Provided by: wimtools_1.13.1-1_amd64 
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)