btrfs-receive

BTRFS-RECEIVE(8) BTRFS BTRFS-RECEIVE(8)

NAME

   btrfs-receive - receive subvolumes from send stream

SYNOPSIS

   btrfs receive [options] <path>

   or

   btrfs receive --dump [options]

DESCRIPTION

   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 mount point is searched in :file:/proc/self/mounts`.  If /proc is not accessible, e.g. in a chroot environment, use this option to tell us where this  filesystem
          is mounted.

   --force-decompress
          if the stream contains compressed data (see --compressed-data in btrfs-send(8)), always decompress it instead of writing it with encoded I/O

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

          Does not require the path parameter. The filesystem remains unchanged.  Each stream command is on one line in the form of key=value and separated by one or more spaces.  Values
          that  contain  special  characters (like paths or extended attributes) are encoded in C-like way, e.g. '\n' or octal escape sequence like '\NNN' where N is the char value. Same
          encoding as is used in /proc files.

   -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

   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  re‐
   ceiving 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

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

AVAILABILITY

   btrfs is part of btrfs-progs.  Please refer to the documentation at https://btrfs.readthedocs.io.