X-Git-Url: https://wimlib.net/git/?p=wimlib;a=blobdiff_plain;f=README;h=6715a1f669d9b1223e8fa69327ab0652bef76bae;hp=ae2ab6b454111eadc1f7961ec35d7558145118f9;hb=HEAD;hpb=e6aef6a0af9e26797ca1711a8014a5fb62b3755e diff --git a/README b/README deleted file mode 100644 index ae2ab6b4..00000000 --- a/README +++ /dev/null @@ -1,291 +0,0 @@ - INTRODUCTION - -This is wimlib version 1.9.1 (March 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.