.br
\fBimagex mountrw\fR \fIarguments...\fR
.br
+\fBimagex split\fR \fIarguments...\fR
+.br
\fBimagex unmount\fR \fIarguments...\fR
.SH DESCRIPTION
.IP \[bu] 2
Mount an image in a WIM read-write (\fBimagex mountrw\fR)
.IP \[bu] 2
-LZX decompression and compression
-.IP \[bu] 2
-XPRESS decompression and compression
-.IP \[bu] 2
-Integrity table
-.IP \[bu] 2
-XML data (parsed and written using \fBlibxml\fR(3))
-.IP \[bu] 2
Create a WIM from a directory (\fBimagex capture\fR)
.IP \[bu] 2
Append a directory onto a WIM as a new image (\fBimagex append\fR)
.IP \[bu] 2
Change which image in a WIM is bootable (\fBimagex info\fR)
.IP \[bu] 2
-Combining split WIMs into one WIM (\fB image join\fR)
+Combining split WIMs into one WIM (\fBimage join\fR)
+.IP \[bu] 2
+Splitting a WIM into multiple parts (\fBimage split\fR)
+.IP \[bu] 2
+Support for all WIM compression types, both compression and decompression (LZX,
+XPRESS, and none)
+.IP \[bu] 2
+Integrity table
+.IP \[bu] 2
+XML data (parsed and written using \fBlibxml\fR(3))
.SH UNSUPPORTED FEATURES
The following features are currently unsupported:
.IP \[bu] 2
-File permissions and security descriptors are ignored. The information
-contained in them in an existing WIM will be lost when wimlib writes a WIM file.
-This does not seem to matter for Windows PE, but this means that you should not
-use this program to image a drive containing Windows Vista/7/8 and expect it to
-be applied with the correct file permissions.
+Wimlib cannot add security data when it captures a WIM file, although it will
+preserve security data for existing WIM files. New files added to a mounted
+WIM will be added without security data. This does not seem to matter for
+Windows PE, but this means that you should not use this program to image a drive
+containing Windows Vista/7/8 and expect it to be applied with the correct file
+permissions.
.IP \[bu] 2
-Split WIMs are not fully supported. These can be used to split up a WIM to fit
-on multiple CDs, if you can't use a DVD for some reason. You can use
-\fBimagex join\fR to combine split WIMs, but you cannot yet create split WIMs.
+Alternate file streams are unsupported and will be lost when wimlib writes a WIM
+file. Note that you shouldn't really have these on your Windows system anyway
+because they are unneeded and a security risk.
.IP \[bu] 2
-The \fB--verify\fR option, for all commands that use it. Without this option,
-there theoretically could be a SHA1 hash collision between two files, although
-it's very unlikely.
+Directly applying or mounting split WIMs is unsupported. You have to combine
+them together with \fBimagex join\fR first.
.IP \[bu] 2
-The \fB--config\fR option, for all commands that use it.
+The \fB--verify\fR option, for all commands that use it is unsupported. Without
+this option, there theoretically could be a SHA1 hash collision between two
+files, although it's very unlikely. You can still verify a WIM manually by
+capturing it, then applying it to a different location, then running a recursive
+diff on the two directory trees.
.IP \[bu] 2
-Alternate stream entries
+The \fB--config\fR option, for all commands that use it.
.IP \[bu] 2
-Different versions of the WIM file format (if different versions even exist)
+Different versions of the WIM file format (if different versions even exist).
Also see the Doxygen documentation for Wimlib.
See \fBUNSUPPORTED FEATURES\fR.
-The \fB/scroll\fR and \fB/log\fR switches from Microsoft's version imagex are
-not planned to be implemented. Note that to scroll the output in the UNIX shell
-you can just pipe the output into \fBless\fR(1).
+The most important difference is that this version of \fBimagex\fR cannot
+capture and restore Windows images losslessly because file permissions and
+alternate file streams cannot be captured. This is because Microsoft designed
+the WIM format to be specific to their NTFS filesystem and the Windows security
+model/API, which is difficult to support in a non-Windows program. However, you
+can still create images of Windows PE, even from a directory tree on a non-NTFS
+filesystem.
+
+See the documentation for each subcommand of \fBimagex\fR; in some cases they do
+not do exactly the same thing as imagex.exe.
Some features, such as the ability to keep files hard-linked when they are
extracted from a WIM, are not available in Microsoft's version of imagex.
+Also, doesn't seem to be an equivalent of \fBimagex join\fR in Microsoft's
+version; you would have to use \fBimagex.exe /export\fR, but that doesn't let
+you export all images at once.
+
+Microsoft's version has some weird limitations, like it won't let you extract a
+WIM on a shared folder, and it requires some commands to be run only from
+Windows PE and not from regular Windows. This version does not have these
+unusual limitations, although it won't actually run on Windows anyway.
-See the documentation for each command; in some cases they do not do exactly the
-same thing as imagex.exe.
+The \fB/scroll\fR and \fB/log\fR switches from Microsoft's version of imagex
+will not be implemented. Note that to scroll the output in the UNIX shell you
+can just pipe the output into \fBless\fR(1).
Obviously, this version of imagex is free software but Microsoft's version is
not.
.SH WARNING
Note: \fBwimlib\fR and \fBimagex\fR are experimental. Use Microsoft's
-imagex.exe if you have to make sure your WIM files are made correctly. Not all
-features listed under \fBSUPPORTED FEATURES\fR have been thoroughly tested.
+imagex.exe if you have to make sure your WIM files are made "correctly". Not
+all features listed under \fBSUPPORTED FEATURES\fR have been thoroughly tested.
Feel free to submit a bug report if you find a bug.
Some parts of the WIM file format are poorly documented or even completely
-undocumented, so these parts had to be reverse engineered for compatibility
-purposes.
+undocumented, so I've just had to do the best I can to read and write WIMs in a
+way that appears to be compatible with Microsoft's software.
.SH REPORTING BUGS
.BR imagex-join (1),
.BR imagex-mount (1),
.BR imagex-mountrw (1),
+.BR imagex-split (1),
.BR imagex-unmount (1),
git://wimlib.net / wimlib / blobdiff