Ubuntu Manpage: wimextract - Extract files from a WIM image

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. If a LISTFILE is "-" (i.e. the whole argument is "@-"), then the
listfile is read from standard input. 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\*.*