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.

       -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 documentation at https://btrfs.readthedocs.io.

SEE ALSO

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

6.6.3                                             Mar 31, 2024                                  BTRFS-RECEIVE(8)