Provided by: btrfs-progs_6.16-2_amd64 
NAME
btrfs-qgroup - control the quota group of a btrfs filesystem
SYNOPSIS
btrfs qgroup <subcommand> <args>
DESCRIPTION
btrfs qgroup is used to control quota group (qgroup) of a btrfs filesystem.
NOTE:
To use qgroup you need to enable quota first using btrfs quota enable command, see btrfs-quota(8).
QGROUP
Quota groups or qgroup in btrfs make a tree hierarchy, the leaf qgroups are attached to subvolumes. The
size limits are set per qgroup and apply when any limit is reached in tree that contains a given
subvolume.
The limits are separated between shared and exclusive and reflect the extent ownership. For example a
fresh snapshot shares almost all the blocks with the original subvolume, new writes to either subvolume
will raise towards the exclusive limit. Extent sharing is also result of reflink or deduplication.
NOTE:
Qgroup limit only works when qgroup is in a consistent state. If some workload marks qgroup
inconsistent (like assigning a qgroup to another qgroup), the limit will no longer work until the
inconsistent flag is cleared by btrfs quota rescan.
The qgroup identifiers conform to level/id where level 0 is reserved to the qgroups associated with
subvolumes. Such qgroups are created automatically.
The qgroup hierarchy is built by commands btrfs qgroup create and btrfs qgroup assign.
NOTE:
If the qgroup of a subvolume is destroyed, quota related to the subvolume will not be functional until
qgroup 0/<subvolume id> is created again.
SUBCOMMAND
assign [options] <src> <dst> <path>
Assign qgroup src as the child qgroup of dst in the btrfs filesystem identified by path.
Options
--rescan
(default since: 4.19) Automatically schedule quota rescan if the new qgroup assignment
would lead to quota inconsistency. See QUOTA RESCAN for more information.
--no-rescan
Explicitly ask not to do a rescan, even if the assignment will make the quotas
inconsistent. This may be useful for repeated calls where the rescan would add unnecessary
overhead.
create <qgroupid> <path>
Create a subvolume quota group.
For the 0/<subvolume id> qgroup, a qgroup can be created even before the subvolume is created.
destroy <qgroupid> <path>
Destroy a qgroup.
If a qgroup is not isolated, meaning it is a parent or child qgroup, then it can only be destroyed
after the relationship is removed.
clear-stale <path>
Clear all stale qgroups whose subvolume does not exist anymore, this is the level 0 qgroup like
0/subvolid. Higher level qgroups are not deleted even if they don't have any child qgroups as they
are always created by the user and their deletion should be verified first.
limit [options] <size>|none [<qgroupid>] <path>
Limit the size of a qgroup to size or no limit in the btrfs filesystem identified by path.
If qgroupid is not given, qgroup of the subvolume identified by path is used if possible.
Options
-c limit amount of data after compression. This is the default, it is currently not possible
to turn off this option.
-e limit space exclusively assigned to this qgroup.
remove <src> <dst> <path>
Remove the relationship between child qgroup src and parent qgroup dst in the btrfs filesystem
identified by path.
Options
--rescan
(default since: 4.19) Automatically schedule quota rescan if the removed qgroup relation
would lead to quota inconsistency. See QUOTA RESCAN for more information.
--no-rescan
Explicitly ask not to do a rescan, even if the removal will make the quotas inconsistent.
This may be useful for repeated calls where the rescan would add unnecessary overhead.
show [options] <path>
Show all qgroups in the btrfs filesystem identified by <path>.
Options
-p print parent qgroup id.
-c print child qgroup id.
-r print limit of referenced size of qgroup.
-e print limit of exclusive size of qgroup.
-F list all qgroups which impact the given path(include ancestral qgroups)
-f list all qgroups which impact the given path(exclude ancestral qgroups)
--raw raw numbers in bytes, without the B suffix.
--human-readable
print human friendly numbers, base 1024, this is the default
--iec select the 1024 base for the following options, according to the IEC standard.
--si select the 1000 base for the following options, according to the SI standard.
--kbytes
show sizes in KiB, or kB with --si.
--mbytes
show sizes in MiB, or MB with --si.
--gbytes
show sizes in GiB, or GB with --si.
--tbytes
show sizes in TiB, or TB with --si.
--sort=[+/-]<attr>[,[+/-]<attr>]...
list qgroups in order of <attr>.
<attr> can be one or more of qgroupid,rfer,excl,max_rfer,max_excl.
Prefix + means ascending order and - means descending order of attr. If no prefix is
given, use ascending order by default.
If multiple attr values are given, use comma to separate.
--sync To retrieve information after updating the state of qgroups, force sync of the filesystem
identified by path before getting information.
SPECIAL PATHS
For btrfs qgroup show command, the path column can print special values:
<toplevel>
The toplevel subvolume.
<under deletion>
The subvolume has been deleted (its directory removed), but the subvolume metadata not not yet
fully cleaned.
<squota space holder>
For simple quota mode only. By its design, a fully deleted subvolume may still have accounting on
it, so even if the subvolume is gone, the numbers are still here for future accounting.
<stale>
The qgroup has no corresponding subvolume anymore, and the qgroup can be cleaned up under most
cases. The only exception is that, if the qgroup numbers are inconsistent and the qgroup numbers
are not all zeros, some older kernels may refuse to delete such qgroups until a full rescan.
QUOTA RESCAN
The rescan reads all extent sharing metadata and updates the respective qgroups accordingly.
The information consists of bytes owned exclusively (excl) or shared/referenced to (rfer). There's no
explicit information about which extents are shared or owned exclusively. This means when qgroup
relationship changes, extent owners change and qgroup numbers are no longer consistent unless we do a
full rescan.
However there are cases where we can avoid a full rescan, if a subvolume whose rfer number equals its
excl number, which means all bytes are exclusively owned, then assigning/removing this subvolume only
needs to add/subtract rfer number from its parent qgroup. This can speed up the rescan.
EXAMPLES
Make a parent group that has two quota group children
Given the following filesystem mounted at /mnt/my-vault
Label: none uuid: 60d2ab3b-941a-4f22-8d1a-315f329797b2
Total devices 1 FS bytes used 128.00KiB
devid 1 size 5.00GiB used 536.00MiB path /dev/vdb
Enable quota and create subvolumes. Check subvolume ids.
$ cd /mnt/my-vault
$ btrfs quota enable .
$ btrfs subvolume create a
$ btrfs subvolume create b
$ btrfs subvolume list .
ID 261 gen 61 top level 5 path a
ID 262 gen 62 top level 5 path b
Create qgroup and set limit to 10MiB.
$ btrfs qgroup create 1/100 .
$ btrfs qgroup limit 10M 1/100 .
$ btrfs qgroup assign 0/261 1/100 .
$ btrfs qgroup assign 0/262 1/100 .
And check qgroups.
$ btrfs qgroup show .
qgroupid rfer excl
-------- ---- ----
0/5 16.00KiB 16.00KiB
0/261 16.00KiB 16.00KiB
0/262 16.00KiB 16.00KiB
1/100 32.00KiB 32.00KiB
EXIT STATUS
btrfs qgroup 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.
SEE ALSO
btrfs-quota(8), btrfs-subvolume(8), mkfs.btrfs(8)
6.16 Sep 07, 2025 BTRFS-QGROUP(8)