Provided by: wimtools_1.13.5-1build1_amd64 
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 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
SEE ALSO
wimlib-imagex(1) wimcapture(1) wiminfo(1) wimmountrw(1) wimoptimize(1)
wimlib 1.13.5 December 2021 WIMUPDATE(1)