Re: Incremental btrfs receive in opposite direction fails

[Jun Lion <junlion@tormail.org>]

Hi,

> I admit I haven't completely understood what you're trying to achieve. You can
> only receive an incremental stream if the internal (!) file system state on the
> receiver's side is the same as on the sender's.

Understood, and the internal states are identical, except for the
snapshot metadata.

This executable example that shows the problem:


    # Create two throwaway filesystems /tmp/img1 and /tmp/img2
    # and mount them at /tmp/mp1 and /tmp/mp2
    for i in 1 2; do
        truncate -s 1G /tmp/img$i
        loop=`losetup -f --show /tmp/img$i`
        mkfs.btrfs "$loop"
        losetup -d "$loop"
        mkdir /tmp/mp$i
        mount /tmp/img$i /tmp/mp$i
    done

    # Create a subvol on the first fs, populate it
    btrfs sub create /tmp/mp1/foo
    echo 1 >/tmp/mp1/foo/1

    # Make an ro snapshot of the subvol, transfer it to the 2nd fs
    btrfs sub snap -r /tmp/mp1/foo /tmp/mp1/foo.1
    btrfs send /tmp/mp1/foo.1 | btrfs receive -v /tmp/mp2

    # Make an rw snapshot of the transferred snapshot on the 2nd fs,
    # add something to this rw snapshot
    btrfs sub snap /tmp/mp2/foo.1 /tmp/mp2/foo
    echo 2 >/tmp/mp2/foo/2

    # Make an ro snapshot of the added-to snapshot
    btrfs sub snap -r /tmp/mp2/foo /tmp/mp2/foo.2

    # Now try to transfer it back in the other direction
    btrfs send -p /tmp/mp2/foo.1 /tmp/mp2/foo.2 |
    btrfs receive -v /tmp/mp1
    # "ERROR: could not find parent subvolume"
    # even though both fs have the same foo.1


As I understand it, if "clone" is a clone/parent source, btrfs send
transmits
    clone.uuid
    clone.ctransid
and btrfs receive searches for a subvol "sub" with
    sub.received_uuid == clone.uuid and sub.stransid == clone.ctransid.

But because the direction of the transfer has changed, it can't find
anything. It would work if btrfs send was modified to *additionally*
transmit
    clone.received_uuid
    clone.stransid
and btrfs receive to do a *fallback* search for a subvol with
    sub.uuid == clone.received_uuid and sub.ctransid == clone.stransid

However, since I'm really not familiar with btrfs code, it was easier
for me to just make a rw snapshot of mp1/foo.1 and modify its metadata:

    # can't modify the info about a ro snapshot
    btrfs sub snap /tmp/mp1/foo.1 /tmp/mp1/foo.1rw

    # mp1/foo.1rw.received_uuid := mp2/foo.1.uuid
    # mp1/foo.1rw.stransid      := mp2/foo.1.ctransid
    uu /tmp/mp2 foo.1 /tmp/mp1/foo.1rw

    # !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
    # !! Now we've made it look as if mp1/foo.1 was received from !!
    # !! mp2/foo.1 when actually it was the other way around.     !!
    # !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
    
    # Let's retry the original problematic command:
    btrfs send -p /tmp/mp2/foo.1 /tmp/mp2/foo.2 |
    btrfs receive -v /tmp/mp1

    # It works fine! Hurray!