WIMLIB-IMAGEX(1)

📦
version 1.14.5 · 4 versions
, in arch rolling, fedora 43, fedora 44, nixpkgs unstable, ubuntu resolute, ubuntu stonking

✨ NAME ✨

okay so first things first, this is the manual page for wimlib-imagex, from the User Commands section of your friendly neighbourhood man pages. and what does it do?? it Extract, create, modify, or mount a WIM archive. that's the whole vibe. one binary, seventeen whole personalities, we'll get to that 💅

🎀 SYNOPSIS 🎀

bestie. there are SO many ways to call this thing. every command has its own lil alias, so you can be lazy and type the short one, or be extra and type the full one. same energy either way:

wimlib-imagex append arguments... (or wimappend arguments...)
wimlib-imagex apply arguments... (or wimapply arguments...)
wimlib-imagex capture arguments... (or wimcapture arguments...)
wimlib-imagex delete arguments... (or wimdelete arguments...)
wimlib-imagex dir arguments... (or wimdir arguments...)
wimlib-imagex export arguments... (or wimexport arguments...)
wimlib-imagex extract arguments... (or wimextract arguments...)
wimlib-imagex info arguments... (or wiminfo arguments...)
wimlib-imagex join arguments... (or wimjoin arguments...)
wimlib-imagex mount arguments... (or wimmount arguments...)
wimlib-imagex mountrw arguments... (or wimmountrw arguments...)
wimlib-imagex optimize arguments... (or wimoptimize arguments...)
wimlib-imagex split arguments... (or wimsplit arguments...)
wimlib-imagex unmount arguments... (or wimunmount arguments...)
wimlib-imagex update arguments... (or wimupdate arguments...)
wimlib-imagex verify arguments... (or wimverify arguments...)

like. it's giving main character with a whole ensemble cast 🌈

🦋 DESCRIPTION 🦋

so. wimlib-imagex is your girl for dealing with archive files in the Windows Imaging (WIM) format. her interface is lowkey similar to Microsoft's ImageX, but plot twist — wimlib-imagex is cross-platform and comes with genuinely useful improvements and extensions. we ate and left no crumbs 👑

to do all this, wimlib-imagex uses wimlib, an open source C library that gives you interfaces for manipulating WIM archives. and here's the thing — wimlib is completely independent from the equivalent Microsoft implementation (WIMGAPI, or wimgapi.dll). no shared bloodline, no cap. you can absolutely use wimlib in your own programs too, though ngl for command-line use wimlib-imagex already hands you access to most of wimlib's functionality 🫶

🌸 BACKGROUND INFORMATION 🌸

the Windows Imaging (WIM) format was designed by Microsoft, primarily for archiving Windows filesystems, like NTFS. but bestie it can be used on other platforms as well, with some limitations. here's the tea:

a WIM archive contains one or more images, and each image is a logically independent directory tree. images are indexed starting from 1, and each one may also have a name. file data is stored as content-addressable "blobs" that get deduplicated across the entire archive. data may be compressed using one of several compression algorithms.

now, there's an update of the WIM format that Microsoft released with Windows 8 which uses solid-mode LZMS compression to achieve a better compression ratio. these files are also called "ESD files" and may have the .esd extension instead of .wim. wimlib fully supports these files — except when they're encrypted 🙈

💜 COMMANDS 💜

wimlib-imagex accepts one of a number of commands (all listed up there in the SYNOPSIS, yes including the typo, we love her), plus additional arguments depending on the specific command. and like, wimlib-imagex will print usage information if you pass --help or if you invoke it incorrectly, but the full documentation for each command lives in its own appropriate manual page. so go read those too, bestie 📚

Note: if appropriate hard links or batch files have been installed, a command wimlib-imagex COMMAND can also be accessed as simply wimCOMMAND — for example, wimapply for wimlib-imagex apply. for brevity, the documentation uses the shorter names. iconic behaviour, honestly.

✨ GENERAL FEATURES ✨

here's a lil sampler platter of the general features / use cases wimlib-imagex currently supports, plus pointers to the relevant commands. a whole menu, and you get to pick 😌

  • Display information about a WIM file (wiminfo)
  • List the files in a WIM image (wimdir)
  • Extract, or "apply", a full WIM image (wimapply)
  • Extract files or directories from a WIM image (wimextract)
  • Capture a WIM image and save it to a new WIM file (wimcapture)
  • Capture a WIM image and append it to an existing WIM file (wimappend)
  • Modify a WIM image by adding, deleting, or renaming files (wimupdate)
  • (Linux only) Mount a WIM image read-only (wimmount)
  • (Linux only) Mount a WIM image read-write (wimmountrw)
  • Delete an image from a WIM file (wimdelete)
  • Export image(s) from a WIM file (wimexport)
  • Change the name or description of a WIM image (wiminfo)
  • Change the bootable image index of a WIM file (wiminfo)
  • Rebuild, and optionally recompress, a WIM file (wimoptimize)
  • Split a WIM file into multiple parts (wimsplit)
  • Join a split WIM (wimjoin)
  • Verify the validity and integrity of a WIM file (wimverify)

🔥 DETAILED FEATURES 🔥

okay now we're getting into the good stuff. this section presents some of the interesting features of wimlib-imagex in more detail. get comfy 🍓

  • Multi-platform support. wimlib-imagex is supported on both UNIX-like systems (mainly Linux, but also FreeBSD, Mac OS X, etc.) and Windows. most code is shared among all platforms, but platform-specific features are still supported when possible.
  • XPRESS, LZX, and LZMS compression and decompression. wimlib contains advanced implementations of all these compression algorithms. these have been improved over time and now usually outperform and outcompress their Microsoft equivalents, while remaining fully compatible. she's not just pretty, she's competent 💅
  • Solid-mode compression, or "ESD file", support. "ESD files" are an updated WIM format that uses solid LZMS compression to achieve a better compression ratio.
  • Multithreaded compression. by default, wimlib's data compression is multithreaded and will use all available processors. all cores, all hands on deck ✨
  • On UNIX-like systems, integration with libntfs-3g allows capturing a WIM image directly from an NTFS volume, or applying a WIM image directly to an NTFS volume. this allows saving and restoring NTFS-specific data and metadata, such as security descriptors and named data streams, which would otherwise only be supported on Windows.
  • On UNIX-like systems, optional support for saving and restoring standard UNIX file permissions (owner/group/mode), UNIX special files, and extended attributes. (this is a wimlib extension; Microsoft's WIM software ignores this extra information. their loss honestly.)
  • On Linux, support for mounting WIM images with FUSE (Filesystem in UserSpacE), both readonly and read-write.
  • Split WIMs. a split WIM is a WIM archive split into multiple parts. wimsplit can create a split WIM from a standalone WIM, and wimjoin can create a standalone WIM from a split WIM.
  • Delta WIMs. a delta WIM contains image metadata but excludes file data already present in another WIM file. a delta WIM can be created using wimcapture with the --delta-from option.
  • "Pipable" WIMs. as a wimlib extension (not compatible with the Microsoft implementation), wimcapture supports capturing a WIM file to standard output in a special "pipable" format which can later be applied by sending it to wimapply on standard input. among other things, this can be used to pipe images to or from a server over the network to implement fast filesystem imaging and restore. pipeline girlies rise 🧚
  • Support for WIM integrity tables. although file data in WIM archives is always checksummed, there can also be an extra set of checksums (an "integrity table") associated with the WIM file itself to provide extra integrity assurance. the --check option to several wimlib-imagex commands can be used to verify or add these extra checksums.
  • Fast incremental backups. because WIM archives use content-addressible file data, the contents of files are automatically deduplicated. in addition, using the --update-of option of wimcapture or wimappend, you can optimize an image capture so that files that are unmodified based on timestamps are not even read from disk. she literally skips the work. queen behaviour 👑
  • Windows-specific image metadata support. when capturing an image of a Windows operating system, wimlib will automatically populate XML metadata fields such as the Windows OS version details by scanning well-known system files.
  • WIMBoot support. on Windows 8.1 and later, files can be "externally backed" by a WIM archive with the help of Microsoft's Windows Overlay Filesystem (WOF) filter driver. with the --wimboot option, wimapply will extract "pointer files" to the WIM archive rather than the files themselves.
  • VSS snapshot support. on Windows, wimcapture or wimappend with the --snapshot option will automatically create a temporary VSS snapshot and capture the image from it. this can be used to image a "live" Windows system. no downtime, no drama 🌈
  • Long path support on Windows. wimlib-imagex can capture and apply files with paths exceeding the MAX_PATH (260 character) limitation of the Win32 subsystem.
  • Non-Administrator support on Windows. you can run wimlib-imagex without Administrator rights, subject to some limitations.

🌟 COMMON OPTIONS 🌟

these work for all wimlib-imagex commands. universal. for everyone. periodt.

  • --help — display the help, then exit.
  • --version — display the version and legal information, then exit.
  • --quiet — suppress informational and progress messages.

🦋 CASE SENSITIVITY 🦋

okay this one's important so pay attention bestie 🫶

by default, the case sensitivity of wimlib-imagex differs somewhat between UNIX-like systems and Windows. WIM images may (but usually do not) have multiple files with the same case-insensitive name. internally, wimlib stores filenames as case-sensitive, but on Windows, paths actually provided by the user for use in a WIM image (e.g. for extracting, adding, renaming, or deleting files) will by default be treated as case-insensitive in order to get the "expected" behavior. this differs from the default behavior on UNIX-like systems, where such paths will be treated as case-sensitive.

note that with case insensitivity, a path component may in general be ambiguous due to multiple files or directories having the same case-insensitive name. in such cases, if there is a file or directory with an exactly matching name, it is chosen; otherwise, one of the case-insensitively matching file or directories is chosen arbitrarily. so like... she's doing her best, okay 😭

the default case sensitivity of wimlib-imagex can be overridden by explicitly setting the environmental variable WIMLIB_IMAGEX_IGNORE_CASE to 1, in which case such paths will be treated case insensitively, or 0, in which case such paths will be treated case sensitively.

regardless of these settings, options and non-path arguments must be specified in lower case. lowercase or nothing, no exceptions 💅

📜 LICENSE 📜

wimlib-imagex may be redistributed and/or modified under the terms of the GNU General Public License; either version 3 of the License, or (at your option) any later version. there is NO WARRANTY, to the extent permitted by law.

💀 REPORTING BUGS 💀

report bugs to https://wimlib.net/forums/. feedback and suggestions are also welcome 💖 she wants to hear from you.

✨ SEE ALSO ✨

ok bestie if you're still here, you're a real one 🫶 here's the whole friend group, the other commands that live in the same house:

like, go read those too 💖 that's the whole squad, no cap.

and that's the page, bestie ✨ you made it to the end, which is honestly giving main character energy 👑

this lil masterpiece is from wimlib 1.14.5, dated January 2026, and it's literally the WIMLIB-IMAGEX(1) manual page 🎀

now go forth and image things 💅🌈🦋

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