btrfs-receive(8) — Linux manual page

NAME | SYNOPSIS | DESCRIPTION | BUGS | EXIT STATUS | AVAILABILITY | SEE ALSO | COLOPHON

BTRFS-RECEIVE(8)              Btrfs Manual              BTRFS-RECEIVE(8)

NAME         top

       btrfs-receive - receive subvolumes from send stream

SYNOPSIS         top

       btrfs receive [options] <path>

       or

       btrfs receive --dump [options]

DESCRIPTION         top

       Receive a stream of changes and replicate one or more subvolumes
       that were previously generated by btrfs send. The received
       subvolumes are stored to path, unless --dump option is given.

       If --dump option is specified, btrfs receive will only do the
       validation of the stream, and print the stream metadata, one
       operation per line.

       btrfs receive will fail in the following cases:

        1. receiving subvolume already exists

        2. previously received subvolume has been changed after it was
           received

        3. default subvolume has changed or you didn’t mount the
           filesystem at the toplevel subvolume

       A subvolume is made read-only after the receiving process
       finishes successfully (see BUGS below).

       Options

       -f <FILE>
           read the stream from <FILE> instead of stdin,

       -C|--chroot
           confine the process to path using chroot(1)

       -e
           terminate after receiving an end cmd marker in the stream.

           Without this option the receiver side terminates only in case
           of an error on end of file.

       -E|--max-errors <NERR>
           terminate as soon as NERR errors occur while stream
           processing commands from the stream

           Default value is 1. A value of 0 means no limit.

       -m <ROOTMOUNT>
           the root mount point of the destination filesystem

           By default the mountpoint is searched in /proc/self/mounts.
           If /proc is not accessible, eg. in a chroot environment, use
           this option to tell us where this filesystem is mounted.

       --dump
           dump the stream metadata, one line per operation

           Does not require the path parameter. The filesystem remains
           unchanged.

       -q|--quiet
           (deprecated) alias for global -q option

       -v
           (deprecated) alias for global -v option

       Global options

       -v|--verbose
           increase verbosity about performed actions, print details
           about each operation

       -q|--quiet
           suppress all messages except errors

BUGS         top

       btrfs receive sets the subvolume read-only after it completes
       successfully. However, while the receive is in progress, users
       who have write access to files or directories in the receiving
       path can add, remove, or modify files, in which case the
       resulting read-only subvolume will not be an exact copy of the
       sent subvolume.

       If the intention is to create an exact copy, the receiving path
       should be protected from access by users until the receive
       operation has completed and the subvolume is set to read-only.

       Additionally, receive does not currently do a very good job of
       validating that an incremental send stream actually makes sense,
       and it is thus possible for a specially crafted send stream to
       create a subvolume with reflinks to arbitrary files in the same
       filesystem. Because of this, users are advised to not use btrfs
       receive on send streams from untrusted sources, and to protect
       trusted streams when sending them across untrusted networks.

EXIT STATUS         top

       btrfs receive returns a zero exit status if it succeeds. Non zero
       is returned in case of failure.

AVAILABILITY         top

       btrfs is part of btrfs-progs. Please refer to the btrfs wiki
       http://btrfs.wiki.kernel.org for further details.

SEE ALSO         top

       mkfs.btrfs(8), btrfs-send(8)

COLOPHON         top

       This page is part of the btrfs-progs (btrfs filesystem tools)
       project.  Information about the project can be found at 
       ⟨https://btrfs.wiki.kernel.org/index.php/Btrfs_source_repositories⟩.
       If you have a bug report for this manual page, see
       ⟨https://btrfs.wiki.kernel.org/index.php/Problem_FAQ#How_do_I_report_bugs_and_issues.3F⟩.
       This page was obtained from the project's upstream Git repository
       ⟨git://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/kdave/btrfs-progs.git⟩
       on 2024-06-14.  (At that time, the date of the most recent commit
       that was found in the repository was 2024-05-02.)  If you
       discover any rendering problems in this HTML version of the page,
       or you believe there is a better or more up-to-date source for
       the page, or you have corrections or improvements to the
       information in this COLOPHON (which is not part of the original
       manual page), send a mail to [email protected]

Btrfs v5.16.1                  02/06/2022               BTRFS-RECEIVE(8)

Pages that refer to this page: btrfs(8)btrfs-send(8)