with wimlib on UNIX-like systems to ease the process of creating and customizing a bootable Windows PE image. DEPENDENCIES This section documents the dependencies of wimlib and the programs distributed with it, when building for a UNIX-like system from source. If you have downloaded the Windows binary distribution of wimlib and wimlib-imagex then all dependencies were already included and this section is irrelevant. * libxml2 (required) This is a commonly used free library to read and write XML documents. Almost all Linux distributions should include this; however, you may need to install the header files, which might be in a package named "libxml2-dev" or similar. For more information see http://xmlsoft.org/. * libfuse (optional but recommended) Unless configured --without-fuse, wimlib requires a non-ancient version of libfuse. Most 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 should automatically be loaded if you try to mount a WIM image. For more information see http://fuse.sourceforge.net/. * libattr (optional but recommended) Unless configured --without-fuse, wimlib also requires libattr. Almost all Linux distributions should include this; however, you may need to install the header files, which might be in a package named "attr-dev", "libattr1-dev", or similar. * libntfs-3g (optional but recommended) Unless configured --without-ntfs-3g, wimlib requires the library and headers for libntfs-3g version 2011-4-12 or later to be installed. * OpenSSL / libcrypto (optional) wimlib can use the SHA-1 message digest implementation from libcrypto (usually provided by OpenSSL) instead of compiling in yet another SHA-1 implementation. * 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 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 This section documents the most important options that may be passed to the "configure" script when building from source: --without-ntfs-3g If libntfs-3g is not available or is not version 2011-4-12 or later, wimlib can be built without it, in which case it will not be possible to capture or apply WIM images directly from/to NTFS volumes. The default is --with-ntfs-3g when building for any UNIX-like system, and --without-ntfs-3g when building for Windows. --without-fuse The --without-fuse option completely disables support for mounting WIM images. This removes dependencies on libfuse, librt, and libattr. The wimmount, wimmountrw, and wimunmount commands will not work. The default is --with-fuse when building for Linux, and --without-fuse otherwise. --without-libcrypto Build in functions for SHA-1 rather than using external SHA-1 functions from libcrypto (usually provided by OpenSSL). The default is to use libcrypto if it is found on your system. PORTABILITY wimlib works on both UNIX-like systems (Linux, Mac OS X, FreeBSD, etc.) and Windows (XP and later). As much code as possible is shared among all supported platforms, but there necessarily are some differences in what features are supported on each platform and how they are implemented. Most notable is that file tree scanning and extraction are implemented separately for Windows, UNIX, and UNIX (NTFS-3g mode), to ensure a fast and feature-rich implementation of each platform/mode. wimlib is mainly used on x86 and x86_64 CPUs, but it should also work on a number of other GCC-supported 32-bit or 64-bit architectures. It has been tested on the ARM architecture. Currently, gcc and clang are the only supported compilers. A few nonstandard extensions are used in the code. REFERENCES The WIM file format is partially specified in a document that can be found in the Microsoft Download Center. However, this document really only provides an overview of the format and is not a formal specification. It also does not cover later extensions of the format, such as solid resources. With regards to the supported compression formats: - Microsoft has official documentation for XPRESS that is of reasonable quality. - Microsoft has official documentation for LZX, but in two different documents, neither of which is completely applicable to its use in the WIM format, and the first of which contains multiple errors. - There does not seem to be any official documentation for LZMS, so my comments and code in src/lzms_decompress.c may in fact be the best documentation available for this particular compression format. The algorithms used by wimlib's compression and decompression codecs are inspired by a variety of sources, including open source projects and computer science papers. The code in ntfs-3g_apply.c and ntfs-3g_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. A 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 implementation, such as the ability to mount WIMs read-write as well as read-only, the ability to create compressed WIMs, the correct handling of security descriptors and hard links, support for LZMS compression, and support for solid archives. * ImagePyX (https://github.com/maxpat78/ImagePyX) is a Python program that provides similar capabilities to wimlib-imagex. One thing to note, though, is that it does not support compression and decompression by itself, but instead relies on external native code, such as the codecs from wimlib. If you are looking for an archive format that provides features similar to WIM but was designed primarily for UNIX, you may want to consider SquashFS (http://squashfs.sourceforge.net/). However, you may find that wimlib works surprisingly well on UNIX. It will store hard links and symbolic links, and it has optional support for storing UNIX owners, groups, modes, and special files such as device nodes and FIFOs. Actually, I use it to back up my own files on Linux! LICENSE AND DISCLAIMER See COPYING for information about the license. 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. On UNIX-like systems, if you do not want wimlib to be dynamically linked with libcrypto (OpenSSL), configure with --without-libcrypto. This replaces the SHA1 implementation with built-in code and there will be no difference in functionality. wimlib comes with no warranty whatsoever. Please submit a bug report (to ebiggers3@gmail.com) if you find a bug in wimlib and/or wimlib-imagex.