Ubuntu Manpage: btrfs-receive - receive subvolumes from send stream

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 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.

--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.

-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 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

       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 btrfs wiki http://btrfs.wiki.kernel.org
       for further details.