- WIMLIB
-
-This is wimlib version 1.0.2 (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.
-
- WIM FILES
-
-A Windows Imaging (WIM) file is an archive. Like some other archive formats
-such as ZIP, files in WIM archives may be compressed. WIM archives support two
-Microsoft-specific compression formats: LZX and XPRESS. Both are based on LZ77
-and Huffman encoding, and both are supported by wimlib.
-
-Unlike ZIP files, WIM files can contain multiple independent toplevel directory
-trees known as images. While each image has its own metadata describing a
-directory tree and file access modes, files are not duplicated for each image;
-instead, each file is included only once in the entire WIM. Microsoft did this
-so that in one WIM file, they could do things like have 5 different versions of
-Windows that are almost exactly the same.
-
-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.
-
-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
+ INTRODUCTION
+
+This is wimlib version 1.4.0 (May 2013). wimlib is a C library for creating,
+modifying, extracting, and mounting files in the Windows Imaging Format (WIM
+files). These files are normally created by using the `imagex.exe' utility on
+Windows, but wimlib is distributed with a free implementation of ImageX called
+"wimlib-imagex" for both UNIX and Windows.
+
+ INSTALLATION
+
+To install wimlib and wimlib-imagex on Windows you simply need to download and
+extract the ZIP file containing the latest binaries from the SourceForge page
+(http://sourceforge.net/projects/wimlib/), which you may have already done.
+
+To install wimlib and wimlib-imagex on UNIX (with Linux being the primary
+supported and tested platform), you must compile it from the source code. At
+some point I might start posting RPMs and Debian packages for convenience.
+
+ 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 two compression formats: LZX and
+XPRESS. Both 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.
+
+ 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 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 UNIX, 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 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 x86_64 Windows PE image. Note: these timings were done on Windows
+7 so that the times would be fully comparable; however, wimlib-imagex may have
+even better performance on Linux.
+
+ Table 1. WIM size
+
+ XPRESS Compression LZX Compression
+ wimlib-imagex (v1.4.0): 165,301,379 bytes 155,254,385 bytes
+ Microsoft imagex.exe: 167,212,939 bytes 149,973,212 bytes
+
+ Table 2. Time to create WIM
+
+ XPRESS Compression LZX Compression
+ wimlib-imagex (v1.4.0, 2 threads): 18 sec 51 sec
+ Microsoft imagex.exe: 25 sec 93 sec
+
+ 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 a 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 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 if you install
-either the `cabextract' or `p7zip' programs.
+Microsoft, inside the `WinPE.cab' file, which you can extract natively on
+Windows, or on UNIX 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'.
+A shell script `mkwinpeimg' is distributed with wimlib on UNIX to ease the
+process of creating and customizing a bootable Windows PE image.
-`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.
+ DEPENDENCIES
-`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.
+This section documents the dependencies of wimlib and the programs distributed
+with it, when building for UNIX 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.
- 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
- 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 will automatically be loaded if you try to mount
- a WIM file. For more information see http://fuse.sourceforge.net/.
- FUSE is also available for FreeBSD.
-
-* libntfs-3g
+ version of libfuse to be installed. 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 will automatically be loaded if you try to mount a WIM
+ file. For more information see http://fuse.sourceforge.net/. FUSE is
+ also available for FreeBSD.
+
+* 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)
* 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 GNU/Linux
+ 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
(http://www.syslinux.org). Retrieving files from the Windows Automated
Installation Kit requires `cabextract' (http://www.cabextract.org.uk).
+ CONFIGURATION
- CONFIGURATION
-
-Besides the various well-known options, the following options can be passed to
-wimlib's `configure' script:
+This section documents the most important options that may be passed to the
+"configure" script when building the UNIX version from source:
--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.
-
--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 assertions included by default.
---enable-debug
- Include debugging messages. Only use this option if you have found a
- bug in the library.
+ PORTABILITY
---enable-more-debug
- Include more debugging messages. Only use this option if you have found
- a bug in the library.
+wimlib has primarily been tested on Linux and Windows (primarily Windows 7, but
+also Windows XP and Windows 8).
- PORTABILITY
+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 has mostly been developed and tested on x86_64 (64-bit) GNU/Linux.
+wimlib has not been tested on big-endian CPU architectures.
-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 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
compression format, and a document that specifies the XPRESS compression format.
However, many parts of these formats are poorly documented, and some parts have
no documentation whatsoever. Some particularly poorly documented parts of the
-formats have had comments added in various places in the library. Please see
-the code and/or ask me if you have any questions about the WIM file format as it
-exists in reality and not as it exists in Microsoft's poorly written
+formats have had comments added in various places in the library code. Please
+see the code and/or ask me if you have any questions about the WIM file format
+as it exists in reality and not as it exists in Microsoft's poorly written
documentation.
-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.
-
-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).
-
-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/).
-
-lz.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.
-
-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/.
-
-You can see the documentation about Microsoft's version of the imagex program at
+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.
+
+lzx-decompress.c, the code to decompress WIM file resources that are compressed
+using LZX compression, was originally based on code from the cabextract project
+(http://www.cabextract.org.uk) but has been rewritten.
+
+lzx-compress.c, the code to compress WIM file resources using LZX compression,
+was originally based on code written by Matthew Russotto (www.russotto.net/chm/)
+but has been rewritten.
+
+lz77.c, the code to find LZ77 matches (used for both XPRESS and LZX
+compression), is based on code from zlib but has been rewritten.
+
+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
+ imagex.exe, 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.
+ * 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.
+
+A very early version of wimlib is being used to deploy Windows 7 from the
+Ultimate Deployment Appliance. For more information see
+http://www.ultimatedeployment.org/.
+
+You can see the documentation about Microsoft's version of ImageX 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 wimlib-imagex.
- MORE INFORMATION
+If you are looking for a UNIX archive format that provides features similar to
+WIM, I recommend you take a look at SquashFS (http://squashfs.sourceforge.net/).
-See the manual pages for `imagex', the manual pages for the subcommands of
-`imagex', and the manual page for `mkwinpeimg'.
+ LICENSE
-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
-enter the directory `doc' and run `doxygen'. The HTML documentation will be
-created in a directory named `html'.
-
- LICENSE
-
-As of version 1.0.0, wimlib is released under the GNU GPL version 3.0 or later.
-This includes the files in the `programs' directory as well as the files in the
-`src' directory.
+As of version 1.0.0, wimlib and all programs and scripts distributed with it are
+released under the GNU GPL version 3.0 or later.
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
+On UNIX, 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.
+
+ 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).
+wimlib comes with no warranty whatsoever. 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).
-Please submit a bug report (to ebiggers3@gmail.com) if you find a bug in wimlib.
+Please submit a bug report (to ebiggers3@gmail.com) if you find a bug in wimlib
+and/or wimlib-imagex.
-Some parts of the WIM file format are poorly documented or even completely
-undocumented, so I've just had to do the best I can to read and write WIMs that
-appear to be compatible with Microsoft's software.
+Be aware that some parts of the WIM file format are poorly documented or even
+completely undocumented, so I've just had to do the best I can to read and write
+WIMs that appear to be compatible with Microsoft's software.
git://wimlib.net / wimlib / blobdiff