They are set up automatically on OpenSUSE and make a new snapshot before and after every program installation, update and removal. Awesome for general peace of mind and especially when you’re up to strange shenanigans.
Also, for people on distros that don’t have an OOTB solution like OpenSUSE have, I recommend snapper and btrfs-assistant. You just install both packages, open the assistant GUI and create a profile for your root partition.
You can then also install a snapper plugin for your package manager, if one exists (I know DNF and pacman have one), which automatically take pre/post snapshots like OpenSUSE does, so you can quickly roll back if something goes wrong after a particular update/install/removal.
I’ve been using the above with EndeavourOS for a year now and it’s come in very handy on a couple of occasions.
Me:
- make the snapshot after the system is already broken
- Break it more
- Don’t restore the snapshot because its old and you can fix it
Been using it on a fedora workstation and a Debian server for 2 years and it has been stable and amazing for backups and regressions. So fast and easy to use. I use timeshift to handle organizing and scheduled backups.
FWIW, I set up these distros to separate my home directory from the OS, so backups aren’t clogged with random files in my /home directory. I use Pika Backup to handle the /home directories to a separate backup site.
It’s basically automated, reliable, and sooo fast. Love it.
The FS feature is great, it’s just cumbersome to use without a tool.
Snapper works well for a local backup like history both against botched updates and accidental deletion, but eats up the free space with the default settings.
Timeshift is an easy to use GUI but doesn’t support non-default partitions.
Also the quota support had a nasty side effect: freezing the whole system on snapshot deletion.
But It’s just a corrupt driver dude, I know I can fix it.
They’re set up in Nobara by default, haven’t had to use them yet but every once in a while I see them in the journalctl and get a warm feeling.
Used them to debug a problem. Forgot to remove them. Wondered why I ran out of disk space a few weeks later.
Very good. Saved me a couple of times. It’s a really hassle free way of preventing update fuckery
I don’t now how to use them but have btrfs snapshots set up by default on SUSE nonetheless
Snapshots are definitely a hit or miss with me. I nearly never use them, but when I need to recover a file it’s awesome. The only system related problem I had with Nvidia drivers but it was actually better to reinstall so it does all the install configuration itself
Although the most problems I had with it is backup of data. I tend to hoard too much
Too confusing, why can I create them with one command but not restore them in the same way? Last time I was gonna use them to fix an issue I spent an hour trying to figure out how to restore it and then just ended up fixing the issue manually in much less time.
Why dont you just use timeshift ?
Missed previous highway exit:
Use Debian stable / Ubuntu LTS
I’ve been using snapshots for a couple of years. So far I’ve only had to restore a snapshot once, but it and it worked fine. The snapshots are created almost instantly and they don’t use much disk space unless a lot of stuff has been changed.
If you use btrfs snapshots and systemd-boot instead of grub, then be carefull restoring updates from before a kernel update.
If I understand it correctly, with systemd-boot the kernel lives in the EFI partition, while the kernel modules live in the main (btrfs) partition. If you restore a snapshot with a different kernel version, it doesn’t restore the kernel itself, but the kernel modules have different filenames, which stops the system from being able to boot.
At least that is my understanding of the problem, from having to debug it twice (just start a live-boot system and use Timeshift to restore the system to after the update again). The next time I install Linux, I think I’ll go with grub instead of systemd-boot.
That being said, I really like btrfs snapshots as a sort of “almost backup” (still do regular backups on an external drive). They are quick and easy, and most packet managers can be setup to automatically make a snapshot before installing/updating stuff.
I just use snapshots for taking backups. This ensures that I get a consistent state when the backup occurs. It seems to work well for that.
