btrfs rollback (how to)

English Install/Boot/Login
1

I wanna ask simple question I’ve some trouble booting… I solved it but I also tried do a rollback, I was in text mode and I did



btrfs subvolume set-default xxx /.snapshots

xxx - the id of the snapshot (working state)

(or in chroot live CD it could be

... set-default xxx /mnt./snapshots

if you’ve mounted your system in /mnt of that liveCD session), but I did a lot of changes to system that day so I don’t clearly know which snaphsot it should be even if I use



snapper list

. So my questions is was my method/command right cause I’ve only found posts like this http://www.howtoforge.com/rollback-to-a-working-state-with-btrfs-plus-apt-btrfs-snapshot-on-ubuntu-12.10 which was about apt-btrfs-snapshot package but I just if you build from source or change some settings , config files you may want to set any snaphsot you know is good (fully working system as it was before changes) as default
Or use smth like this

snapper -v undochange 2..3
  • that undo change between snapshot with ID 2-3 but like if I want to undo change between 2-10 it’d be
snapper -v undochange 2..10

or if you want to undochange on particular dir

snapper -v undochange 2..3 /etc/sysconfig/*
2

With the default subvolume layout created during installation snapshots cannot be used directly because far too many directories will be missing. I know that there is some work in progress to allow it, but as far as I understood this is not intended as permanent rollback to previous version but rather as possibility to boot into previous snapshot for short term.

So I guess using snapshots as backup is the only way (i.e. - yuo have old versions of files so you can fetch them from snapshot to replace files in your real filesystem).

3

If you use Yast (also available in textmode), it may be a bit easier. Use the snapper module, have a look.

4

I don’t have the snapper snapper module in yast nad I wonder why. And I understand so far that snapper only undo zypper and yast changes by this official guides https://doc.opensuse.org/products/draft/SLES/SLES-admin_sd_draft/cha.snapper.html http://en.opensuse.org/openSUSE:Snapper_Tutorial

5

I was assuming you’re running 13.1, in the renewed Yast there is a snapper module.

6

As there was in 12.3 (and 12.2 possibly).