Docs / Restoring from a conduit
Restoring from a conduit
Pull a snapshot back from your conduit to a local pool — replication runs in reverse.
1. List what's available
SSH into your conduit and list the snapshots you can restore from:
2. Send it back to your machine
Run
zfs send on the conduit (over SSH) and
pipe it into zfs receive locally. Here we
restore into a new dataset so nothing existing is touched:
zfs send
-Rw
conduits/sub_abc123/data@2026-01-07
\
|
zfs recv
tank/restored
Restoring into a fresh dataset (
tank/restored)
is the safe default. Only add -F to
zfs recv if you intend to roll an existing
dataset back, since it discards newer local snapshots.
3. Unlock encrypted data
If you sent your dataset raw with
-w, the
restored copy arrives still encrypted. Load your key and mount it locally:
$
zfs load-key
tank/restored
&&
zfs mount
tank/restored
Tip
A backup you've never restored is only a hypothesis. Periodically test a
restore into a throwaway dataset to confirm your data and keys are intact.