Ubuntu Manpage: wimextract - Extract files from a WIM image

name
synopsis
description
paths and listfiles
split wims
options
notes
examples
see also

Provided by: wimtools_1.12.0-1build1_amd64

NAME

       wimextract - Extract files from a WIM image

SYNOPSIS

       wimextract WIMFILE IMAGE [(PATH | @LISTFILE)...]  [OPTION...]

DESCRIPTION

wimextract, or equivalently wimlib-imagex extract, extracts one or more files or directory trees from the
specified IMAGE contained in the Windows Imaging (WIM) archive WIMFILE.

wimextract is intended for extracting only a subset of a WIM image. If you want to extract or "apply" a
full WIM image to a directory or NTFS volume, use wimapply(1) instead.

IMAGE specifies the image in WIMFILE from which to extract the files or directory trees. It may be the
1-based index of an image or the name of an image. It may be omitted if WIMFILE contains only one image.
You can use wiminfo(1) to list the images contained in WIMFILE.

If no additional arguments are given, the entire WIM image is extracted. Otherwise, each additional
argument is interpreted as a PATH if it does not begin with the '@' character, or a LISTFILE if it does.
Each PATH specifies a file or directory tree within the WIM image to extract, whereas each LISTFILE
specifies a file that itself contains a list of paths to extract. See PATHS AND LISTFILES for more
details.

By default, files and directories are extracted to the current directory. Use --dest-dir to select a
different destination directory. Alternatively, use --to-stdout to extract a file to standard output to
pipe into another program.

A file or directory extracted from a PATH argument is by default extracted directly into the destination
directory, whereas a file or directory extracted from a LISTFILE argument is by default extracted into
the destination directory in such a way that the archive's directory structure is preserved. Use
--preserve-dir-structure to always get the latter behavior.

wimextract supports extracting files and directory trees from stand-alone WIMs as well as split WIMs.
See SPLIT WIMS.

PATHS AND LISTFILES

Each path, including those on the command line and those in listfiles, must be specified as an absolute
path starting from the root of the WIM image, like those output by wimdir(1). However, path separators
may be either forward or backward slashes, and the leading slash is optional.

On Windows, by default paths are treated case-insensitively, whereas on UNIX-like systems, by default
paths are treated case-sensitively. In either case, the default behavior may be overridden through the
WIMLIB_IMAGEX_IGNORE_CASE environmental variable, as documented in wimlib-imagex(1).

By default, each path may contain the wildcard characters '?' and '*'. The '?' character matches any
non-path-separator character, whereas the '*' character matches zero or more non-path-separator
characters. Consequently, a single wildcard path, or "glob", may expand to multiple actual files or
directories. Use the --no-globs option to disable wildcard matching and search for each path literally.

Each LISTFILE must be a text file (UTF-8 or UTF-16LE encoded; plain ASCII is also fine) that contains a
list of paths to extract, one per line. Wildcard characters are allowed by default. The following
demonstrates an example listfile:

; This is a comment (begins with semicolon)
# This is also a comment (begins with number sign)
/Users
/Windows/explorer.exe
/Windows/System32/en-US/*

; Both forward and backslashes are valid.
; It's not necessary to quote paths containing internal spaces.
\Program Files\A*

; Leading and trailing whitespace is ignored
\Windows\notepad*

SPLIT WIMS

       You may use wimextract to extract files or directory trees from a split WIM.  This uses the --refs="GLOB"
       option in the same way as in other commands such as wimapply.  See wimapply(1) for more details.

OPTIONS

--check
Before extracting the files, verify the integrity of WIMFILE if it contains extra integrity
information.

--ref="GLOB"
File glob of additional WIMs or split WIM parts to reference resources from. See SPLIT_WIMS.
Note: GLOB is listed in quotes because it is interpreted by wimextract and may need to be quoted to
protect against shell expansion.

--dest-dir=DIR
Extract the files and directories to the directory DIR instead of to the current working directory.

--to-stdout
Extract the files to standard output instead of to the filesystem. This can only be provided if
all the specified paths are to regular files (not directories or reparse points). If present,
named data streams are not extracted.

--unix-data
See the documentation for this option to wimapply(1).

--no-acls
See the documentation for this option to wimapply(1).

--strict-acls
See the documentation for this option to wimapply(1).

--no-attributes
See the documentation for this option to wimapply(1).

--include-invalid-names
See the documentation for this option to wimapply(1).

--no-globs
Do not recognize wildcard characters in paths. Each path will be searched for literally. In
addition, if case insensitivity is enabled, do not allow a single path to match multiple files with
the same case-insensitive name but different case-sensitive names.

--no-wildcards is also accepted as an alias for this option.

--nullglob
If a glob does not match any files, ignore it and print a warning instead of failing with an error.
In other words, this option allows a glob to successfully match zero files.

This option also affects paths that do not contain wildcard characters, since such paths are still
considered globs unless --no-globs is enabled. If case-insensitivity is enabled, such a glob could
match multiple files with the same case-insensitive name but different case-sensitive names,
whereas a non-glob path (with --no-globs) can match at most one file.

--preserve-dir-structure
When extracting paths, preserve the archive directory structure instead of extracting the file or
directory tree named by each path directly to the destination directory. Note: --preserve-dir-
structure is already the default behavior for paths in listfiles, but not paths directly specified
on the command line.

--wimboot
See the documentation for this option to wimapply(1).

--compact=FORMAT
See the documentation for this option to wimapply(1).

NOTES

       See wimapply(1) for information about what data and metadata are extracted on UNIX-like systems versus on
       Windows.

       Reparse-point fixups (a.k.a.  changing  absolute  symbolic  links  and  junctions  to  point  within  the
       extraction location) are never done by wimextract.  Use wimapply if you want this behavior.

       Unlike  wimapply,  wimextract  does  not  support  extracting  files  directly  to  an  NTFS volume using
       libntfs-3g.

EXAMPLES

       Extract a file from the first image in "boot.wim" to the current directory:

              wimextract boot.wim 1 /Windows/System32/notepad.exe

       Extract a file from the first image in "boot.wim" to standard output:

              wimextract boot.wim 1 /Windows/System32/notepad.exe --to-stdout

       Extract a file from the first image in "boot.wim" to the specified directory:

              wimextract boot.wim 1 /Windows/System32/notepad.exe \
                     --dest-dir=somedir

       Extract the "sources" directory from the first image in "boot.wim" to the current directory:

              wimextract boot.wim 1 /sources

       Extract multiple files and directories in one command:

              wimextract boot.wim 1 /Windows/Fonts \
                     /sources /Windows/System32/cmd.exe

       Extract many files to the current directory using a wildcard pattern:

              wimextract install.wim 1 "/Windows/Fonts/*.ttf"

       Extract files using a list file:

              wimextract install.wim 1 @files.txt

        ...  where files.txt could be something like:

                     Windows\System32\*.*
                     Windows\System32\??-??\*.*
                     Windows\System32\en-US\*.*