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ZFS-DIFF(8) System Manager's Manual ZFS-DIFF(8)

zfs-diff — show difference between ZFS snapshots

zfs diff [-FHth] snapshot snapshot|filesystem

Display the difference between a snapshot of a given filesystem and another snapshot of that filesystem from a later time or the current contents of the filesystem. The first column is a character indicating the type of change, the other columns indicate pathname, new pathname (in case of rename), change in link count, and optionally file type and/or change time. The types of change are:

-
The path has been removed
The path has been created
The path has been modified
The path has been renamed
Display an indication of the type of file, in a manner similar to the -F option of ls(1).
Block device
Character device
Directory
Door
Named pipe
Symbolic link
Event port
Socket
Regular file
Give more parsable tab-separated output, without header lines and without arrows.
Display the path's inode change time as the first column of output.
Do not ooo-escape non-ASCII paths.

The following example shows how to see what has changed between a prior snapshot of a ZFS dataset and its current state. The -F option is used to indicate type information for the files affected.

# zfs diff -F tank/test@before tank/test
M       /       /tank/test/
M       F       /tank/test/linked      (+1)
R       F       /tank/test/oldname -> /tank/test/newname
-       F       /tank/test/deleted
+       F       /tank/test/created
M       F       /tank/test/modified

zfs-snapshot(8)

March 16, 2022 OpenZFS