+++ /dev/null
- INTRODUCTION
-
-This is wimlib version 1.9.1-BETA (February 2016). 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 UNIX-like systems, you can compile from
-source (e.g. './configure && make && sudo make install'). Alternatively, check
-if a package has already been prepared for your operating system. Example files
-for Debian and RPM packaging are in the debian/ and rpm/ directories.
-
-To install wimlib and wimlib-imagex on Windows, just download and extract the
-ZIP file containing the latest binaries. See README.WINDOWS for more details.
-
-All official wimlib releases are available from https://wimlib.net.
-
- 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 archives support multiple compression formats,
-including LZX, XPRESS, and LZMS. All these formats are supported by wimlib.
-
-A WIM archive contains one or more "images", each of which is a logically
-independent directory tree. Each image has a 1-based index and usually a name.
-
-WIM archives provide data deduplication at the level of full file contents. In
-other words, each unique "file contents" is only stored once in the archive,
-regardless of how many files have that contents across all images.
-
-A WIM archive may be either stand-alone or split into multiple parts.
-
-An update of the WIM format --- first added by Microsoft for Windows 8 ---
-supports solid-mode compression. This refers to files being compressed together
-(e.g. as in a .tar.xz or .7z archive) rather than separately (e.g. as in a .zip
-archive). This usually produces a much better compression ratio. Solid
-archives are sometimes called "ESD files" by Microsoft and may have the ".esd"
-file extension rather than ".wim". They are supported in wimlib since v1.6.0.
-
- IMAGEX IMPLEMENTATION
-
-wimlib itself is a C library, and it provides a documented public API (See:
-https://wimlib.net/apidoc) 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
-
-wimlib (and wimlib-imagex) can create XPRESS, LZX, and LZMS compressed WIM
-archives. wimlib's compression codecs usually outperform and outcompress their
-closed-source Microsoft equivalents. Multiple compression levels and chunk
-sizes as well as solid mode compression are supported. Compression is
-multithreaded by default. Detailed benchmark results and descriptions of the
-algorithms used can be found at https://wimlib.net/compression.html.
-
- 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 or later) 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 media for Windows (Vista or later)
-as 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 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 and MIPS architectures.
-
-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 some capabilities of wimlib-imagex, with the help of external
- compression codecs.
-
-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!
-
- HISTORY
-
-wimlib was originally a project started by Carl Thijssen for use on Linux in the
-Ultimate Deployment Appliance (http://www.ultimatedeployment.org/). Since then
-the code has been entirely rewritten and improved (main author: Eric Biggers).
-Windows support has been available since version 1.3.0 (March 2013). A list of
-version-to-version changes can be found in the NEWS file.
-
- 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.
git://wimlib.net / wimlib / blobdiff