Provided by: wimtools_1.14.2-1_amd64 bug

NAME

       wimcapture, wimappend - Capture or append a WIM image

SYNOPSIS

       wimcapture SOURCE WIMFILE [IMAGE_NAME  [IMAGE_DESC]] [OPTION...]
       wimappend SOURCE WIMFILE [IMAGE_NAME  [IMAGE_DESC]] [OPTION...]

DESCRIPTION

       The  wimcapture (equivalently: wimlib-imagex capture) and wimappend (equivalently: wimlib-
       imagex append) commands create ("capture") a new Windows Imaging (WIM) image.   wimcapture
       creates a new WIM archive WIMFILE to contain the new image, while wimappend adds the image
       to the existing WIM archive WIMFILE (or with --create, creating it if needed).

       SOURCE specifies the location of the files from which to create the WIM image.  If  SOURCE
       is a directory or a symbolic link pointing to a directory, then the image is captured from
       that  directory  as  per  DIRECTORY  CAPTURE  (UNIX)  or  DIRECTORY   CAPTURE   (WINDOWS).
       Alternatively,  if  --source-list  is  specified,  then  SOURCE  is  interpreted as a file
       containing a list of files and directories to include in the image.  Still  alternatively,
       if  SOURCE is a UNIX block device, then an image is captured from the NTFS volume on it as
       per NTFS VOLUME CAPTURE (UNIX).

       IMAGE_NAME and IMAGE_DESC specify the name and description to  give  the  new  image.   If
       IMAGE_NAME  is  unspecified,  it defaults to the filename component of SOURCE, appending a
       unique suffix if needed.  Otherwise, IMAGE_NAME must be either a name not already used  by
       an  image  in  WIMFILE,  or the empty string to create an unnamed image.  If IMAGE_DESC is
       unspecified then the new image is given no description.

       If WIMFILE is specified as "-", then the --pipable option is assumed and a pipable WIM  is
       written to standard output (this is a wimlib extension).

DIRECTORY CAPTURE (UNIX)

       On  UNIX-like  systems, if SOURCE specifies a directory or a symbolic link to a directory,
       then the WIM image will be captured from that directory.  The directory can be on any type
       of  filesystem,  and  mountpoints  are  followed.   In  this  mode, the following types of
       information are captured:

       •   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

       •   Files that appear to be sparse will be flagged as such, but their full data will still
           be stored, subject to the usual compression.

       •   With --unix-data: standard UNIX file permissions (owner, group, and mode)

       •   With --unix-data: device nodes, named pipes, and sockets

       •   With --unix-data: extended attributes (Linux only)

       There is no  support  for  storing  last  status  change  times  (ctimes),  or  hard  link
       information  for  symlinks  (each  symlink  will  be  stored  as  a separate file).  Also,
       filenames and symlink targets which are not valid UTF-8 with  the  addition  of  surrogate
       codepoints  are  unsupported.   Note that 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)

       On UNIX-like systems, SOURCE may also be specified as a  block  device  (e.g.   /dev/sda3)
       containing  an unmounted NTFS volume.  In this mode, wimcapture uses libntfs-3g to capture
       a WIM image from root directory of the NTFS volume.   In  this  mode,  as  much  data  and
       metadata as possible is captured, including NTFS-specific and Windows-specific metadata:

       •   All  data  streams of all unencrypted files, including the unnamed data stream as well
           as all named data streams.

       •   Reparse points.  See REPARSE POINTS AND SYMLINKS for details.

       •   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 mode are:

       •   Encrypted files are excluded.

       •   Extended attributes (EAs) are not stored yet.

       •   Sparse files will be flagged as such, but  their  full  data  will  still  be  stored,
           subject to the usual compression.

       •   Some  types  of  reparse  points  are transparently dereferenced by Windows but not by
           NTFS-3G.  See REPARSE POINTS AND SYMLINKS.

       Note that this mode uses libntfs-3g directly, without going through the ntfs-3g(8) driver.
       Hence,  there is no special support for capturing a WIM image from a directory on which an
       NTFS filesystem has been mounted using ntfs-3g(8); you have to unmount it first.  There is
       also  no support for capturing a subdirectory of the NTFS volume; you can only capture the
       full volume.

DIRECTORY CAPTURE (WINDOWS)

       On Windows, wimcapture and wimappend 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  the
       program  should  be  run  with Administrator privileges; however, non-NTFS filesystems and
       running without Administrator privileges are also supported, subject to limitations.

       On Windows, wimcapture and wimappend try to capture as much data and metadata as possible,
       including:

       •   All data streams of all files.

       •   Reparse  points,  if  supported  by  the  source  filesystem.   See REPARSE POINTS AND
           SYMLINKS for details.

       •   File and directory creation, access, and modification timestamps.   These  are  stored
           with Windows' native timestamp resolution of 100 nanoseconds.

       •   Security  descriptors,  if  supported  by  the  source filesystem and --no-acls is not
           specified.  Note: when not running as an Administrator, security  descriptors  may  be
           only partially captured (see --strict-acls).

       •   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.

       •   Extended attributes (EAs), if supported by the source filesystem.

REPARSE POINTS AND SYMLINKS

       A "symbolic link" (or "symlink") is a special file which "points to" some  other  file  or
       directory.   On  Windows,  a "reparse point" is a generalization of a symlink which allows
       access to a file or directory to be redirected  in  a  more  complex  way.   Windows  uses
       reparse points to implement symlinks and sometimes uses them for various other features as
       well.  Normally, applications can choose whether they want to "dereference" reparse points
       and symlinks or not.

       The  default  behavior  of  wimcapture  is  that  reparse  points  and  symlinks  are  not
       dereferenced, meaning that the reparse points or symlinks themselves  are  stored  in  the
       archive rather than the files or data they point to.  There is a --dereference option, but
       it is currently only supported by the UNIX version of wimcapture on UNIX filesystems (it's
       not yet implemented for Windows filesystems).

       Windows  also  treats  certain  types  of  reparse points specially.  For example, Windows
       applications reading from deduplicated, WIM-backed, or system-compressed files always  see
       the  dereferenced  data,  even  if they ask not to.  Therefore, wimcapture on Windows will
       store these files dereferenced, not as reparse points.  But wimcapture on UNIX in  NTFS-3G
       mode  cannot  dereference these files and will store them as reparse points instead.  This
       difference can be significant in certain  situations,  e.g.  when  capturing  deduplicated
       files  which,  to  be  readable  after  extraction,  require  that the chunk store also be
       present.

OPTIONS

       --boot
             Mark the new image as the "bootable" image of the WIM.  The "bootable" image is  the
             image which the Windows bootloader will use when loading Windows PE from the WIM.

       --check
             Include  extra  integrity  information  in  the resulting WIM.  With wimappend, also
             check the integrity of the WIM before appending to it.  Also verify the integrity of
             any WIMs specified by --update-of and/or --delta-from.

       --include-integrity
             Include  extra  integrity  information  in  the resulting WIM, i.e. like --check but
             don't do any verification beforehand.

       --compress=TYPE[:LEVEL]
             With wimcapture, use the specified compression format in 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
             With wimcapture, use a compression chunk size of 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  WIM  software  is
             desired, since their software has limited support for non-default chunk sizes.

       --solid
             With  wimcapture,  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  slow  compression with very high memory usage, reduced
             compatibility, and slow random access to the resulting WIM file.

             By default this enables solid LZMS compression, thereby creating a  file  equivalent
             to  one  created  with DISM's /compress:recovery option.  Such files are also called
             "ESD files" and were first supported by WIMGAPI in Windows 8,  by  DISM  in  Windows
             8.1, and by 7-Zip 15.12.

       --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.

       --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 WIM software is not compatible with LZMS chunk sizes larger than 64MiB.

       --threads=NUM_THREADS
             Number  of  threads  to  use  for  compressing data.  Default: autodetect (number of
             available CPUs).

       --rebuild
             With wimappend, rebuild the entire WIM rather than appending the new data to the end
             of  it.  Rebuilding the WIM is slower, but will save some space that would otherwise
             be left as a hole in the WIM.  Also see wimoptimize(1).

       --flags=EDITIONID
             Specify a string to use in the <FLAGS> element of the XML data for the new image.

       --image-property NAME=VALUE
             Assign an arbitrary property to the new image in the XML document of the WIM.  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, even when the
                 file or directory also matches a glob in [ExclusionList].   If  a  directory  is
                 matched,  then  all  its  contents  are  included as well.  Files or directories
                 within a directory excluded by [ExclusionList] may even be included using  this,
                 though  currently it only works for absolute globs (those that begin with "/" or
                 "\"); for example, "/dir/file" can be included while "/dir" can be excluded, but
                 including simply "file" won't work in that case.

             •   [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
                    \$RECYCLE.BIN
                    \$Recycle.Bin
                    \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 UNIX-specific  metadata  and  special  files.   This
             includes:  standard  UNIX  file  permissions (owner, group, and mode); device nodes,
             named pipes, and sockets; and extended attributes (Linux  only).   This  information
             can later be restored by wimapply with the --unix-data option.

             UNIX-specific  information is ignored by Microsoft's WIM software and by the Windows
             version of wimlib.

       --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 of wimcapture is equivalent to --rpfix.  The  default  behavior
             of  wimappend  is equivalent to --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
             wimcapture  and  wimappend 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
             With  wimcapture,  create  a wimlib-specific "pipable" WIM which can be captured and
             applied fully sequentially.  If WIMFILE is specified as "-", then the pipable WIM is
             written directly to standard output; otherwise, it is written to disk as usual.  The
             image in the pipable WIM can be later be applied with wimapply, either from disk  or
             from  standard input.  A typical use of pipable WIMs might involve streaming the WIM
             image to a remote server when capturing it and/or streaming the  WIM  image  from  a
             remote server when applying it.

             Generally, all the wimlib-imagex commands work on both pipable and non-pipable WIMs.
             wimoptimize and wimexport may also be used to convert between pipable WIMs and  non-
             pipable WIMs.  However, there are a few limitations of pipable WIMs:

             •   Pipable  WIMs  are  a wimlib extension which are not compatible with Microsoft's
                 WIM software or with other programs such as 7-Zip.

             •   Using wimappend, multiple images may  be  added  to  a  pipable  WIM.   This  is
                 supported,  though  it  is  less  efficient  than doing so with non-pipable WIMs
                 because a pipable WIM is fully rebuilt each time it is  appended  to;  and  when
                 piping  such  a  WIM to wimapply to extract an image, some unneeded data will be
                 sent over the pipe.

             •   Although a pipable WIM image may be updated using wimupdate, it requires a  full
                 rebuild  of  the  WIM file, making it less efficient than updating a non-pipable
                 WIM.

             •   Solid pipable WIMs are not yet supported.

       --not-pipable
             With wimappend, rebuild the WIM file in  the  non-pipable  (regular)  format.   This
             option  is  only  useful  if  you happen to be adding an image to a pipable WIM (see
             --pipable) which you want in non-pipable format instead.  Note  that  wimoptimize(1)
             can also be used to convert between non-pipable and pipable WIMs.

       --update-of=[WIMFILE:]IMAGE
             Hint 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 if --delta-from is specified exactly once, in
             which case the WIM defaults to that specified in --delta-from, or if  the  operation
             is  wimappend  rather  wimcapture,  in  which case the WIM defaults to the one being
             appended to.

             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
             Capture or append the new image as a "delta" from WIMFILE.  Any file data that would
             ordinarily need to be archived in the new or updated WIM is omitted if it is already
             present in the WIMFILE on which the delta is being based.  The  resulting  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 file data not present in any of the specified base WIMs.

             To  operate  on  the  resulting delta WIM using other commands such as wimapply, 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
             wimappend.  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.

             --delta-from is supported by both wimcapture and wimappend.

             Delta  WIMs  are compatible with Microsoft's WIM software.  For example, you can use
             the /ref option of ImageX to reference the base WIM(s), similar to above.

             Additional note: wimlib 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.  With wimcapture this option  will  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     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
             With  wimappend,  compact  the  WIM  archive  in-place  and  append  any  new  data,
             eliminating "holes".  This is efficient, but 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 to wimoptimize(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).

       --create
             With wimappend, if the WIM file doesn't exist yet, then create it (like wimcapture).

NOTES

       wimappend does not support appending an image to a split WIM.

       Except when using --unsafe-compact, it is  safe  to  abort  a  wimappend  command  partway
       through;  however,  after  doing  this, it is recommended to run wimoptimize 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.

       •   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':

              wimcapture somedir mywim.wim

       Next, append the image of a different directory tree to the WIM created above:

              wimappend 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,  extra  integrity  information,  no  messing  with  absolute
       symbolic links, and an image name and description:

              wimcapture somedir mywim.wim --compress=fast \
                     --check --norpfix "Some Name" "Some Description"

       On  a  UNIX-like  system,  capture a full NTFS volume into a new WIM using the NTFS VOLUME
       CAPTURE (UNIX) mode, and name the image "Windows 7":

              wimcapture /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:

              wimcapture E:\ windows7.wim "Windows 7"

       Same  as  UNIX  example above, but capture the WIM in the wimlib-specific "pipable" format
       that can be piped to wimapply:

              wimcapture /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:

              wimcapture /dev/sda2 - "Windows 7" | someprog

SEE ALSO

       wimlib-imagex(1), wimapply(1) wimoptimize(1)