.\" Copyright (C) 2016 Oracle. All rights reserved. .\" .\" %%%LICENSE_START(VERBATIM) .\" This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or .\" modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as .\" published by the Free Software Foundation. .\" .\" This program is distributed in the hope that it would be useful, .\" but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of .\" MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the .\" GNU General Public License for more details. .\" .\" You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License .\" along with this program; if not, write the Free Software Foundation, .\" Inc., 51 Franklin St, Fifth Floor, Boston, MA 02110-1301 USA .\" %%%LICENSE_END .TH IOCTL-FICLONERANGE 2 2016-02-10 "Linux" "Linux Programmer's Manual" .SH NAME ioctl_ficlonerange, ioctl_ficlone \- share some the data of one file with another file .SH SYNOPSIS .br .B #include .br .B #include .sp .BI "int ioctl(int " dest_fd ", FICLONERANGE, struct file_clone_range * " arg ); .br .BI "int ioctl(int " dest_fd ", FICLONE, int " src_fd ); .SH DESCRIPTION If a filesystem supports files sharing physical storage between multiple files ("reflink"), this .BR ioctl (2) system call can be used to make some of the data in the .B src_fd file appear in the .B dest_fd file by sharing the underlying storage, which is faster than making a separate physical copy of the data. If a file write should occur to a shared region, the filesystem must ensure that the changes remain private to the file being written. This behavior is commonly referred to as "copy on write". This ioctl reflinks up to .IR src_length bytes from file descriptor .IR src_fd at offset .IR src_offset into the file .IR dest_fd at offset .IR dest_offset ", provided that both are files. This information is conveyed in a structure of the following form: .in +4n .nf struct file_clone_range { __s64 src_fd; __u64 src_offset; __u64 src_length; __u64 dest_offset; }; .fi .in Clones are atomic with regards to concurrent writes, so no locks need to be taken to obtain a consistent cloned copy. The FICLONE ioctl clones entire files. .SH RETURN VALUE On error, \-1 is returned, and .I errno is set to indicate the error. .PP .SH ERRORS Error codes can be one of, but are not limited to, the following: .TP .B EXDEV .IR dest_fd " and " src_fd are not on the same mounted filesystem. .TP .B EISDIR One of the files is a directory and the filesystem does not support shared regions in directories. .TP .B EINVAL The filesystem does not support reflinking the ranges of the given files. This error can also appear if either file descriptor represents a device, fifo, or socket. Disk filesystems generally require the offset and length arguments to be aligned to the fundamental block size. XFS and btrfs do not support overlapping reflink ranges in the same file. .TP .B EBADF .IR src_fd is not open for reading; .IR dest_fd is not open for writing or is open for append-only writes; or the filesystem which .IR src_fd resides on does not support reflink. .TP .B EPERM .IR dest_fd is immutable. .TP .B ETXTBSY One of the files is a swap file. Swap files cannot share storage. .TP .B EOPNOTSUPP This can appear if the filesystem does not support reflinking either file descriptor. .SH NOTES Because a copy on write operation requires the allocation of new storage, the .B fallocate (2) operation may un-share shared blocks to guarantee that subsequent writes will not fail because of lack of disk space. .SH CONFORMING TO This API is Linux-specific. This ioctl was previously known as .B BTRFS_IOC_CLONE_RANGE and was private to btrfs. .fi .in .SH SEE ALSO .BR ioctl (2)