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.

       -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)

6.8                              April 5, 2024                BTRFS-RECEIVE(8)