Ubuntu Manpage: wimmount, wimmountrw, wimunmount

NAME

       wimmount, wimmountrw, wimunmount - Mount or unmount a WIM image

SYNOPSIS

       wimmount WIMFILE [IMAGE] DIRECTORY [OPTION...]
       wimmountrw WIMFILE [IMAGE] DIRECTORY [OPTION...]
       wimunmount DIRECTORY [OPTION...]

DESCRIPTION

       On  Linux,  the  wimmount (equivalently: wimlib-imagex mount) and wimmountrw (equivalently: wimlib-imagex
       mountrw) commands mount the specified IMAGE in the Windows Imaging (WIM) archive WIMFILE on the directory
       DIRECTORY  using  FUSE  (Filesystem  in  Userspace).   wimmount  will  mount  the  image read-only, while
       wimmountrw will mount the image read-write.

       IMAGE specifies the image in WIMFILE to mount.  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.

       The WIM image can be unmounted using wimunmount (equivalently: wimlib-imagex unmount).  Changes  made  to
       an image mounted read-write will be discarded unless the --commit flag is provided to wimunmount.

DATA AND METADATA SUPPORT

WIM images can contain a variety of types of files and file metadata, some of which is Windows-specific.
Currently, the mount feature can translate some, but not all, Windows concepts to Linux equivalents.
Briefly, the following features are supported (read/write):

• Hard links

• Symbolic links. Native Windows symbolic links and junctions in a mounted WIM image will
automatically be translated into UNIX symbolic links, potentially with their targets fixed to be
valid given the actual mountpoint directory. UNIX symbolic links created in a read-write mounted WIM
image will automatically be translated into native Windows symbolic links.

• Named data streams (mostly). See the --streams-interface option.

In addition, standard UNIX file permissions (owner, group, and mode) and special files are supported if
the --unix-data option is used.

However, the following features are unsupported and not exposed in mounted images:

• Windows security descriptors. New files are not given security descriptors.

• DOS names (8.3 names) (short names). New files are not given DOS names.

• Windows file attributes. New files are assigned default attributes based on the UNIX file mode bits.

• Object IDs. New files are not given object IDs.

• EFS-encrypted files. The files themselves will be visible in mounted WIM images but their data will
not be available.

• Extended attributes. Although wimlib supports WIM images containing extended attributes, these are
not yet exposed in mounted WIM images. (This may be implemented in the future, though it would
conflict with the use of extended attributes to expose Windows concepts like named data streams.)

SPLIT WIMS

       You may use wimmount to mount an image from a split WIM read-only.  However, you may not mount  an  image
       from a split WIM read-write.

       The  WIMFILE  argument  must  specify  the first part of the split WIM, while the additional parts of the
       split WIM must be specified in one or more --ref="GLOB" options.  Since globbing is built into the  --ref
       option,  typically  only  one  --ref option is necessary.  For example, the names for the split WIM parts
       usually go something like:

              mywim.swm
              mywim2.swm
              mywim3.swm
              mywim4.swm
              mywim5.swm

       To mount the first image of this split WIM to the directory "dir", run:

              wimmount mywim.swm 1 dir --ref="mywim*.swm"

NOTES

       Availability: Mounting WIM images is only supported on Linux-based systems.  These commands will not work
       on other platforms.  Furthermore, the library cannot have been configured --without-fuse.

       Multiple  mounts: You are free to mount many WIM images at the same time, provided that there are not two
       images mounted read-write from the same file at the same time.

       Appends vs. rebuilds: By default, changes to a read-write WIM are made in-place by appending to the  WIM.
       This  is nice for big WIM files, since the entire file doesn't have to be rebuilt to make a small change.
       But, if you are making many changes to a read-write mounted WIM, especially deleting large files,  it  is
       suggested  to  provide  the  --rebuild  option  to wimunmount to force the WIM to be rebuilt, or else run
       wimoptimize afterwards.

       ESD files (solid WIMs): You can mount version 3584 WIMs,  which  usually  contain  LZMS-compressed  solid
       resources  and  may carry the .esd file extension rather than .wim.  However, such files are not designed
       for random access, so reading data from them when mounted may be very  slow.   In  addition,  .esd  files
       downloaded directly by the Windows 8 web downloader have encrypted segments, and wimlib cannot mount such
       files until they are first decrypted.

MOUNT OPTIONS

--check
Before mounting the WIM image, verify the integrity of the WIM if it contains extra integrity
information.

--streams-interface=INTERFACE
This option is inspired by the ntfs-3g(8) filesystem driver. It controls how named data streams
(also called "alternate data streams") in WIM files are made available.

If "none", it will be impossible to read or write the named data streams.

If "xattr" (default), named data streams will be accessible through extended file attributes,
unless this support was disabled when compiling wimlib. The named data streams may be accessed
through extended attributes named "user.*", where the * is the name of the named data stream. See
setfattr(1) and getfattr(1). Note that this is not an ideal interface, since named data streams
may be larger than the maximum allowed extended attribute size.

If "windows", the named data streams will be accessible by specifying the filename, then a colon,
then the name of the named data stream; for example, "myfile:mystream".

--debug
Turn on debugging information printed by the FUSE library, and do not fork into the background.

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

--staging-dir=DIR
Store temporary staging files in a subdirectory of the directory DIR. Only valid for wimmountrw.

--unix-data
Honor UNIX-specific metadata that was captured by wimcapture with the --unix-data option. By
default, wimmount (and wimmountrw) will ignore both Windows-style security descriptors and UNIX-
specific metadata. In this default mode, all files will simply be owned by the user running
wimmount and will have mode 0777. (They will still not be accessible to other users unless you
also specify --allow-other.) If you instead provide the --unix-data option, these default
permissions will be overridden on a per-file basis with the UNIX-specific metadata from the WIM
image when available, and in the case of wimmountrw it will also be possible to change the UNIX
permissions on files in the mounted image using the standard UNIX tools and functions, and (if
appropriately privileged) create UNIX special files such as device nodes.

--allow-other
Pass the allow_other option to the FUSE mount. See mount.fuse (8). Note: to do this as a non-root
user, user_allow_other needs to be specified in /etc/fuse.conf.

UNMOUNT OPTIONS

       --commit
              Update the WIM file with the changes that have been made.  Has no effect if  the  mount  is  read-
              only.

       --force
              In  combination  with  --commit,  force  the WIM image to be committed even if there are open file
              descriptors to the WIM image.  Any such file descriptors will be immediately closed, and  the  WIM
              image will be committed and unmounted.

       --check
              If  committing changes to the WIM, include extra integrity information, even if it was not present
              before.

       --rebuild
              Rebuild the entire WIM rather than appending any 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.
              Even more space will be saved if the read-write mount resulted in streams being deleted  from  the
              WIM.  Also see

       --new-image
              In  combination  with  --commit  for  a  read-write mounted image, causes the modified image to be
              committed as a new, unnamed image appended to  the  WIM  archive.   The  original  image  will  be
              unmodified.

IMPLEMENTATION DETAILS

       Since  a  WIM is an archive and not a filesystem per se, wimmountrw creates a temporary staging directory
       to contain files that are created or modified.  This directory  is  located  in  the  same  directory  as
       WIMFILE  by  default, but the location can be set using the --staging-dir option.  When the filesystem is
       unmounted with --commit, the WIM is modified in-place (or rebuilt completely with --rebuild), merging  in
       the staging files as needed.  Then, the temporary staging directory is deleted.

       wimunmount  runs  in a separate process from the process that previously ran wimmount.  When unmounting a
       read-write mounted WIM image with --commit, these two processes communicate using a POSIX  message  queue
       so  that  the  unmount process can track the progress of the mount process.  See src/mount_image.c in the
       source code for details.