Re: zfs send / recv

On Thu, Jan 22, 2026 at 4:13 AM Julien Cigar <[email protected]> wrote:
>
> Hello,
>
> I'm working on updating our internal CI/CD pipeline. Things are installed on a physical server running FreeBSD X1.Y1-RELEASE:
>
> A Forgejo instance is installed in jail "forgejo.lan"
> A Forgejo runner is installed in a VNET jail "builder.lan" and uses jailed ZFS datasets
> A Saltstack master / Saltstack API is installed in a jail "salt.lan"
>
>
> The jail "builder.lan" uses hierarchical jails and when a job is launched it launches an orchestration script on "salt.lan". This orchestration script does the following:
>
> On "builder.lan" a newly ZFS dataset is created, a new jail is created within this newly ZFS dataset, and a salt-minion instance is installed
> Run the build in the newly created jail
> When the build finishes it stops the jail, umount the ZFS dataset, make a dump with something like $> zfs send zroot_srv/data/jails/builder/jails/foobar | gzip > /tmp/foobar.gz
>
>
> The idea is to have immutable builds, use ZFS datasets to deploy on the servers (jails) later with zfs receive, and be able to easily rollback is something wrong happend. It is working fine in "testlab" with same FreeBSD version.
> The only thing I was wondering is: is the dump made with my zfs send example above will always be compatible with zfs recv? I'm especially thinking about different FreeBSD version, ZFS versions, zpool versions ...
>
> Thanks!

Yes, it will.  However, if you use certain flags like "zfs send -L",
"zfs send -e", or "zfs send -c" then it might not be receivable by
very old ZFS versions.  But plain "zfs send" should be receivable
everywhere.