Ubuntu Manpage: wimupdate - Update a WIM image

NAME

       wimupdate - Update a WIM image

SYNOPSIS

       wimupdate WIMFILE [IMAGE] [OPTION...] [< CMDFILE]

DESCRIPTION

       wimupdate,  or  equivalently  wimlib-imagex  update,  modifies  the specified IMAGE in the
       Windows  Imaging  (WIM)  archive  WIMFILE  by  adding,  deleting,  or  renaming  files  or
       directories in it.

       IMAGE  specifies  the image in WIMFILE to update.  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 modifications to perform on the WIM image are specified as a sequence of commands, one
       per line, read in a text file from standard input.  It is recommended that standard  input
       be  redirected  from  a  file  (CMDFILE),  as  shown above, rather than typing in commands
       interactively.  Alternatively, to specify a command directly on the command line, see  the
       --command option.

AVAILABLE COMMANDS

This section documents the commands that may appear in the CMDFILE described above.

add [OPTION...] SOURCE DESTINATION
Add a file or directory tree to the WIM image. SOURCE must specify the path to a file or
directory on your filesystem. DESTINATION must specify the path inside the WIM image at
which to add the file or directory tree.

If DESTINATION names an existing directory in the WIM image, then SOURCE must also name a
directory. This causes the contents of the SOURCE directory to be added to the
DESTINATION directory.

If DESTINATION names an existing nondirectory file in the WIM image, then SOURCE must also
name a nondirectory file. By default, this causes the DESTINATION file to be replaced
with the SOURCE file. Or, with --no-replace specified, this generates an error.

If DESTINATION does not exist in the WIM image, then any prerequisite directories are
created as needed to add the SOURCE at that location.

The add command supports a subset of the options accepted by wimcapture; namely,
--dereference, --unix-data, --no-acls, and --strict-acls. See wimcapture(1) for
explanations of these options.

In addition, the add command supports the --no-replace option, which causes the add
command to refuse to overwrite existing nondirectory files in the WIM image.

delete [OPTION...] PATH
Delete a file or directory tree from the WIM image. PATH must specify the path inside the
WIM image of the file or directory tree to delete.

The available options for the delete command are:

--force
Do not issue an error if the path to delete does not exist.

--recursive
Delete the file or directory tree recursively; if not specified, an error is issued
if the path to delete is a directory.

rename OLD_PATH NEW_PATH
Rename a file or directory tree inside the WIM image. OLD_PATH must specify the old path
of the file or directory tree inside the WIM image, and NEW_PATH must specify the new path
for the file or directory tree. This command follows the semantics of the POSIX rename
(3) function; in particular, a pre-existing file at NEW_PATH will be deleted if present,
except in certain cases such as attempting to rename a directory to a non-directory, which
is not allowed.

There are no options available for the rename command.

OPTIONS

The following options are accepted on the command line by wimupdate itself:

--dereference
Use --dereference for all add commands.

--unix-data
Use --unix-data for all add commands.

--no-acls
Use --no-acls for all add commands.

--strict-acls
Use --strict-acls for all add commands.

--no-replace
Use --no-replace for all add commands.

--config=FILE
Set the capture configuration file for all add commands. See the description of
this option to wimcapture(1).

--force
Use --force for all delete commands.

--recursive
Use --recursive for all delete commands.

--check
Before updating the WIM, verify its integrity if it contains extra integrity
information. Also include extra integrity information in the updated WIM even if it
was not present before.

--include-integrity
Include extra integrity information in the updated WIM, i.e. like --check but don't
also verify the WIM beforehand.

--threads=NUM_THREADS
Number of threads to use for compressing newly added files. Default: autodetect
(number of processors).

--rebuild
Rebuild the entire WIM rather than appending the updated 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 file.

See wimoptimize(1) for a more customizable way of rebuilding (and optionally
recompressing) a WIM file. If running wimoptimize after wimupdate, there is no need
to specify --rebuild to wimupdate.

--command=STRING
Instead of reading update commands from standard input, read a single update command
directly from the string STRING specified on the command line. This option cannot
be provided more than one time and cannot be used to specify more than one update
command. Note that the STRING, as well as any paths containing spaces within the
STRING must be appropriately quoted. If running from cmd.exe on Windows, you should
use double quotes for the outer quotes and single quotes for the inner quotes.
Example:

wimupdate boot.wim 1 --command="add 'C:\My Dir' '\My Dir'"

This option is provided for convenience only. Do not execute wimupdate multiple
consecutive times, each time passing the --command option! This is inefficient.
Instead, generate an update command file and provide it (on standard input) to a
single invocation of wimupdate, as explained in this document.

--wimboot-config=FILE
If this option is specified, no commands shall be read from standard input, and
instead the following command shall be executed:

add FILE /Windows/System32/WimBootCompress.ini

This sets FILE as the WIMBoot configuration file for the image. The
[PrepopulateList] section of this file specifies path globs that shall not be
extracted as WIMBoot pointer files (perhaps due to being needed early in the boot
process). See the documentation for the --wimboot option of wimapply(1) for more
information.

--unsafe-compact
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 in wimoptimize(1).

NOTES

wimupdate can be viewed as redundant with wimmountrw, since a WIM image can also be
updated by mounting it read-write. However, wimupdate works on all platforms including
Windows, whereas wimmountrw only works on Linux.

Symbolic links inside a WIM image are not dereferenced when being interpreted. So, for
example, if you have a WIM image that contains a symbolic link "/Documents and Settings"
-> "/Users" where "/Users" is a directory, then a subdirectory named "Public" in this
directory must be specified as "/Users/Public" rather than "/Documents and
Settings/Public".

All paths to files or directories within the WIM image must be specified relative to the
root of the image. However, the leading slash is optional, and both forward slashes and
backslashes are accepted. In addition, on Windows, the paths are by default treated case-
insensitively, while on UNIX-like systems, the paths are by default treated case-
sensitively. The default case sensitivity may be changed by setting the
WIMLIB_IMAGEX_IGNORE_CASE environmental variable to 0 or 1.

The command file (CMDFILE) is parsed by wimupdate itself and not by the system shell.
Therefore, its syntax is limited. However, comment lines beginning with '#' are allowed,
and it is also possible to quote arguments with whitespace inside them.

On UNIX-like systems, you cannot use wimupdate to add files to an image directly from an
NTFS volume using libntfs-3g, even though wimcapture supports capturing a full image this
way.

Except when using --unsafe-compact, it is safe to abort a wimupdate 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 --rebuild was specified, in which case you should delete the
temporary file left over.

EXAMPLES

       All the examples below show the update command file to be created as well as the wimupdate
       command to run to perform the updates.

       Delete two files from a WIM image:

              update_commands.txt:

                     delete /setup.exe
                     delete /sources/setup.exe

              $ wimupdate boot.wim 2 < update_commands.txt

       Add some files and directories to a WIM image.  Note that  the  first  path  of  each  add
       command  specifies the files to add, while the second path of each add command specify the
       locations at which to to add them inside the WIM image:

              update_commands.txt:

                     add somedir     /dir
                     add somefile    /dir/file

              $ wimupdate boot.wim 2 < update_commands.txt

       Rename a file inside a WIM image.

              update_commands.txt:

                     rename /dir_in_wim/oldfile.txt /dir_in_wim/newfile.txt

              $ wimupdate boot.wim 2 < update_commands.txt

       Using additional features, such as comments, options, and overlays,  and  including  extra
       integrity information in the updated WIM:

              update_commands.txt:

                     #
                     # This file specifies some changes to make to a WIM image.
                     #

                     # Add a new directory containing files I want in the image.
                     # The quotes are necessary because the directory name
                     # contains a space.
                     add "My Directory" "/My Directory"

                     # Add the contents of "Another Directory" to the
                     # "/My Directory" we just created in the WIM image.  Since
                     # the destination path already exists, this performs an
                     # overlay.
                     add "Another Directory" "/My Directory"

                     # Rename some file for some reason.
                     rename /dir_in_wim/oldfile.txt /dir_in_wim/newfile.txt

                     # Delete an unwanted directory.
                     delete --recursive /Users/Me/Documents/Junk

              $ wimupdate boot.wim 2 --check < update_commands.txt