I seem to have snapper and don’t want it. I’ve read about deleting the cron files to disable it, but is it safe to simply uninstall it? I thought I should check because, e.g., the package includes a grub plugin, which perhaps - given my current config - is now required for my system to boot. Or perhaps my btrfs partitions will play up with snapper uninstalled (unlikely I imagine, but given I have no understanding of how snapper interacts with the system, I can’t be sure).
Then why not run the OS from a different filesystem? One of btrfs’ main features IS snapper. Removing that removes an essential feature of btrfs
Maybe.
But to answer the actual question: yes, it is safe to uninstall snapper.
And the grub plugin is only necessary to boot from btrfs snapshots, not for normal boot.
Just as the zypp plugin is only necessary to automatically create snapshots when installing/removing packages. YaST/zypper (and PackageKit) will otherwise work fine without it.
One thing to note though: you need snapper to manage your snapshots. So if you uninstall it, you obviously won’t even be able to delete snapshots (so you should do that before).
Yes, snapper is only a tool to manage (create, display and remove) snapshots. Snapshot functionality itself is completely separate, part of the BTRFS filesystem.
But, if you do so, you will also be removing a very useful capability, the ability to rollback everything in your root partition (which typically won’t include your personal files).
A far better solution is to allow snapper to work, but remove unnecessary snapshots, maually if necessary. It’s possible to retain a small inventory of snapshots using very little space.
Although you can use the YAST GUI tool to manage snapshots, I find it far easier to simply open a root console and
Display snapshots
snapper list
And delete
snapper delete* snapshot_numbers *
Earlier snapshots are supposed to take up more space, so you can prioritize removing smaller numbered snapshots. I recommend retaining the first snapshot, but that’s a personal decision.
It’s that simple to recover space while still retaining snapshot capability.
The alternative might be to disable automatic snapshots (see the MAN) and manually create snapshots, but it’s well known that this approach is far more risky ensuring a reliable snapshot exists when you need it.
IMO,
TSU
Thanks for all the replies. Probably, yes, I don’t really need btrfs either, but I think I’d need to reinstall to change that. I do see that snapper is potentially a very useful feature, but I’ve been using suse since 9.3 and never had an update cause a significant problem. I suppose I’ve had a little more trouble with leap than with previous releases, but still nothing serious.
… just to mention: unlike old Suse versions there is no backup-tool in yast anymore. this has switched to snapper.
so you are aware of not having any point to get back to if you disable snapper and don’t use any other backup-tools, which can save a lot of time if anything goes wrong with updating (the main point at least for me ;).