NAME | SYNOPSIS | DESCRIPTION | OPTIONS | DIAGNOSTICS | NOTES | CAVEATS | SEE ALSO | COLOPHON

xfs_copy(8)                System Manager's Manual               xfs_copy(8)

NAME         top

       xfs_copy - copy the contents of an XFS filesystem

SYNOPSIS         top

       xfs_copy [ -bd ] [ -L log ] source target1 [ target2 ... ]
       xfs_copy -V

DESCRIPTION         top

       xfs_copy copies an XFS filesystem to one or more targets in parallel
       (see xfs(5)).  The first (source) argument must be the pathname of
       the device or file containing the XFS filesystem. The remaining
       arguments specify one or more target devices or file names. If the
       pathnames specify devices, a copy of the source XFS filesystem is
       created on each device. The target can also be the name of a regular
       file, in which case an image of the source XFS filesystem is created
       in that file. If the file does not exist, xfs_copy creates the file.
       The length of the resulting file is equal to the size of the source
       filesystem. However, if the file is created on an XFS filesystem, the
       file consumes roughly the amount of space actually used in the source
       filesystem by the filesystem and the XFS log.  The space saving is
       because xfs_copy seeks over free blocks instead of copying them and
       the XFS filesystem supports sparse files efficiently.
       xfs_copy should only be used to copy unmounted filesystems, read-only
       mounted filesystems, or frozen filesystems (see xfs_freeze(8)).
       Otherwise, the generated filesystem(s) would be inconsistent or
       corrupt.
       xfs_copy does not alter the source filesystem in any way. Each new
       (target) filesystem is identical to the original filesystem except
       that new filesystems each have a new unique filesystem identifier
       (UUID).  Therefore, if both the old and new filesystems will be used
       as separate distinct filesystems, xfs_copy or
       xfsdump(8)/xfsrestore(8) should be used to generate the new
       filesystem(s) instead of dd(1) or other programs that do block-by-
       block disk copying.
       xfs_copy uses synchronous writes to ensure that write errors are
       detected.
       xfs_copy uses pthreads(7) to perform simultaneous parallel writes.
       xfs_copy creates one additional thread for each target to be written.
       All threads die if xfs_copy terminates or aborts.

OPTIONS         top

       -d     Create a duplicate (true clone) filesystem. This should be
              done only if the new filesystem will be used as a replacement
              for the original filesystem (such as in the case of disk
              replacement).
       -b     The buffered option can be used to ensure direct IO is not
              attempted to any of the target files. This is useful when the
              filesystem holding the target file does not support direct IO.
       -L log Specifies the location of the log if the default location of
              /var/tmp/xfs_copy.log.XXXXXX is not desired.
       -V     Prints the version number and exits.

DIAGNOSTICS         top

       xfs_copy reports errors to both stderr and in more detailed form to a
       generated log file whose name is of the form
       /var/tmp/xfs_copy.log.XXXXXX or a log file specified by the -L
       option. If xfs_copy detects a write error on a target, the copy of
       that one target is aborted and an error message is issued to both
       stderr and the log file, but the rest of the copies continue. When
       xfs_copy terminates, all aborted targets are reported to both stderr
       and the log file.
       If all targets abort or if there is an error reading the source
       filesystem, xfs_copy immediately aborts.
       xfs_copy returns an exit code of 0 if all targets are successfully
       copied and an exit code of 1 if any target fails.

NOTES         top

       When moving filesystems from one disk to another, if the original
       filesystem is significantly smaller than the new filesystem, and will
       be made larger, we recommend that mkfs.xfs(8) and
       xfsdump(8)/xfsrestore(8) be used instead of using xfs_copy and
       xfs_growfs(8).  The filesystem layout resulting from using
       xfs_copy/xfs_growfs is almost always worse than the result of using
       mkfs.xfs/xfsdump/xfsrestore but in the case of small filesystems, the
       differences can have a significant performance impact. This is due to
       the way xfs_growfs(8) works, and not due to any shortcoming in
       xfs_copy itself.

CAVEATS         top

       xfs_copy does not copy XFS filesystems that have a real-time section
       or XFS filesystems with external logs. In both cases, xfs_copy aborts
       with an error message.

SEE ALSO         top

       mkfs.xfs(8), xfsdump(8), xfsrestore(8), xfs_freeze(8), xfs_growfs(8),
       xfs(5).

COLOPHON         top

       This page is part of the xfsprogs (utilities for XFS filesystems)
       project.  Information about the project can be found at 
       ⟨http://xfs.org/⟩.  If you have a bug report for this manual page, see
       ⟨http://oss.sgi.com/bugzilla/buglist.cgi?product=XFS⟩.  This page was
       obtained from the project's upstream Git repository 
       ⟨git://oss.sgi.com/xfs/cmds/xfsprogs⟩ on 2017-07-05.  If you discover
       any rendering problems in this HTML version of the page, or you
       believe there is a better or more up-to-date source for the page, or
       you have corrections or improvements to the information in this
       COLOPHON (which is not part of the original manual page), send a mail
       to man-pages@man7.org
                                                                 xfs_copy(8)

Pages that refer to this page: xfs_db(8)xfsdump(8)xfs_logprint(8)xfs_metadump(8)