- WIMLIB
+ WIMLIB
-This is wimlib version 1.0.3 (September 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
-systems.
+This is wimlib version 1.3.3 (April 2013). 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 systems.
+
+wimlib 1.3.0 has added experimental support for Windows. See the file
+"README.WINDOWS" for more details.
WIM FILES
Microsoft provides documentation for the WIM file format, XPRESS compression
format, and LZX compression format. The XPRESS documentation is acceptable, but
the LZX documentation is not entirely correct, and the WIM documentation itself
-is very incomplete and is of unacceptable quality.
+is incomplete.
A WIM file may be either stand-alone or split into multiple parts.
- WINDOWS PE
-
-A major use for this library is to create customized images of Windows PE, the
-Windows Preinstallation Environment, without having to rely on Windows. 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. Windows PE 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 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.
-
- NTFS SUPPORT
-
-As of version 1.0.0, wimlib supports capturing and applying images directly to
-NTFS volumes. This was made possible with the help of libntfs-3g from the
-NTFS-3g project. This feature supports capturing and restoring NTFS-specific
-data such as security descriptors, alternate data streams, and reparse point
-data.
-
-The code for NTFS image capture and image application 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 a NTFS volume,
-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.
-
PROGRAMS
wimlib provides a public API for other programs to use, but also comes with two
-programs: `imagex' and `mkwinpeimg'.
+programs: `wimlib-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
-read-write mounts are supported. See the man page `doc/imagex.1' for more
-details.
+`wimlib-imagex' is intended to be like the imagex.exe program from Windows.
+`wimlib-imagex' can be used to create, extract, and mount WIM files. Both
+read-only and read-write mounts are supported. See the man page
+`doc/wimlib-imagex.1' for more details.
`mkwinpeimg' is shell script that makes it easy to create a customized bootable
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.
+server for PXE booting. See the main page `doc/mkwinpeimg.1' for more details.
+
+There is an additional program, `wimapply', that is not installed by default.
+It can be used to build a small executable with the ability to apply a WIM image
+from a standalone WIM, without having to build the whole shared library. This
+could be useful on Linux boot clients that only need to be able to apply a WIM,
+not capture/split/join/append/export/mount a WIM. See `programs/wimapply.c'.
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.
+wimlib can create XPRESS or LZX compressed WIM archives. Currently, 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, especially with multithreaded compression, available in wimlib v1.1.0
+and later.
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
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
+ wimlib-imagex (v1.2.1): 138,971,353 bytes 131,379,943 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
+ XPRESS Compression LZX Compression
+ wimlib-imagex (v1.2.1, 2 threads): 11 sec 17 sec
+ Microsoft imagex.exe: 25 sec 89 sec
+ NTFS SUPPORT
+
+As of version 1.0.0, wimlib supports capturing and applying images directly to
+NTFS volumes. This was made possible with the help of libntfs-3g from the
+NTFS-3g project. This feature supports capturing and restoring NTFS-specific
+data such as security descriptors, alternate data streams, and reparse point
+data.
+
+The code for NTFS image capture and image application 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 a NTFS volume,
+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 this library is to create customized images of Windows PE, the
+Windows Preinstallation Environment, without having to rely on Windows. 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. Windows PE 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 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.
DEPENDENCIES
-* libxml2
+* libxml2 (required)
This is a commonly used free library to read and write XML files. You
likely already have it installed as a dependency for some other program.
For more information see http://xmlsoft.org/.
-* libfuse
+* libfuse (optional but highly recommended)
Unless configured with --without-fuse, wimlib requires a non-ancient
version of libfuse to be installed. Most GNU/Linux distributions
already include this, but make sure you have the libfuse package
a WIM file. For more information see http://fuse.sourceforge.net/.
FUSE is also available for FreeBSD.
-* libntfs-3g
+* libntfs-3g (optional but highly recommended)
Unless configured with --without-ntfs-3g, wimlib requires the library
and headers for libntfs-3g version 2011-4-12 or later to be installed.
Versions dated 2010-3-6 and earlier do not work because they are missing
the header xattrs.h (and the file xattrs.c, which contains functions we
- need).
+ need). libntfs-3g version 2013-1-13 is compatible only with wimlib
+ 1.2.4 and later.
+
+* OpenSSL / libcrypto (optional)
+ wimlib can use the SHA1 message digest code from OpenSSL instead of
+ compiling in yet another SHA1 implementation. (See LICENSE section.)
* cdrkit (optional)
* mtools (optional)
(http://www.syslinux.org). Retrieving files from the Windows Automated
Installation Kit requires `cabextract' (http://www.cabextract.org.uk).
-
CONFIGURATION
Besides the various well-known options, the following options can be passed to
wimlib's `configure' script:
--without-ntfs-3g
- If libntfs-3g is not available or is not the correct version, we can
- build without it. wimlib will then not be able to apply or capture
- images directly to NTFS volumes.
+ 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
+ apply or capture images directly to/from NTFS volumes.
--without-fuse
If libfuse or the FUSE kernel module is not available, wimlib can be
compiled with --without-fuse. This will remove the ability to mount and
- unmount WIM files. wimlib_mount() and wimlib_unmount() will fail with
- WIMLIB_ERR_UNSUPPORTED.
+ unmount WIM files.
--without-libcrypto
Build in functions for SHA1 rather than using external SHA1 functions
--enable-xattr, --disable-xattr
Enable or disable support for the extended-attributes interface to NTFS
- alternate data streams in mounted WIMs. To support these, we require
- the setxattr() function and the attr/xattr.h header be available. The
- default is to autodetect whether support is possible.
+ alternate data streams in mounted WIMs. To support these, wimlib
+ requires that the setxattr() function and the attr/xattr.h header are
+ available. The default is to autodetect whether support is possible.
+
+--disable-multithreaded-compression
+ By default, data will be compressed using multiple threads when writing
+ a WIM, unless only 1 processor is detected. Specify this option to
+ disable support for this.
--enable-ssse3-sha1
Use a very fast assembly language implementation of SHA1 from Intel.
Only use this if the build target supports the SSSE3 instructions.
--disable-custom-memory-allocator
- If this option is given, MALLOC(), FREE(), CALLOC(), and STRDUP() will
- directly call the appropriate functions in the C library.
- wimlib_set_memory_allocator() will fail with WIMLIB_ERR_UNSUPPORTED.
-
---disable-verify-compression
- Unless this option is given, every time wimlib compresses a data block
- it will decompress it into a temporary buffer and abort() the program
- with an error message if the decompressed data does not exactly match
- the original data. This is to find bugs.
+ If this option is given, a very small amount of space will be saved by
+ removing support for the wimlib_set_memory_allocator() function.
+ wimlib-imagex will be unaffected.
+
+--enable-verify-compression
+ If this option is given, every time wimlib compresses a data block, it
+ will decompress it into a temporary buffer and abort the program with an
+ error message if the decompressed data does not exactly match the
+ original data. This only makes compression about 10% slower. This
+ checking is disabled by default because there are no known bugs in the
+ compression code, and the SHA1 message digest of every extracted file is
+ checked anyway.
--disable-error-messages
- 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.
-
- If --disable-error-messages is given, wimlib_set_print_errors() will
- fail with WIMLIB_ERR_UNSUPPORTED if the action is to turn error messages
- on.
+ Save some space by removing all error messages from the library.
--disable-assertions
- Remove all assertions. Without this option, wimlib will abort() the
- program if an assertion fails. An assertion failure should only occur
- if there is a bug in wimlib.
+ Remove all assertions, even the ones that are included by default.
+
+--enable-more-assertions
+ Enable assertions that are not included by default.
--enable-debug
Include debugging messages. Only use this option if you have found a
It has been tested on x86 (32-bit) GNU/Linux occasionally.
-wimlib may work on FreeBSD. However, this is not well tested. If you do not
-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').
+wimlib may work on FreeBSD and Mac OS X. However, this is not well tested. If
+you do not have libntfs-3g 2011-4-12 or later available, you must configure
+wimlib with --without-ntfs-3g. On FreeBSD, before mounting a WIM you need to
+load the POSIX message queue module (run `kldload mqueuefs').
-wimlib should work on big endian machines but it has not been tested.
+The code pays attention to endianness, so it should work on big-endian
+architectures, but I've never tested this so do not expect it to work.
-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.
+As of wimlib 1.3.0, there is experimental support for Microsoft Windows. I
+expect it to work on Windows Vista and later, although I have only tested it on
+Windows 7. See README.WINDOWS for more information.
- 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
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
+lzx-decompress.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/).
+lzx-compress.c, the code to compress WIM file resources using LZX compression,
+is originally based on code written by Matthew Russotto (www.russotto.net/chm/).
-lz.c, the code to find LZ77 matches (used for both XPRESS and LZX compression),
+lz77.c, the code to find LZ77 matches (used for both XPRESS and LZX compression),
is based on code from zlib.
A very 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 imagex.exe,
-such as the ability to mount WIMs read-write as well as read-only, and the
-ability to create LZX or XPRESS compressed WIMs.
+such as the ability to mount WIMs read-write as well as read-only, the ability
+to create LZX or XPRESS compressed WIMs, and the correct handling of security
+descriptors and hard links.
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.
+see how it compares to the version provided by this library.
+
+ 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
-`imagex', and the manual page for `mkwinpeimg'.
+See the manual pages for `wimlib-imagex', the manual pages for the subcommands
+of `wimlib-imagex', and the manual page for `mkwinpeimg'.
As of version 0.5.0, wimlib's public API is documented. Doxygen is required to
build the documentation. To build the documentation, run `configure', then
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
+By default, wimlib will be linked to the system library "libcrypto", which
+probably will be OpenSSL. Some people believe that GPL code cannot be linked to
+OpenSSL without a linking exception. As far as I know, I cannot officially
+include a linking exception with the license of this library because several
+files could be considered derived works of code copyrighted by others. If you
+believe this to be a problem, configure with --without-libcrypto to avoid
+linking with OpenSSL. There is no difference in functionality--- there will
+just be stand-alone SHA1 message digest code built into the library.
+
+ 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