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P4 CLI Documentation | 2026.1

# p4 journalcopy

Copies journal data from a target server The immediately upstream server for replica servers, edge servers, standby servers, proxies and brokers. See also 'upstream server' and 'central server'. to the local file system of a standby replica.

## Syntax

    p4 [g-opts] journalcopy -l
    p4 [g-opts] journalcopy -i N [-b wait]

Syntax and naming conventions

## Description

The `p4 journalcopy` command has two syntax variants:

- To get a report of the current copy position from the target server’s journal to the replica’s journalcopy, use `p4 journalcopy -l`

  where the output of the `p4 journalcopy -l` command includes the sequence number, which indicates the byte offset position in the journal that the journalcopy has reached:

> Current replica persisted journal state is: Journal 2, Sequence 6510347

- To copy journal data (the journalcopy) to the local file system of a standby replica, use p4 journalcopy -i N with or without the -b option.

An operator or superuser can confirm the state of a replica by running the `p4 journalcopy -l,``p4 pull -l -j,` and `p4 pull -l -s` commands.

## Options

Option | Description
--- | ---
`-b wait` | Wait the specified number of seconds before retrying the `p4 journalcopy` command after a failed attempt. Setting this option overrides the default value of 60 seconds. For example, to set the value of the startup.N configurable so that the wait time is 30 seconds:
                                p4 -p depot_london_p4port configure set standby#startup.1="journalcopy -i 0 -b 30"
`-i N` | Repeat the `p4 journalcopy` command every `N` seconds. If you do not use this option, the command runs once. If you set N to `0`, the command runs as frequently as possible rather than sleeping between runs. This is useful for a high availability (HA) standby server.
`-l` | Report the current position in the copied journal.
`g-opts` | See Global options.

## Usage notes

Can File Arguments Use Revision Specifier? | Can File Arguments Use Revision Range? | Minimal Access Level Required
--- | --- | ---
NA | NA | `super` the `-l` option is available to an operator user

## Examples

`p4 journalcopy -l` | Show information about the current copy position from the target server’s journal to the replica’s journal.

## Related commands

To make a copy of the target server’s versioned files. | `p4 pull -u`
To retrieve the journal records from the journalcopy files created by the `p4 journalcopy` and to apply these to the standby’s database | `p4 pull -L`
To get information about replication status from the point of view of the target server, use the `-J` option of the `p4 servers` command. | `p4 servers`
To fail over to a new target server | p4 failover

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