I have mostly been using “ext4” for file system. I did try “btrfs” maybe 10 years ago, and it seemed to work.
I did three recent installs using “btrfs”. The first of those was for MicroOs, and snapper seems properly setup there.
The second was for Slowroll. And when I try
snapper list
it tells me that snapper is not configured.
The third was for Leap 15.6 Alpha, and snapper seems not configured there either.
What did I do wrong? Was there some step I was supposed to take during the install, to make sure that snapper was properly configured?
What is the size of root partition in each case?
I should have mentioned that.
For the MicroOs install, it was around 40G.
The other two installs were into logical volumes using an encrypted LVM. The root file systems are 60G, which I would have thought large enough for snapshots.
I am not sure what are the defaults in this case. YaST installation log would be interesting.
Problem solved (I think).
I went back to repeat the install. I only went as far as the partitioning, so nothing is changed on disk (yet).
Apparently this is related to using the expert partitioner. There’s a check box for “Enable snapshots”. I guess I failed to check that box.
I’ll probably go back and repeat my installs, and get it right this time.
Just to finish off this thread.
I have repeated the installs. Now both systems (slowroll and 15.6 alpha) are using snapshots.
Curiously, on the reinstall the checkbox for “enable snapshots” was already checked as the default.
With my original install of these, the box was not checked.
My best guess is that this is because my original install started with an “ext4” file system, but asked the expert partitioner to change that to “btrfs”. This time it started as “btrfs”, then reformatted to still “btrfs” for the reinstall.
Users unintentionally disabling snapper during install may try to enable it later:
Tip: Enabling Snapper in the installed system
If you disabled Snapper during the installation, you can enable it at any time later.