I am installing OpenSUSe Tumbleweed as follows a 512MB BootEFI partition, a 144GB root (btrfs) partition, and an 18GB swap partition on a laptop with 16GB of ram. For he most part my ACTUAL user data will be stored on in SMB workgroup storage or NTFS partition as this is a dual boot machine with Windows 10. In a previous discussion I asked about snapshotting the user configuration data that under my limited knowledge would be housed in the /home directory in the root partition as the OS, apps and home data will occupy a single partition as suggested after I followed dated (less appropriate) installation instructions the last time I installed. I have seen configuration instructions to allow the user to create snapshots of his/her data (necessary or at least desirable in my mind when I make application configuration changes between OS/app updates). I have also seen instructions to link snapshots (take simultaneous snapshots) as I believe should be required when performing an OS/app update saving the resulting OS, app and configuration changes as a set. I will be reviewing the two sets of instructions but is there anything I should know about rolling back when what I should be rolling back to would be an OS/app snapshot and the latest configuration snapshot (possibly NOT the one simultaneous with the desired upgrade) taken on or after the selected OS/app snapshot and BEFORE the undesired OS/app (and configuration) snapshot.
I have installed pam_snapper in anticipation it would be needed. That appears unlikely since /home is in the root partition the general (and automatic because the root partition exceeds 16GB) snapper operation appears as though it will automatically include home. In addition a manual invocation of snapper, if possible, could make a configuration change without a corresponding OS/app update look exactly the same as an OS/app update meaning the rollback issue that concerns me is no different than rolling back an OS/app upgrade because they will in effect be the same thing in terms of simply choosing the appropriate snapshot.
Thanks especially if you can confirm the latter process (second paragraph) making this simpler than I thought it would be.
First a caution. I don’t use “btrfs” myself, so I’m probably not the best source of advice.
When “/home” is a subvolume, I think it is excluded from the usual snapshots. So if you roll back to an earlier snapshot, that won’t roll back your home directory.
Since you are going with a large root file system, you could perhaps create a subdirectory (but NOT a subvolume) – call it “home-backup”, and from time to time, backup your home config to there. You will then have snapshots for that backup. I would suggest that you backup “.config” and “.local” but do not backup “.cache”.
Maybe someone else will have some alternative suggestions.
I just re-read the section that lead me to believe /home was snapped when the OS/app changes occur. I missed a NOT in the statement, Snapshots of home directories will be separate from OS/app upgrades. Clearly I need to do more reading this is more complicated like I originally I expected.
As t the amount of USER data in my linux file system all that will be there will be that installed by the installer and log files created as a result of operating the system. The data file I create largely audio files from audacity will NOT be stored inside the linux file system they will be transferred immediately to a separate file server that contains my multimedia files.
I re-read the statement about /home being snapped and found a NOT I missed the first time. This process is every bit as complicated as I originally thought it was. I also appear to need to read about subvolumes.