zxfer.8

.\"
.\" Copyright (c) 2024 Aldo Gonzalez
.\" Copyright (c) 2013-2016 Allan Jude <allanjude@freebsd.org>
.\" Copyright (c) 2010, 2011 Ivan Nash Dreckman
.\" Copyright (c) 2007, 2008 Constantin Gonzalez
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.Dd Mar 14, 2024
.Dt ZXFER 8
.Os
.Sh NAME
.Nm zxfer
.Nd "transfer ZFS filesystems, snapshots, properties, files and directories"
.Sh SYNOPSIS
.Nm
.Op Fl dFnPsUvVwY
.Op Fl k | e
.Op Fl b | B
.Brq -N path/to/src | -R path/to/src
.Op Fl m Op Ar c "FMRI|pattern[ FMRI|pattern]...]"
.Op Fl D Ar 'progress dialog options'
.Op Fl I Ar properties,to,ignore
.Op [-z] [-Z 'zstd compression command'] Fl O Ar user@host
.Op Fl T Ar user@host
.Op Fl o Ar option1=value1,option2=value2...
.Op Fl g Ar days
.Ar destination
.Nm
.Brq -S
.Op Fl dilpPnv
.Op Fl k | e
.Op Fl b | B
.Op Fl f Ar /path/to/rsfile
.Brq -R /path/to/src1,path/to/src2... | -N /path/to/src1,path/to/src2...
.Op Fl o Ar option1=value1,option2=value2...
.Op Fl E Ar pattern
.Op Fl L Ar value
.Op Fl u Ar snapshot
.Ar destination
.Nm
.Op Fl h
.Pp
Where
.Em destination
is a ZFS filesystem e.g.
.Pa poolname/fsname
.Sh DESCRIPTION
The
.Nm
utility performs two main functions. It can replicate ZFS
filesystems (including snapshots and properties) using
.Xr zfs 8
.Va send
to do the heavy lifting.
.Pp
It can also transfer files and
directories and the filesystems underlying them using
.Xr rsync 1 .
It will first recursively
snapshot those filesystems so that an atomic snapshot of all files
and directories exists as a base. It then creates a replica of the source
filesystem hierarchy down to the pool level at the destination. It then
transfers the files and directories. This is desirable when we have different
snapshotting regimes on source and destination, and want to copy across
the latest contents of the filesystem(s).
.Pp
Both
.Xr zfs 8
.Va send
and
.Xr rsync 1
use checksums/hashes to verify that the data copied to the destination is
the same data that was sent from the source, so we have a similar degree of
surety of end-to-end data integrity as the ZFS filesystem itself.
.Pp
Either method allows for the properties of each filesystem to be transferred
and specific properties overridden as necessary. For example,
.Va compression ,
.Va readonly ,
and
.Va copies
are properties that are likely to be useful to override if
we are using this utility to make backups. If the destination filesystems
do not exist,
.Nm
will automatically create them.
.Pp
Both methods also allow
the backup and restore of the original filesystem properties so that
if it is desirable to backup the filesystem(s) for archival purposes
using
.Va compression
etc. as overrides, the original properties may be restored without the
user having to make a note of what those original properties were.
.Pp
.Em IMPORTANT:
Note that switching between these two modes is done with -S.
Depending on the mode, the workings of an option may be nonexistent,
subtly or grossly different. Don't assume an option works the exact same way
that it did with the other mode.
.Pp
Note also that
.Nm
should be run from root, as to do anything useful
.Xr zfs 8
must also be run from root.
.Pp
Note that at present, the usage of spaces in
.Xr zfs 8
filesystem names is NOT supported. There is no plan to support it without
someone else doing the coding or a good funding proposal coming my way.
.Sh DISCLAIMER/WARNING
You MUST read, understand and agree to the disclaimer in the BSD license
before applying any of these examples or using
.Nm .
(See the file "COPYING" that should have been included with this utility.)
I eat my own cooking - I use
.Nm
as per the examples given and as my primary form of backup. That being said,
you are strongly urged to have a look
at the script and try it out on some non-risky pools and filesystems before
using it in production. At this stage, straying too far from the given examples
will probably furnish you with the material to submit some bug reports.
Run a backup before using it and don't shoot
me if something goes wrong. This software is about beta level, which
means that if you are going to use it for backups you should treat it more
like alpha level software - i.e. trust it at your own risk.
.Pp
Modifying an example first is a good way to start using the script, as
there are some options (e.g. -d and -F in normal mode) that are in practice
always used.
.Sh SNAPSHOTS
.Nm
in Normal mode as a backup/restore solution is designed to be used
hand-in-hand with a regular snapshotting
regime. If there is no regular snapshotting regime in place then the results
won't be nearly as good.
.Nm
would still be useful to reliably and easily copy
a pool for example, but you would be missing the main point of the program.
.Pp
.Sh OPTIONS
Common options are listed, followed by
options as they function specifically with
.Xr zfs 8
.Va send
mode, followed by options as they work specifically to
.Xr rsync 1
aka -S mode.
.Pp
Please note that options with arguments (e.g. -R, -N
and the like) can not be concatenated after other options.
(e.g. -vFdR
.Va source
.Va destination
will fail. You should use instead:
-vFd -R
.Va source
.Va destination
)
Otherwise this will confuse getopts and
.Xr zfs 8
will complain that "dataset already exists".
.Pp
The options are as follows:
.Bl -tag -width indent
.It Fl b
Small (b)eep mode. Play a failure tune before exit with failure
so that you don't have to monitor
the terminal to know when a lengthy backup or restore finishes.
(This is not as yet supported in (Open) Solaris.)
To save insult being added to injury, the failure beep will not play
during errors that
.Nm
discovers in the initialization phase, beeps will only occur if an error
has the possibility of occurring after significant time has elapsed.
.Pp
.It Fl B
Large (B)eep mode. Similar to (b) but suitable for use at the end of a script.
It plays a success or failure tune before exit. If you are executing
.Nm
multiple times, use -b for everything but the last execution, for which you
should use -B.
.It Fl e
R(e)store property mode. This restores all filesystem properties from the
backup file mentioned in the previous option.
.Pp
A word of warning:
In order to allow the restoration of filesystems within the hierarchy,
.Nm
will begin at the level you specify, and traverse the filesystem hierarchy back
to the pool level until it finds an appropriate .zxfer_backup_info
file or fails. It will use the first such file it comes across, so be careful about
backing up from multiple individual levels of the same filesystem hierarchy.
.It Fl h
Prints (h)elp.
.It Fl k
Bac(k)up property mode. This backs up the original filesystem property settings
to a file
.Pa .zxfer_backup_info.<pool_name>.
This file is located in the directory that is the mountpoint of the parent
filesystem that will contain the root filesystem you are sending.
e.g. if you are backing up
.Pa zroot
to be located as per
.Pa storage/backups/zroot/...
the file
.Pa /storage/backups/.zxfer_backup_info.zroot
would hold all the information about the original values of the filesystem
properties, and some other useful info.
.Pp
This allows us to use the
.Op Fl o
option freely, e.g. specifying
.Va copies ,
.Va compression
etc. without having to remember what the original options were.
.Pp
A word of warning: if you intend to backup to one location and further backup
that backup to another location - sourcing the properties to use in the final
backup property file from the property backup file in the intermediate backup
is not yet supported. A workaround is to refrain from using
property overrides in the intermediate backup; this will mean that the ultimate
backup will be able to store the correct properties of the original.
.It Fl n
Dry ru(n) mode. Prints out the commands that would otherwise execute but does
not execute them. This may not work in all circumstances as it may expect the
existence of filesystems etc. that won't be created.
.It Fl o
(o)verride property mode. Property overrides are specified with commas to separate.
.Pp
e.g.
.Fl o Ar property1=value1,property2=value2...
For example,
.Fl o Ar compression=lzjb
will cause all destination filesystems to be set to lzjb compression. If using
recursive mode, only the root filesystem will be
.Cm set ,
and all other filesystems
will
.Cm inherit
from this. Note that this option will also override any values that would
otherwise be
.Cm set
by "-P". Invoking this option will also create the destination filesystem(s)
if they do not already exist.
.It Fl P
Transfer (P)roperty mode. This causes the destination to have properties explicitly
.Cm set
(i.e. with property
.Va sources
as
.Va local )
to exactly the same properties as the source. If the destination filesystems do
not exist, they will be created with the correct properties.
.Pp
If using recursive modes, child
filesystems have property
.Va sources
(as in, the fourth column of
.Cm # zfs get all pool/filesystem
) that are made either
.Va local ,
(if the
.Va source
is
.Va local )
or
.Va inherited
(if the
.Va source
is
.Va default
or
.Va inherited )
as per the source filesystem. Note that
.Va inherited
behaves in a similar manner to
.Va default .
If you were to set a given property of the parent of a child filesystem, the
child would have that same property's source listed as "inherited from..."
whether that child property source had been
.Va default
or
.Va inherited .
.Pp
There are several properties that
must be set (using
.Cm zfs create )
at filesystem creation time. These are:
.Va casesensitivity ,
.Va normalization ,
.Va jailed ,
.Va utf8only .
If you are trying to replicate such a filesystem where one of these properties is
different from source to destination, destroy the destination
filesystems before you begin otherwise the utility will fail with an error.
.Pp
There are several other properties that may not be technically readonly
but it was
judged that it would not make sense to try and transfer them. They are:
.Va type ,
.Va creation ,
.Va used ,
.Va available ,
.Va referenced ,
.Va compressratio ,
.Va mounted ,
.Va version ,
.Va primarycache ,
.Va secondarycache ,
.Va usedbysnapshots ,
.Va usedbydataset ,
.Va usedbychildren ,
.Va usedbyrefreservation ,
.Va version ,
.Va volsize ,
.Va mountpoint .
There are several properties in FreeBSD 8.2
that are not supported and hence will
not be transferred via
.Nm ,
they are:
.Va idevices ,
.Va aclmode ,
.Va aclinherit ,
.Va nbmand ,
.Va shareiscsi ,
.Va vscan ,
.Va xattr .
If using -S, all filesystems in the pools containing the source directories/files
will be created on the destination if they aren't in existence already, whether
they are to hold files/directories or not.
.It Fl S
.Xr rsync 1
mode.
If -S is specified,
.Xr rsync 1
mode is triggered. If -S is absent,
.Xr zfs 8
.Va send
mode is in effect. Several options have different effects depending
on whether -S is present or not. Consult the relevant option section before
using.
.Pp
It is also possible to transfer to readonly destination filesystems, but
this is only supported if either
.Op Fl o
or
.Op Fl P
is enabled.
.It Fl v
(v)erbose mode.
.El
.Ss Normal | zfs send/receive mode
(i.e. -S is absent)
.Bl -tag -width indent
.It Fl c
A space delimited list of SMF services in quotes to be temporarily disabled
before unmounting the source, then re-enable after changing the mountpoint
of the destination. Requires -m.
.It Fl d
(d)elete snapshots on the destination that are absent on the source. This may
be necessary to function properly anyway, in a similar fashion to
.It Fl D
.Nm
will pipe
.Xr zfs 8
.Va send
through the indicated command and parameters, to create a progress bar.
A number of macros will be replaced with values before the command is executed:
.Bl -tag -width a
.It %%size%%
Will be replaced with the estimated size of the snapshot.
.It %%title%%
Will be replaced with the name of the source dataset@snapshot.
.El
.Pp
Example:
.Pp
.Nm
.Fl O Ar user@host Fl D Ar 'bar -s %%size%%' Fl R Ar source destination
.Op Fl F .
This will occur if you are using
.Nm
for routine backups and in the interim, culling snapshots on the source.
The snapshot corresponding to the most recent snapshot on the destination
often gets deleted on the source. Any snapshots on the destination more
recent than the most recent common snapshot must be deleted for
.Cm zfs send
to work.
.It Fl g
(g)randfather protection. Specify a number of days old (relative to the system
date) at and above which snapshots on the destination won't be deleted. For use
with
.Op Fl d .
This allows a safeguard to protect the "grandfathers" in a
Grandfather-Father-Son (GFS) snapshot
collection on a destination. Grandfathers (as defined by
.Nm )
are the snapshots that never get
deleted (often yearly, half yearly or quarterly snapshots).
.Pp
Note that for
this to work properly, you must set
.Op Fl g
so that it does not inadvertently protect the "fathers" which will be deleted on
the source by your snapshot management tool, and hence will need to be deleted
on the
destination. If you go a long time between backups with an otherwise well set
.Op Fl g ,
you may have fathers on the destination that are the age of grandfathers and so
you will need to either relax the number of days provided for, or manually
delete those fathers.
.Pp
For example,
specifying -g 375 should protect snapshots as old or older than 375 days,
which could be useful where grandfathers are yearly and monthly fathers are
kept for a period of a year or less. This gives us 9 days of grace period
to make a backup without throwing an error, but do note that during
this grace period grandfathers
less than 375 days old are not protected.
.It Fl I Ar properties,to,ignore
Do not copy this comma separated list of properties when performing replication.
Useful for skipping properties like quotas that can interfere with replication,
or properties that are not supported on the destination.
.It Fl m
After sending all snapshots, (m)igrate the source to the destination filesystem by
unmounting the source filesystem and changing the new filesystem's
mountpoint to that of the source. This option includes -s. It also includes
-P. Note that
.Nm
does not prevent you from migrating a default mountpoint
(e.g. pool/filesystem) to something that will be potentially confusing, so
be sure that this is what you want before executing.
.Pp
Note also that
.Op Fl O
and
.Op Fl T
(i.e. remote transfers) are not supported with this option enabled.
.It Fl N
Replicate the listed filesystem. Note the provisos listed above in
.Op Fl R .
It works similarly but is (N)ot recursive.
e.g.  specifying -N
.Pa tank/tmp
will transfer only
.Pa tank/tmp .
.It Fl O
Specify an (O)rigin user@host. This allows transfers FROM a remote host via ssh.
e.g. Whatever filesystems you specify as the source are taken to exist on that
remote host.
.Pp
For this to work, you must have a working ssh
connection from your local machine to the remote host, using public key based
authentication (so that you won't have to keep entering a password every time
a command is sent over ssh). You must have
.Nm
on your local machine. The remote host must support
.Xr zfs 1 ,
and so does your local machine if
.Op Fl T
is not also used.
.Pp
This option has been somewhat tested in FreeBSD 8.2 and Solaris 11 Express
and
appears to be working. (Consider it alpha level.) These are the only
operating systems that it has been tested on, and possibly/probably won't
work on others.
.Pp
Note also that transferring between different operating systems and even
different
versions of the same operating system (e.g. FreeBSD 8.1 and 8.2) has not been
tested and will probably fail or give unexpected results. As
.Xr zfs 1 ,
has been developed, new properties have come into being, and those properties
have either been supported in FreeBSD or they haven't. So it is difficult to
know what a user would like to have such properties be when they are copied
from one OS (or version) to another. At least between OS versions, you are
advised to use the same OS and zpool and zfs version from source to
destination.
It's not likely I will test this thoroughly in
the near future, as it requires an estimated n^2 number of tested transfers,
where n is the number of operating system variations to support.
You are welcome to try it though, and report bugs back to me.
.Pp
Note that if at all possible, do not try and be clever
and run
.Nm
with both an origin and a target host. While this may work,
the transfer will be piped from the remote origin to the local machine and from
there to the remote target machine, which will be slow as it is
not a direct path.
.Pp
The syntax for this command is -O user@remote_host.
.Pp
e.g. -O root@192.168.0.1
.Pp
Please note that if you are using Solaris, you will most likely need to use
"pfexec" (similar to sudo) and have a suitably privileged user. Copy the
quotes and spacing exactly:
.Pp
e.g. -O "user1@192.168.0.1 pfexec"
.Pp
The reason this works is because the commands that are related to
reading/writing/modifying data will be prefaced with in normal circumstances:
.Pp
ssh root@192.168.0.1 command ...
.Pp
So with Solaris, specifying the pfexec at the end results in:
.Pp
ssh user1@192.168.0.1 pfexec command ...
.It Fl R
(R)ecursively replicate all filesystems under the specified source. If not
specifying
.Op Fl S ,
you
.Em must
invoke one and only one of either
.Op Fl R
or
.Op Fl N .
Note that if you enable this option, you must specify only one filesystem,
and that it starts without a "/". e.g.  specifying -R
.Pa tank/tmp
will transfer
.Pa tank/tmp ,
.Pa tank/tmp/foo,
.Pa tank/tmp/foo/bar
etc.
.Pp
Also note that a trailing slash on the source filesystem has a similar effect
as it has in
.Xr cp 1 .
This would primarily be used in restoring filesystems, especially pools.
See Ex3.
.It Fl s
Make a (s)napshot of the source before replication. Note that you might want to
transfer a current snapshot at the end of a transfer, as the initial transfer
might take a long time. This would leave you with an old snapshot on the
destination. To do this you will need to execute your command again
at the end, and ensure that a current snapshot is taken before or during the
second execution. e.g. use this option to ensure that a relatively current
snapshot exists, create it manually, or wait until your own snapshotting
regime does the job for you (if you have one).
.It Fl T
Specify a (T)arget user@host. This allows transfers TO a remote host via ssh.
e.g. Whatever filesystem you specify as the destination will be where the
source filesystems will be sent.
.Pp
See the section on
.Op Fl O
for notes, usage advice and warnings, as this option is very similar in
operation.
.Pp
The syntax for this command is -T user@remote_host. e.g. -T root@192.168.1.2
.Pp
Again, please note that if you are using Solaris, you will most likely need to use
"pfexec" (similar to sudo) and have a suitably privileged user. Copy the
quotes and spacing exactly:
.Pp
e.g. -T "user1@192.168.0.1 pfexec"
.It Fl U
Skip replicating any properties that are not supported by the destination.
Before replication begins, a list of supported properties is fetched from the
destination and any properties not on that list are removed from the list of
properties to be replicated.
This allows replicating from newer versions of OpenZFS to older versions.
.It Fl v
(v) verbose mode
.It Fl V
(V)ery verbose mode, prints debugging messages to stderr
.It Fl w
uses zfs ra(w) send mode
.It Fl Y
(Y)ield after no zfs send or zfs destroy commands are executed or 8 iterations
have been performed, whichever comes first.
.It Fl z
Pipe the send stream through zstd -3 compression and then decode it at the
target using zstd -d.
This converts:
.Pp
ssh user@host "/sbin/zfs send dataset@snap1 | /sbin/zfs receive
.Pp
to
.Pp
ssh user@host "/sbin/zfs send dataset@snap1 | zstd -3" | zstd -d | /sbin/zfs receive
.It Fl Z
Pass the zstd command to use during compression.
.Pp
e.g.
.Pp
-Z "zstd -T0 -9"
.Pp
This will modify the default -z option to
.Pp
ssh user@host "/sbin/zfs send dataset@snap1 | zstd -T0 -9" | zstd -d | /sbin/zfs receive

.El
.Ss Rsync mode
(i.e. -S is specified)
.Bl -tag -width indent
.It Fl d
(d)elete files on the destination that do not exist on the source. This is
equivalent to
.Cm rsync --del .
.It Fl E
Pass (E)xclude patterns to
.Xr rsync 1 .
e.g. If you want to specify "--exclude=/boot/zfs/zpool.cache" when
.Xr rsync 1
is called, then
use "-E /boot/zfs/zpool.cache". You can specify this option as many times as
you like, and it will pass each exclude pattern to
.Xr rsync 1 .
My understanding of how to get this to work is to specify the exclude as a
continuation of the filesystem mountpoint on which the file/directory is
stored. e.g. with "/boot/zfs/zpool.cache"
it works because the mountpoint of zroot is effectively "/".
.It Fl f
Specify a (f)ile that contains a list of options to feed to
.Cm rsync .
In this event, no other options will be given to
.Cm rsync .
(If this option is not enabled, the default options given to
.Cm rsync
are
.Cm -clptgoD --inplace --relative -H --numeric-ids .
)
.Pp
It has been suggested that it might be more convenient to be able to specify
custom options to rsync by means of a switch and the options in quotes or
some other delimiting character. If
there is enough feedback I will consider implementing this option.
.It Fl i
(i)nclude directories corresponding to ZFS filesystem mountpoints on the
destination when transferring. The default is to exclude them, since the
destination may correspond to a filesystem from another pool mounted there,
which has its own data and would be restored independently.
.It Fl l
Treat (l)egacy mountpoints as being equal to "/". If this is not enabled,
.Nm
will fail with an error when it encounters a legacy mountpoint.
.It Fl L
Specify how many (L)evels deep in the source filesystem tree the filesystem
that was originally a backed up pool now lies. Most likely, this will only
need to be used in the event of a restore, as the default level (zero)
will create filesystems from the pool level on down at the target. e.g.
if we are trying to restore
.Pa /storage/backups/zroot/tmp/stuff.txt
which was originally in a pool named
.Pa zroot ,
and wished it to end up where it originally came from (e.g. at
.Pa zroot/tmp/stuff.txt
) we would indicate with -L 2
that the original pool is located 2 levels deep on the source. If we did not specify
that option, we would end up with the file transferred to
.Pa /zroot/backups/zroot/tmp/stuff.txt,
which is not what is wanted.
.It Fl N
Replicate the listed director(y|ies) or file(s). Note the provisos listed above in
.Op Fl R .
It works similarly but is not recursive. e.g.  specifying -N
.Pa /tmp
will transfer only
.Pa /tmp .
.It Fl p
(p)ersist through
.Xr rsync 1
errors. This saves having to feed directories individually to
.Nm ,
if we expect rsync to return an error at some point (e.g. when it tries to
overwrite itself).
.It Fl R
(R)ecursively replicate all directories and files under the specified source(s).
If specifying
.Op Fl S ,
you
.Em must
invoke at least one or both of either
.Op Fl R
or
.Op Fl N .
The idea is that this utility makes an atomic clone of the filesystems you will need
to get your files/directories from, and you can use
.Cm rsync
to decide what to transfer within a given pool.
.Pp
Note that if you enable this option, you can specify as many directories as
you like, separated by commas (with no spaces). Directories must start with a
.Pa /
and may or may not end with a
.Pa / .
Read the
.Xr rsync 1
man page to get the gist of how that works.
e.g.  specifying -R
.Pa /tmp
will transfer
.Pa /tmp ,
.Pa /tmp/foo,
.Pa /tmp/foo/bar
etc.
.Pp
Note also that
.Nm
will only transfer the contents of the directory "/" if
.Op Fl l
is invoked, "/" is mounted as legacy, and it will only transfer
across those files and directories belonging to the same ZFS filesystem as / belongs
to.
.Pp
Another action not supported is
recursively transferring a directory that contains directories that are in
fact filesystems from other pools, or in fact any included
directories where the filesystem mountpoints diverge from what ZFS
would assign by default.
.It Fl u
(u)se an already existing snapshot as the source to transfer from. You should
first check that this snapshot exists on all the filesystems that house the
files and directories to be used in the transfer. This gives us the option of
restoring files/directories without having to roll back.
.El
.Sh EXAMPLES
Note that some of these example commands are lengthy, so be sure to fix
the line wrapping appropriately. Also if you wonder why
.Nm
isn't transferring anything, please read the section titled SNAPSHOTS.
.Ss Ex1 - Backup a pool (including snapshots and properties)
We have a pool called
.Pa storage
and we want to back it up to
.Pa backup01/pools ,
along with all its snapshots. Grandfather snapshots are yearly, fathers are
monthly and are deleted after 365 days.
The resultant filesystem hierarchy should look like so:
.Bl -bullet -offset indent -compact
.It
.Pa backup01/pools/storage
.It
.Pa backup01/pools/storage/home
.It
.Pa backup01/pools/storage/back
.It
etc.
.El
To back this up while:
.Bl -bullet -offset indent -compact
.It
.Op Fl g
protecting (grandfather) snapshots older than 375 days
.It
.Op Fl P
copying across the properties of each filesystem
.It
.Op Fl k
storing the original filesystem properties in the file
.Pa backup01/pools/.zxfer_backup_info.storage
.It
.Op Fl F
forcing a rollback of destination to the most recent snapshot. Given even
mounting the filesystem will cause a change and hence cause
.Cm zfs receive
to fail with an error, enabling this
is the way to go. Otherwise you would be modifying(!) a backup,
wanting to keep the changes you are making(!?) and also wanting to copy more
stuff to the backup (hence it's still being used as a backup)... well
if that's what you want then don't use
this option.
.It
.Op Fl d
deleting stale snapshots that don't exist on the source
(e.g. if using
a snapshot management script such as
.Xr zfs-snapshot-mgmt 8 ,
snapshots are regularly taken and regularly deleted to leave a range of
frequencies of snapshots at different vintages. If you are regularly backing
up to another pool which is stored off-site as is
.Em highly
recommended, you may want
to delete the stale snapshots on the backup pool without having to manage the
snapshots there too. This is especially true for those pools that are usually
not connected to a machine, e.g. if you are using HDD as backup media. Note that
.Cm zfs send
will also refuse to work if you have newer snapshots on destination than
the most recent common snapshot on both, so it's easier to just enable it.)
.It
.Op Fl v
seeing lots of output (verbose)
.It
.Op Fl V
(V)ery verbose output sent to stderr
.It
.Op Fl R
copying the source filesystem recursively
.El
use the following command:
.Pp
.Nm
.Cm -dFkPv -g 375 -R storage backup01/pools
.Pp
Note that this same command will work for both the initial replication
and subsequent replications (which are potentially much faster due to
incremental transfers being used). Also note that if you don't have any
snapshots on the source, nothing will be transferred. You can create
a snapshot for this very occasion by adding the -s option.
.Ss Ex2 - Backup pool to HDD
Using HDDs as backup media was in large part a motivation for writing this
utility. (Using an e-SATA dock is particularly convenient). The source and
destination are the same as Ex1.
.Pp
We will want to increase the number of
.Va copies
to at
least 2 or more so that we have some protection against bad sectors. We won't
have protection against a HDD crash so use more than one HDD if you are doing
this (mirrored or otherwise). We may also want to override the
.Va compression
to make up for the multiplication in disk usage by the number of copies. Here
is the command:
.Pp
.Nm
.Cm -dFkPv -o copies=2,compression=lzjb -R storage backup01/pools
.Pp
.Ss Ex3 - Restore a pool
To restore the pools we have backed up in Examples 1 and 2, we would first
make sure that there is a new pool named
.Pa storage
to copy the backup to. Then we would issue the following command:
.Pp
.Nm
.Cm -deFPv -R backup01/pools/storage/ storage
.Pp
Note that the trailing slash enables us to copy the
.Pa zroot
filesystem directly to the pool level, and then the child filesystems
below that, which is where we want them. If the pool name is to be changed,
the command becomes:
.Pp
.Nm
.Cm -deFPv -R backup01/pools/storage/ newpoolname
.Pp
.Ss Ex4 - Backup a filesystem
We might want to just backup a filesystem within a pool. That is easily done:
.Pp
.Nm
.Cm -dFkPv -N storage/home backup01/filesystems
.Pp
The resulting filesystem will be
.Pa backup01/filesystems/home .
This example will only replicate that exact filesystem
(i.e. it is non-recursive). If we wanted to recursively transfer all
filesystems under
.Pa storage/home
at the same time we could do so by changing the
.Op Fl N
to an
.Op Fl R .
.Pp
.Ss Ex5 - Restore a filesystem
To restore the filesystem backed up in Ex4, we would do so using the
following command:
.Pp
.Nm
.Cm -deFPv -N backup01/filesystem/home storage
.Pp
.Ss Ex6 - Recursive directory backup
We might want to backup a directory within a pool, using rsync
to do the heavy lifting, while also making a backup of the properties
of the filesystems transferred. Transferring via
.Op Fl S
will allow us to have different snapshotting regimes on
source and destination coexisting happily.
.Pp
.Nm
.Cm -SkPv -R /storage/home backup01/rsbacks
.Pp
The resulting filesystem structure will look like:
.Pa backup01/rsbacks/storage/home .
.Pp
If we wanted to non-recursively transfer that directory
we would just change the
.Op Fl R
to an
.Op Fl N .
.Pp
.Ss Ex7 - Recursive directory restore
To restore the directory backed up in Ex6, we would do so using the
following command:
.Pp
.Nm
.Cm -SePv -L 2 -N /backup01/rsbacks/storage/home storage
.Pp
Note that we had to specify a drop back of 2 levels of filesystems,
so that
.Nm
would know that the pool level is not
.Pa backup01
but
.Pa storage .
Specifying -L of 1 would indicate that the pool level was
.Pa rsbacks ,
which it was not. Leaving out
.Op Fl L
would be equivalent to L=0, or specifying that the pool level
was
.Pa backup01 .
.Pp
Note also that this will re-create all the original
filesystems that existed on the pool "storage" with their original properties,
if they have since been deleted. If those filesystems still exist,
.Nm
will
ensure that each such filesystem have the properties they originally had. Note
that if those
filesystems still exist, no data will be changed other than what you have
specified to be rsynced across.
.Pp
If you wish to not have filesystems created
or properties set (just the files/directories you want rsynced),
just forego
.Op Fl P
and
.Op Fl o .
Note that this will only work on filesystems that are writable.
.Pp
.Ss Ex8 - Backup FreeBSD 8.2 root mirror
This will make a recursive snapshot of the root mirror, create similar
filesystems on the pool
.Pa storage ,
transfer the properties over,
.Xr rsync 1
across the directories and files needed to restore the system,
and destroy the snapshots when done. To see how to do this in more
detail, check out the
.Nm
wiki.
.Pp
.Nm
.Cm -SPkld
.Cm -R /bin,/boot,/compat,/etc,/lib,/libexec,/rescue,/root,/sbin,/tmp,/usr,/var,/vshare
.Cm -N /.cshrc,/.profile storage/zr_backup
.Pp
The resulting filesystem structure will look something like:
.Pa storage/zr_backup/zroot
.Pa storage/zr_backup/zroot/usr
.Pa storage/zr_backup/zroot/var
etc.
.Pp
.Ss Ex9 - Restore FreeBSD 8.2 root mirror
To restore the config files backed up in Ex8, we would do so using the
following command after installing the system,
installing
.Nm
and booting up in the system.
This uses the snapshot auto-2010-11-14_14.00. Note that
for this to work properly
.Pa /var/empty
must be set to mutable. Also, the flag "schg" must be turned off to transfer
properly. For the full sequence of commands, see the
.Nm
wiki. Here is the command for the
.Nm
part of the procedure (note you will need to add any directories of your creation kept on your zroot e.g. "vshare"):
.Pp
.Nm
.Cm -SpldBv -E /boot/zfs/zpool.cache
.Cm -u auto-2010-11-14_14.00
.Cm -L 2
.Cm -N $zrootdir/.cshrc,$zrootdir/.profile
.Cm -R $zrootdir/bin,$zrootdir/boot,$zrootdir/compat,$zrootdir/etc,$zrootdir/lib,$zrootdir/libexec,$zrootdir/rescue,$zrootdir/root,$zrootdir/sbin,$zrootdir/tmp,$zrootdir/usr,$zrootdir/var,$zrootdir/vshare zroot
.Pp
.Ss Ex10 - Migrate a filesystem
We might want to migrate a filesystem (including properties).
Note that this is only allowable when the original mountpoint is
not the default (i.e. pool/filesystem). In the following example,
the new filesystem will be located in
.Pa new_pool/location/fs .
If the old mountpoint was
.Pa /path/to/old_fs
then that will be the mountpoint of the new filesystem.
.Pp
.Nm
.Cm -PmFdv -N original_pool/fs new_pool/location
.Pp
.Ss Ex11 - Compress a filesystem
If we want to compress a filesystem, it is not enough to simply
set a compression setting of some sort on that filesystem. This
will only cause new files to be compressed. If we want to compress
a filesystem, what we would want to do is to transfer it to another
location (where compression is enabled).
.Pp
.Nm
.Cm -PmFdv -o compression=gzip -N original_pool/fs new_pool/location
.Pp
.Ss Ex12 - Compress a filesystem...
- and store it in the original location.
This is probably what you want to do instead of example 11. Usually
what we want to do when we want to compress
a filesystem - it is already in the location we want it to be, just
we haven't realized we wanted it compressed at the time. Or maybe
we want to do something similar to compression, like dedup, and it was
not supported at the time we created the filesystem. So it is not enough
to have the filesystem compressed in a new location, we want it in the
original location.
.Pp
If so, we will need to migrate the filesystem. Then, if necessary, we would
need to upgrade the original pool
to ensure that the new filesystem can do what it is we want it to do
(e.g. dedup perhaps), and then transfer it back. Here are the steps.
.Pp
1. Ensure you have set aside a time where nothing will be reading or writing
to the filesystem(s) in question. If you are performing this operation on a
system filesystem (e.g. something like
.Pa zroot/usr )
then ensure that you are performing these operations from a recovery disk
(e.g. Fixit # in FreeBSD). Also it is a very good idea to ensure that you
have made backups of the filesystems you are going to perform this operation
on.
.Pp
2. Migrate the filesystems to a new location. e.g.
.Pp
.Nm
.Cm -PmFdv -N original_pool/fs new_pool/location
.Pp
3. Triple check that the new filesystems are as they should be. Be very,
very, very careful here. It is a good idea to have made a backup before
doing this next step. In fact, it's probably worth practicing on a system
you don't care about first. And do not, repeat do not, blame me if something
goes wrong.
.Pp
4. Destroy the original filesystem. e.g.
.Pp
zfs destroy original_pool/fs
.Pp
5. Ensure that the original pool is upgraded to do what you want it to do
(e.g. dedup perhaps, though you will need to change the option setting
appropriately).
.Pp
6. Migrate the filesystem back, but with the overrides you want. e.g.
.Pp
.Nm
.Cm -PmFdv -o compression=gzip -N new_pool/location/fs original_pool
.Pp
.Ss Ex13 - Backup a pool to a remote host
Notice this is the same as in Ex2 with the exception of option
.Op Fl T ,
and uses the same options which
have been explained in that example. Note that if you use Solaris you will
most likely need to specify pfexec (refer to the
.Op Fl O
section).
Here is the command:
.Pp
.Nm
.Cm -dFkPv -o copies=2,compression=lzjb -T root@192.168.123.1 -R storage backup01/pools
.Pp
.Ss Ex14 - Restore a pool from a remote host
Use the following command, assuming that you are restoring from a situation as
in Ex13. Again, if using Solaris refer to
.Op Fl O .
.Pp
.Nm
.Cm -deFPv -O root@192.168.123.1 -R backup01/pools/storage/ storage
.Pp
.Sh EXIT VALUES
.Nm
exits 0 on success, 1 on an error and 2 if a command line option is incorrect.
.Sh SEE ALSO
.Xr rsync 1 ,
.Xr zfs 1 ,
.Xr zpool 1
.Sh COMPATIBILITY
.Nm
is tested (somewhat) before release on FreeBSD 8.2-RELEASE and Solaris
Express 11. It
was tested on the last version of OpenSolaris and FreeBSD 8.1 as of 0.9.0 and
may continue to function correctly, but in order to ease my workload I am
only going to test
.Nm
against Solaris Express 11 and whatever version I run of FreeBSD, in my case
8.2.
.Sh THANKS
Thanks to Constantin Gonzalez for his constant collaboration, guidance, and
his
providing of a sounding board for ideas and decisions as I developed this
script. It is no understatement to say that this script would not have been
developed to the extent it has and in its present form if not for his
encouragement, input on design decisions, and often just simply agreeing that
some features would be really cool, which spurred me on.
.Pp
Constantin's zfs-replicate script formed the original basis for this one, and
was very useful as a template for me to follow. Thanks to Constantin also
for generously allowing his code to be licensed under the BSD license, and
also encouraging the existence of this project under its own banner.
.Pp
You can read Constantin's blog "Constant Thinking" at
constantin.glez.de - if you are at all interested in the world of ZFS it is
worth reading regularly (his non-ZFS stuff is good too).
.Pp
Thanks also to the creators of rsync for their excellent tool.
.Sh AUTHORS
The basis for
.Nm ,
zfs-replicate, was written by Constantin Gonzalez. Ivan Nash Dreckman
built upon that work to create the additional code and documentation
required for
.Nm .
Constantin was invaluable throughout with providing feedback
on design decisions, suggestions and encouragement, not to mention initial
testing on Solaris.
.Sh BUGS
(This is a bug of ZFS on FreeBSD and not this script.)
There are several properties in FreeBSD that when set via "zfs create"
or "zfs set" will have the source stay as default while others are
set to local. This does not have any real impacts because these properties
are not inheritable. The properties are: quota, reservation, canmount,
refquota, refreservation.
.Pp
Note that FreeBSD does not support the transfer of several properties. See
.Op Fl P
section for details on this.
.Pp
There are several properties that are skipped over when transferring
or setting properties - search the script for "readonly_properties"
to see what they are. If you find that certain newer ZFS properties
are not being transferred, there is a good chance that those properties
they have been added to this list. That is
because testing has indicated that attempting to create with or set those
properties would cause the script to fail. If you can make a good case
that the script should heed those property values,
feel free to email me.
.Pp
Send bug reports to ivannashdreckman at fastmailgolf dot fm, but not before
removing the sport originating in Scotland from the email address. If you like
.Nm
and find it useful, send some feedback saying how you use it, and consider
donating at some stage in the future.
.Sh CREDITS
.Nm
is distributed under the BSD license. See the file COPYING for details.
.Pp
The website for
.Nm
is http://www.zxfer.org. For additional help, consult the wiki on that site.