- WIMLIB
+ WIMLIB
-This is wimlib version 1.0.2 (September 2012). wimlib can be used to read,
+This is wimlib version 1.0.4 (October 2012). wimlib can be used to read,
write, and mount files in the Windows Imaging Format (WIM files). These
files are normally created by using the `imagex.exe' utility on Windows,
but this library provides a free implementation of imagex for UNIX-based
PROGRAMS
wimlib provides a public API for other programs to use, but also comes with two
-programs: `imagex' and `mkwinpeimg'.
+programs: `imagex' and `mkwinpeimg'.
`imagex' is intended to be like the imagex.exe program from Windows. `imagex'
can be used to create, extract, and mount WIM files. Both read-only and
image of Windows PE that can be put on a CD or USB drive, or published on a
server for PXE booting. See the main page `doc/mkwinpeiso.1' for more details.
+ COMPRESSION RATIO
+
+wimlib can create XPRESS or LZX compressed WIM archives. As of wimlib v1.0.3,
+the XPRESS compression ratio is slightly better than that provided by
+Microsoft's software, while the LZX compression ratio is approaching that of
+Microsoft's software but is not quite there yet. Running time is as good as or
+better than Microsoft's software.
+
+The following tables compare the compression ratio and performance for creating
+a compressed Windows PE image (disk usage of about 524 MB, uncompressed WIM size
+361 MB):
+
+ Table 1. WIM size
+
+ XPRESS Compression LZX Compression
+ wimlib imagex (v1.0.2): 145,283,871 bytes 139,288,293 bytes
+ wimlib imagex (v1.0.3): 139,288,293 bytes 131,379,869 bytes
+ Microsoft imagex.exe: 140,406,981 bytes 127,249,176 bytes
+
+ Table 2. Time to create WIM
+
+ XPRESS Compression LZX Compression
+ wimlib imagex (v1.0.2): 18 sec 49 sec
+ wimlib imagex (v1.0.3): 19 sec 30 sec
+ Microsoft imagex.exe: 25 sec 89 sec
+
+
DEPENDENCIES
* libxml2
Removes all error messages from the library. If left in, they still
have to explicitly turned on with wimlib_set_print_errors() in order to
see them. Also, error codes will still be returned regardless of
- whether error messages are printed or not.
+ whether error messages are printed or not.
If --disable-error-messages is given, wimlib_set_print_errors() will
fail with WIMLIB_ERR_UNSUPPORTED if the action is to turn error messages
have libntfs-3g 2011-4-12 or later available, you must configure with
--without-ntfs-3g. Also, GNU coreutils is needed to run the test suite. Before
mounting a WIM you need to load the POSIX message queue module (run `kldload
-mqueuefs').
+mqueuefs').
wimlib should work on big endian machines but it has not been tested.
There are no plans to port wimlib to Windows since the programming interface on
Windows is very different and Microsoft's imagex.exe is already available.
- REFERENCES
+ REFERENCES
The WIM file format is specified in a document that can be found in the
Microsoft Download Center. There is a similar document that specifies the LZX
The code in ntfs-apply.c and ntfs-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). Additionally, the code in ntfs-3g-security.c is
-mostly copied from NTFS-3g, but I'm hoping to get rid of this file eventually.
-See http://www.tuxera.com/community/ntfs-3g-download/ for more information.
+recent versions of Windows). See
+http://www.tuxera.com/community/ntfs-3g-download/ for more information.
lzx-decomp.c, the code to decompress WIM file resources that are compressed
using LZX compression, is originally based on code from the cabextract project
-(http://www.cabextract.org.uk).
+(http://www.cabextract.org.uk).
lzx-comp.c, the code to compress WIM file resources using LZX compression, is
originally based on code written by Matthew Russotto (www.russotto.net/chm/).
An earlier version of wimlib is being used to deploy Windows 7 from the Ultimate
Deployment Appliance. For more information see
-http://www.ultimatedeployment.org/.
+http://www.ultimatedeployment.org/.
-You can see the documentation about Microsoft's version of the imagex program at
+You can see the documentation about Microsoft's version of the imagex program at
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc749447(v=ws.10).aspx, so you can
see how it compares.
+ GNU/Linux equivalents of WIM format
+
+What's the equivalent way to capture the filesystem of a GNU/Linux operating
+system into an archive file? You have a few options:
+
+SquashFS:
+ SquashFS (http://squashfs.sourceforge.net/) provides a compressed,
+ read-only filesystem for Linux, and it's probably the closest equivalent
+ of the WIM format and better designed. Although you can't mount
+ SquashFS read-write, when wimlib does this for WIM files it's really an
+ illusion since the WIM isn't actually modified until the image is
+ unmounted. Multiple top-level images in SquashFS files are not
+ supported, although nothing stops you from just putting each image in a
+ separate directory.
+
+FSArchiver:
+ FSArchiver (http://www.fsarchiver.org/Main_Page) is not widely used, but
+ it appears to have some features quite similar to the WIM format.
+
+Tar:
+ The well-known tar format can usually capture a UNIX filesystem just
+ fine, and compressing the tar file produces a good compression ratio
+ (better than WIM, especially if using XZ compression), but there is no
+ support for random access, file deduplication, multiple images per
+ archive, or extended attributes.
+
+Zip:
+ Zip shares some features with WIM but is not designed to store entire
+ filesystems.
+
+7z:
+ The 7z format has some nice features but is unfortunately not designed
+ with UNIX in mind.
+
MORE INFORMATION
See the manual pages for `imagex', the manual pages for the subcommands of
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.
- DISCLAIMER
+ DISCLAIMER
wimlib is experimental. Use Microsoft's `imagex.exe' if you want to make sure
your WIM files are made correctly (but beware: Microsoft's version contains some
-bugs).
+bugs).
Please submit a bug report (to ebiggers3@gmail.com) if you find a bug in wimlib.
git://wimlib.net / wimlib / blobdiff