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.