wimlib-imagex-capture(1)
NAME
wimlib-imagex-capture, wimlib-imagex-append - Create or append a WIM image
SYNOPSIS
wimlib-imagex capture SOURCE WIMFILE [IMAGE_NAME [IMAGE_DESCRIPTION]] [OPTION...] wimlib-imagex append SOURCE WIMFILE [IMAGE_NAME [IMAGE_DESCRIPTION]] [OPTION...]
DESCRIPTION
The wimlib-imagex capture and wimlib-imagex append commands create a Windows Imaging (WIM) image from a directory tree. The wimlib-imagex capture command creates a new WIM file containing the captured image, while the wimlib-imagex append command appends the captured image to an existing WIM file. These commands are also available as simply wimcapture and wimappend if the appropriate hard links or batch files are installed. Background information: A WIM image is an independent directory tree in a WIM file. A WIM file may contain any number of separate images. WIM files are single-instancing with regards to file data, so a file is stored only one time in the entire WIM, regardless of how many images the file appears in. SOURCE specifies the location of the files to create the new WIM image from. If SOURCE is a directory, the WIM image is captured from that directory (see DIRECTORY CAPTURE (UNIX) or DIRECTORY CAPTURE (WINDOWS)). Alternatively, if the --source-list option is specified, SOURCE is interpreted as a file that itself provides a list of files and directories to include in the new WIM image. Still alternatively, only on UNIX-like systems, if SOURCE is a regular file or block device, it is interpreted as an NTFS volume from which a WIM image is to be captured using libntfs-3g (see NTFS VOLUME CAPTURE (UNIX)). IMAGE_NAME and IMAGE_DESCRIPTION specify the name and description to give the new WIM image. If IMAGE_NAME is not specified, it defaults to the base name (excluding path to parent directory) of SOURCE, but if this name already exists in WIMFILE, a unique suffix is added. Otherwise, IMAGE_NAME must be either a name that does not already exist as an image in WIMFILE, or the empty string to create an image with no name. If IMAGE_DESCRIPTION is not specified, no description is given to the new image. As a special case, if WIMFILE is "-", the --pipable option is assumed and the WIM file is written to standard output in a special pipable format. See the documentation for --pipable for more details.
DIRECTORY CAPTURE (UNIX)
This section documents how wimlib-imagex captures files from a
directory tree on UNIX-like systems. See DIRECTORY CAPTURE (WINDOWS)
for the corresponding documentation for Windows.
On UNIX-like systems, when SOURCE specifies a directory or a symbolic
link to a directory, the WIM image will be captured from the directory
tree rooted at this directory. This directory can be on any type of
filesystem, and mountpoints are followed recursively. In this mode,
wimlib will store the following types of information:
· Directories and regular files, and the contents of regular files
· Hard links
· Symbolic links (translated losslessly to Windows reparse points)
· Last modification times (mtime) and last access times (atime) with
100 nanosecond granularity
· With --unix-data: UNIX owners, groups, and modes
· With --unix-data: device nodes, FIFOs, and UNIX domain sockets
There is no support for storing extended attributes (e.g. SELinux
security labels and POSIX ACLs), last status change times (ctimes), or
hard link information for symbolic link files (each symbolic link will
be stored as an independent file). In addition, filenames and symbolic
link targets on UNIX filesystems which are not valid UTF-8 with the
addition of surrogate codepoints are unsupported. Note: if you have a
filesystem containing filenames in another multibyte encoding, such as
ISO-8859-1, and you wish to archive it with wimlib, you may be able to
mount it with an option which causes its filenames to be presented as
UTF-8.
NTFS VOLUME CAPTURE (UNIX)
This section documents how wimlib-imagex captures files directly from
an NTFS volume image on UNIX-like systems.
On UNIX-like systems, a special image capture mode is entered when
SOURCE is a regular file or block device. In this mode, SOURCE is
assumed to be an NTFS volume or volume image, and wimlib-imagex will
capture a WIM image containing the full contents of the NTFS volume,
including NTFS-specific data. This is done using libntfs-3g.
Note that the NTFS volume capture mode is not entered if SOURCE is a
directory, even if an NTFS filesystem is mounted on SOURCE using
ntfs-3g. You must specify the NTFS volume itself (and it must be
unmounted, and you must have permission to read from it).
The NTFS volume capture mode attempts to capture as much data and
metadata as possible, including:
· All data streams of all unencrypted files, including the unnamed
data stream as well as all named data streams.
· Reparse points, including symbolic links, junction points, and
other reparse points.
· File and directory creation, access, and modification timestamps,
using the native NTFS resolution of 100 nanoseconds.
· Windows security descriptors, including all components (owner,
group, DACL, and SACL).
· DOS/Windows file attribute flags.
· All names of all files, including names in the Win32 namespace, DOS
namespace, Win32+DOS namespace, and POSIX namespace. This includes
hard links.
· Object IDs.
However, the main limitations of this NTFS volume capture mode are:
· Encrypted files are excluded by default. Although libntfs-3g can
read their data, they need to be stored in the WIM file in a
special format that wimlib does not yet support (except on Windows,
where wimlib can treat the data as opaque and hand it off to the
appropriate API function).
· The sparse attribute on sparse files will be saved, but the data
stored will be the full data of the file rather than the "sparse"
data. (The data is, however, subject to the WIM format's
compression.)
DIRECTORY CAPTURE (WINDOWS)
On Windows, wimlib-imagex capture and wimlib-imagex append natively
support Windows-specific and NTFS-specific data. They therefore act
similarly to the corresponding commands of Microsoft's ImageX or DISM.
For best results, the directory being captured should be on an NTFS
volume and wimlib-imagex should be run with Administrator privileges;
however, non-NTFS filesystems and running without Administrator
privileges are also supported.
On Windows, wimlib-imagex capture and wimlib-imagex append try to
archive as much data and metadata as possible, including:
· All data streams of all files.
· Reparse points, including symbolic links, junction points, and
other reparse points, if supported by the source filesystem.
(Note: see --rpfix and --norpfix for documentation on exactly how
absolute symbolic links and junctions are captured.)
· File and directory creation, access, and modification timestamps.
These are stored with Windows NT's native timestamp resolution of
100 nanoseconds.
· Security descriptors, if supported by the source filesystem and
--no-acls is not specified. However, beware that unless --strict-
acls is specified, the security descriptors for individual files or
directories may be omitted or only partially captured if the user
does not have permission to read them, which can be a problem if
wimlib-imagex is run as a non-Administrator.
· File attributes, including hidden, sparse, compressed, encrypted,
etc. Encrypted files will be stored in encrypted form rather than
in plain text. Transparently compressed files will be read as
uncompressed and stored subject to the WIM's own compression.
There is no special handling for storing sparse files, but they are
likely to compress to a small size.
· DOS names (8.3) names of files; however, the failure to read them
is not considered an error condition.
· Hard links, if supported by the source filesystem.
· Object IDs, if supported by the source filesystem.
There is no support for storing NTFS extended attributes.
The capture process is reversible, since when wimlib-imagex apply (on
Windows) extracts the captured WIM image, it will extract all of the
above information, at least to the extent supported by the destination
filesystem.
Pedantic note: since Windows is not fully compatible with its own
filesystem (NTFS), on Windows wimlib cannot archive certain files that
may exist on a valid NTFS filesystem but are inaccessible to the
Windows API, for example two files with names differing only in case in
the same directory (unless ObCaseInsensitive has been set to 0 in the
Windows registry), or a file whose name contains certain characters
considered invalid by Windows. If you run into problems archiving such
files consider using the NTFS VOLUME CAPTURE (UNIX) mode from Linux.
OPTIONS
--boot
Specifies that the new image is to be made the bootable image of
the WIM archive.
--check
For wimlib-imagex append, before performing the append operation,
check the integrity of WIMFILE if an integrity table is present.
Furthermore, include an integrity table in the new WIM file
(wimlib-imagex capture) or the modified WIM file (wimlib-imagex
append). If this option is not specified, no integrity table is
included in a WIM file created with wimlib-imagex capture, while
a WIM file updated with wimlib-imagex append will be written with
an integrity table if and only if one was present before.
--compress=TYPE[:LEVEL]
Specifies the compression format for the new WIM file. TYPE may
be "none", "XPRESS" (alias: "fast"), "LZX" (alias: "maximum"), or
"LZMS" (alias: "recovery"). TYPE is matched case-insensitively.
The default is "LZX".
You can optionally also specify an integer compression LEVEL.
The compression level specifies how hard the compression
algorithm for the specified compression TYPE will work to
compress the data. The values are scaled so that 20 is quick
compression, 50 is medium compression, and 100 is high
compression. However, you can choose any value, and not just
these particular values. The default is 50.
This option only affects the compression type used in non-solid
WIM resources. If you are creating a solid WIM (using the
--solid option), then you probably want --solid-compress instead.
Be careful if you choose LZMS compression. It is not compatible
with wimlib before v1.6.0, WIMGAPI before Windows 8, DISM before
Windows 8.1, and 7-Zip before v15.12.
Also note that choosing LZMS compression does not automatically
imply solid-mode compression, as it does with DISM. Use --solid
if you want to create a solid WIM, or "ESD file".
--chunk-size=SIZE
Set the compression chunk size to SIZE bytes. A larger
compression chunk size results in a better compression ratio.
wimlib supports different chunk sizes depending on the
compression type:
· XPRESS: 4K, 8K, 16K, 32K, 64K
· LZX: 32K, 64K, 128K, 256K, 512K, 1M, 2M
· LZMS: 32K, 64K, 128K, 256K, 512K, 1M, 2M, 4M, 8M, 16M, 32M,
64M, 128M, 256M, 512M, 1G
You can provide the full number (e.g. 32768), or you can use one
of the K, M, or G suffixes. KiB, MiB, and GiB are also accepted.
This option only affects the chunk size used in non-solid WIM
resources. If you are creating a solid WIM (using the --solid
option), then you probably want --solid-chunk-size instead.
Use this option with caution if compatibility with Microsoft's
implementation is desired, since their implementation has limited
support for non-default chunk sizes.
--solid
Create a "solid" WIM file that compresses files together rather
than independently. This results in a significantly better
compression ratio, but it comes at the cost of various tradeoffs,
including: slow compression with very high memory usage; slow
random access to the resulting WIM file; and reduced
compatibility.
Compatibility-wise, the first version of Microsoft's WIMGAPI to
support solid WIM files was released with Windows 8, and the
first version of DISM to do so was released with Windows 8.1.
If you want to create an "ESD file", then use this option. An
(unencrypted) "ESD file" is a solid WIM file.
By default, this option has an effect equivalent to DISM's option
/compress:recovery. The options for wimlib-imagex are different
because they try not to conflate the compression type (e.g. LZX
or LZMS) with solid-mode compression, as these are two different
things.
--solid-chunk-size=SIZE
Like --chunk-size, but set the chunk size used in solid
resources. The default, assuming LZMS compression, is 64MiB
(67108864); this requires about 640MiB of memory per thread.
This option only has an effect when --solid is also specified.
Note: Microsoft's implementation is not compatible with LZMS
chunk sizes larger than 64MiB.
--solid-compress=TYPE[:LEVEL]
Like --compress, but set the compression type used in solid
resources. The default is LZMS compression. This option only
has an effect when --solid is also specified.
--threads=NUM_THREADS
Number of threads to use for compressing data. Default:
autodetect (number of available CPUs).
--rebuild
For wimlib-imagex append: rebuild the entire WIM rather than
appending the new data to the end of it. Rebuilding the WIM is
slower, but will save a little bit of space that would otherwise
be left as a hole in the WIM. Also see wimlib-imagex
optimize(1).
--flags=EDITIONID
Specify a string to use in the <FLAGS> element of the XML data
for the new image.
--image-property NAME=VALUE
Specify an arbitrary per-image property to set in the XML
document of the WIM file. VALUE is the string to set as the
property value. NAME is the name of the image property, for
example "NAME", "DESCRIPTION", or "TOTALBYTES". The name can
contain forward slashes to indicate a nested XML element; for
example, "WINDOWS/VERSION/BUILD" indicates the BUILD element
nested within the VERSION element nested within the WINDOWS
element. A bracketed number can be used to indicate one of
several identically-named elements; for example,
"WINDOWS/LANGUAGES/LANGUAGE[2]" indicates the second "LANGUAGE"
element nested within the "WINDOWS/LANGUAGES" element. When
adding a list of elements in this way, they must be specified in
sequential order. Note that element names are case-sensitive.
This option may be specified multiple times.
--dereference
(UNIX-like systems only) Follow symbolic links and archive the
files they point to, rather than archiving the links themselves.
--config=FILE
Specifies a configuration file (UTF-8 or UTF-16LE encoded; plain
ASCII also works) for capturing the new image. The configuration
file specifies files that are to be treated specially during the
image capture.
The format of the configuration file is INI-style; that is, it is
arranged in bracketed sections. Currently, the following
sections are recognized:
· [ExclusionList] --- contains a list of path globs to exclude
from capture. If a directory is matched, both the directory
and its contents are excluded.
· [ExclusionException] --- contains a list of path globs to
include in the capture, even when the file or directory also
matches a glob in [ExclusionList].
· [PrepopulateList] --- this does not affect capture, but if
the image is applied later with --wimboot, these are globs of
files that shall be extracted normally, not as WIMBoot
"pointer files". If a directory is matched, all files and
subdirectories are also matched recursively.
Path globs may contain the '*' and '?' meta-characters. Relative
globs (e.g. *.mp3) match against a filename in any directory.
Absolute globs (e.g. /dir/file), are treated as paths starting
at the main directory being captured, or the root of the NTFS
volume for NTFS volume capture mode. Do not use drive letters in
the paths; they will be ignored. Path separators may be either
forwards slashes or backwards slashes.
Lines beginning with the '#' or ';' characters are treated as
comments and ignored. Globs with whitespace in them need not be
quoted; however, if they are, both double and single quotes are
accepted.
If this option is not specified the following default
configuration file is used:
[ExclusionList]
\$ntfs.log
\hiberfil.sys
\pagefile.sys
\swapfile.sys
\System Volume Information
\RECYCLER
\Windows\CSC
However, special behavior applies if --wimboot is also specified.
By default, with --wimboot specified, the file
Windows/System32/WimBootCompress.ini in the directory being
captured will be used as the configuration file. However, this
can be overridden using --config; and this also causes the
specified configuration file to be saved in the WIM image as
Windows/System32/WimBootCompress.ini, overriding any that may be
present on the filesystem.
--unix-data
(UNIX-like systems only) Store the UNIX owner, group, mode, and
device ID (major and minor number) of each captured file. Since
wimlib v1.7.0, you can backup and restore not only the standard
UNIX file permission information, but also character device
nodes, block device nodes, named pipes (FIFOs), and UNIX domain
sockets.
wimlib stores UNIX data by adding a special tagged metadata item
to each directory entry of each file that contains this
information. This extra information is ignored by the Microsoft
implementation. Note: UNIX data stored by wimlib before v1.7.0
used a different format that is no longer supported. If you have
old WIM files with UNIX data, apply them with v1.6.2 and
recapture them with v1.7.0 or later.
--no-acls
Do not capture files' security descriptors.
--strict-acls
Fail immediately if the full security descriptor of any file
cannot be read. On Windows, the default behavior without this
option is to first try omitting the SACL from the security
descriptor, then to try omitting the security descriptor
entirely. The purpose of this is to capture as much data as
possible without always requiring Administrator privileges.
However, if you desire that all security descriptors be captured
exactly, you may wish to provide this option, although the
Administrator should have permission to read everything anyway.
--rpfix, --norpfix
Set whether to fix targets of absolute symbolic links (reparse
points in Windows terminology) or not. When enabled (--rpfix),
absolute symbolic links that point inside the directory tree
being captured will be adjusted to be absolute relative to the
root of the directory tree being captured. When disabled
(--norpfix), absolute symbolic links will be captured exactly as
is.
The default behavior for wimlib-imagex capture is equivalent to
--rpfix. The default behavior for wimlib-imagex append will be
--rpfix if reparse point fixups have previously been done on
WIMFILE, otherwise --norpfix.
In the case of a multi-source capture, (--source-list specified),
passing --norpfix is recommended. Otherwise, reparse point
fixups will be disabled on all capture sources destined for non-
root locations in the WIM image, while capture sources destined
for the WIM root will get the default behavior from the previous
paragraph.
--source-list
wimlib-imagex capture and wimlib-imagex append support creating a
WIM image from multiple separate files or directories. When
--source-list is specified, the SOURCE argument specifies the
name of a text file, each line of which is either 1 or 2
whitespace separated file paths. The first file path, the
source, specifies the path to a file or directory to capture into
the WIM image. It may be either absolute or relative to the
current working directory. The second file path, if provided, is
the target and specifies the path in the WIM image that this
file or directory will be saved as. Leading and trailing slashes
in the target are ignored, except if it consists entirely of
slashes (e.g. "/"), which indicates that the directory is to
become the root of the WIM image. If omitted, the target string
defaults to the same as the source string.
An example source list file is as follows:
# Make the WIM image from the 'winpe' directory
winpe /
# Send the 'overlay' directory to '/overlay' in the WIM image
overlay /overlay
# Overlay a separate directory directly on the root of the WIM image.
/data/stuff /
Subdirectories in the WIM are created as needed. Multiple source
directories may share the same target, which implies an overlay.
In the event that this results a nondirectory file being added to
the WIM image multiple times, the last version (as listed in the
source list file) overrides any earlier version.
File paths containing whitespace may be quoted with either single
quotes or double quotes. Quotes may not be escaped.
Lines consisting only of whitespace and lines beginning with '#'
preceded by optional whitespace are ignored.
As a special case, if SOURCE is "-", the source list is read from
standard input rather than an external file.
The NTFS volume capture mode on UNIX-like systems cannot be used
with --source-list, as only capturing a full NTFS volume is
supported.
--pipable
Create a "pipable" WIM, which can be applied fully sequentially,
including from a pipe. An image in the resulting WIM can be
applied with wimlib-imagex apply, either normally by specifying
the WIM file name, or with wimlib-imagex apply - to read the WIM
from standard input. See wimlib-imagex apply(1) for more
details.
For append operations, this option will result in a full rebuild
of the WIM to make it pipable. For capture operations, the
captured WIM is simply created as pipable. Beware that the more
images you add to a pipable WIM, the less efficient piping it
will be, since more unneeded data will be sent through the pipe.
When wimlib creates a pipable WIM, it carefully re-arranges the
components of the WIM so that they can be read sequentially and
also makes several other modifications. As a result, these
"pipable" WIMs are not compatible with Microsoft's software, so
keep this in mind if you're going to use them. If desired, you
can use wimlib-imagex optimize --not-pipable to re-write a
pipable WIM as a regular WIM. (wimlib-imagex export also
provides the capability to export images from a pipable WIM into
a non-pipable WIM, or vice versa.)
For the most part, wimlib operates on pipable WIMs transparently.
You can modify them, add or delete images, export images, and
even create split pipable WIMs. The main disadvantages are that
appending is (currently) less efficient (--rebuild is always
implied), and also they aren't compatible with Microsoft's
software.
wimlib-imagex capture and wimlib-imagex append can both write a
pipable WIM directly to standard output; this is done
automatically if WIMFILE is specified as "-". (In that case,
--pipable is assumed.)
--not-pipable
Ensure the resulting WIM is in the normal, non-pipable WIM
format. This is the default for wimlib-imagex capture, except
when writing to standard output (WIMFILE specified as "-"), and
also for wimlib-imagex append, except when appending to a WIM
that is already pipable.
--update-of=[WIMFILE:]IMAGE
Declares that the image being captured or appended from SOURCE is
mostly the same as the existing image IMAGE in WIMFILE, but
captured at a later point in time, possibly with some
modifications in the intervening time. This is designed to be
used in incremental backups of the same filesystem or directory
tree. IMAGE can be a 1-based index or name of an existing image
in WIMFILE. It can also be a negative integer to index backwards
into the images (e.g. -1 means the last existing image in
WIMFILE).
When this option is provided, the capture or append of the new
image will be optimized by not reading files that, based on
metadata such as timestamps, appear not to have been modified
since they were archived in the existing IMAGE. Barring
manipulation of timestamps, this option only affects performance
and does not change the resulting WIM image (but see note below).
As shown, the full syntax for the argument to this option is to
specify the WIM file, a colon, and the image; for example,
"--update-of mywim.wim:1". However, the WIM file and colon may
be omitted, in which case the WIM file will default to the WIM
file being appended to for append operations, or the WIM file
from which a delta is being taken (only if --delta-from is
specified exactly once) for capture operations.
Note: in the Windows version of wimlib, it has been observed that
--update-of mode is not completely reliable at detecting changes
in file contents, sometimes causing the old contents of a few
files to be archived rather than the current contents. The cause
of this problem is that Windows does not immediately update a
file's last modification timestamp after every write to that
file. Unfortunately, there is no known way for applications like
wimlib to automatically work around this bug. Manual workarounds
are possible; theoretically, taking any action that causes the
problematic files to be closed, such as restarting applications
or the computer itself, should cause the files' last modification
timestamps to be updated. Also note that wimlib compares file
sizes as well as timestamps in determining whether a file has
changed, which helps make the problem less likely to occur; and
the problem does not occur on other operating systems such as
Linux which maintain files' last modification timestamps
correctly.
--delta-from=WIMFILE
For wimlib-imagex capture only: capture the new WIM as a "delta"
from WIMFILE. Any streams that would ordinarily need to be
archived in the new WIM are omitted if they are already present
in the WIMFILE on which the delta is being based. The new WIM
will still contain a full copy of the image metadata, but this is
typically only a small fraction of a WIM's total size.
This option can be specified multiple times, in which case the
resulting delta WIM will only contain streams not present in any
of the specified base WIMs.
To operate on the resulting delta WIM using other commands such
as wimlib-imagex apply, you must specify the delta WIM as the WIM
file to operate on, but also reference the base WIM(s) using the
--ref option. Beware: to retain the proper functioning of the
delta WIM, you can only add, not delete, files and images to the
base WIM(s) following the capture of a delta from it.
--delta-from may be combined with --update-of to increase the
speed of capturing a delta WIM.
As an example, consider the following backup and restore
sequence:
(initial backup)
$ wimcapture /some/directory bkup-base.wim
(some days later, create second backup as delta from first)
$ wimcapture /some/directory bkup-2013-08-20.dwm \
--update-of bkup-base.wim:-1 --delta-from bkup-base.wim
(restoring the second backup)
$ wimapply bkup-2013-08-20.dwm --ref=bkup-base.wim 1 \
/some/directory
However, note that as an alternative to the above sequence that
used a delta WIM, the second backup could have simply been
appended to the WIM as new image using wimlib-imagex append.
Delta WIMs should be used only if it's desired to base the
backups or images on a separate, large file that is rarely
modified.
Note: unlike "pipable" WIMs (created with the --pipable option),
"delta" WIMs (created with the --delta-from option) are
compatible with Microsoft's software. For example, you can use
the /ref option of ImageX to reference the base WIM(s), similar
to above.
Additional note: wimlib-imagex is generalized enough that you
can in fact combine --pipable and --delta-from to create pipable
delta WIMs. In such cases, the base WIM(s) must be captured as
pipable as well as the delta WIM, and when applying an image, the
base WIM(s) must be sent over the pipe after the delta WIM.
--wimboot
Mark the image as WIMBoot-compatible. See Microsoft's
documentation for more information about WIMBoot. This option
will, by default, set the compression type to XPRESS and the
chunk size to 4096 bytes; these can, however, still be overridden
through the --compress and --chunk-size parameters, respectively.
In addition, this option will, by default, set the configuration
file to SOURCE\Windows\System32\WimBootCompress.ini if present
and accessible; however, this may still be overridden through the
--config parameter.
--unsafe-compact
For wimlib-imagex append: compact the WIM archive in-place and
append any new data, eliminating "holes". In general, this
option should not be used because a failed or interrupted
compaction will corrupt the WIM archive. For more information,
see the documentation for this option in wimlib-imagex-optimize
(1).
--snapshot
Create a temporary filesystem snapshot of the source directory
and capture the files from it. Currently, this option is only
supported on Windows, where it uses the Volume Shadow Copy
Service (VSS). Using this option, you can create a consistent
backup of the system volume of a running Windows system without
running into problems with locked files. For the VSS snapshot to
be successfully created, wimlib-imagex must be run as an
Administrator, and it cannot be run in WoW64 mode (i.e. if
Windows is 64-bit, then wimlib-imagex must be 64-bit as well).
NOTES
wimlib-imagex append does not support appending an image to a split
WIM.
Except when using --unsafe-compact, it is safe to abort a wimlib-imagex
append command partway through; however, after doing this, it is
recommended to run wimlib-imagex optimize to remove any data that was
appended to the physical WIM file but not yet incorporated into the
structure of the WIM, unless the WIM was being fully rebuilt (e.g. with
--rebuild), in which case you should delete the temporary file left
over.
wimlib-imagex creates WIMs compatible with Microsoft's software
(WIMGAPI, ImageX, DISM), with some caveats:
· With wimlib-imagex on UNIX-like systems, it is possible to create a
WIM image containing files with names differing only in case, or
files with names containing the characters ':', '*', '?', '"', '<',
'>', '|', or '\', which are valid on POSIX-compliant filesystems
but not Windows. Be warned that such files will not be extracted
by default by the Windows version of wimlib-imagex, and (even
worse) Microsoft's ImageX can be confused by such names and quit
extracting the image partway through. (It perhaps is worth
pointing out that Windows' own default filesystem, NTFS, supports
these characters, although Windows does not!)
· Pipable WIMs are incompatible with Microsoft's software. Pipable
WIMs are created only if WIMFILE was specified as "-" (standard
output) or if the --pipable flag was specified.
· WIMs captured with a non-default chunk size (with the --chunk-size
option) or as solid archives (with the --solid option) or with LZMS
compression (with --compress=LZMS or --compress=recovery) have
varying levels of compatibility with Microsoft's software.
Generally, more recent versions of Microsoft's software are more
compatible.
EXAMPLES
First example: Create a new WIM 'mywim.wim' with LZX ("maximum")
compression that will contain a captured image of the directory tree
'somedir'. Note that the image name need not be specified and will
default to 'somedir':
wimlib-imagex capture somedir mywim.wim
or, if the wimcapture hard link or batch file has been installed, the
abbreviated form can be used:
wimcapture somedir mywim.wim
The remaining examples will use the long form, however. Next, append
the image of a different directory tree to the WIM created above:
wimlib-imagex append anotherdir mywim.wim
Easy enough, and the above examples of imaging directory trees work on
both UNIX-like systems and Windows. Next, capture a WIM with several
non-default options, including XPRESS ("fast") compression, an
integrity table, no messing with absolute symbolic links, and an image
name and description:
wimlib-imagex capture somedir mywim.wim --compress=fast \
--check --norpfix "Some Name" "Some Description"
Capture an entire NTFS volume into a new WIM file and name the image
"Windows 7". On UNIX-like systems, this requires using the special
mode described in NTFS VOLUME CAPTURE (UNIX) where SOURCE is a file or
block device containing an NTFS filesystem:
wimlib-imagex capture /dev/sda2 windows7.wim "Windows 7"
or, on Windows, to capture a full NTFS volume you instead need to
specify the root directory of the mounted volume, for example:
wimlib-imagex capture E:\ windows7.wim "Windows 7"
Same as above example with capturing an NTFS volume from wimlib-imagex
running on a UNIX-like system, but capture the WIM in the wimlib-
specific "pipable" format that can be piped to wimlib-imagex apply:
wimlib-imagex capture /dev/sda2 windows7.wim "Windows 7" \
--pipable
Same as above, but instead of writing the pipable WIM to the file
"windows7.wim", write it directly to standard output through a pipe
into some other program "someprog", which could, for example, be a
program or script that streams the data to a server. Note that
--pipable need not be explicitly specified when using standard output
as the WIM "file":
wimlib-imagex capture /dev/sda2 - "Windows 7" | someprog
SEE ALSO
wimlib-imagex(1), wimlib-imagex-apply(1)
Opportunity
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