this post was submitted on 03 Dec 2023
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    [–] [email protected] 40 points 11 months ago (1 children)

    Ok, I don’t get it. Can you explain it to me?

    [–] [email protected] 53 points 11 months ago (5 children)

    Timeshift works only with BTRFS subvolumes, thus, if you wanna have backups (snapshots), you have to have subvolumes and not install in the root of a BTRFS filesystem 😔.

    [–] [email protected] 19 points 11 months ago (2 children)

    That's only to backup/rollback the root though, right? If one's looking to backup - say - their home dir, they can just recreate the home as a subvolume without reinstalling the system. Or am I mistaken?

    [–] [email protected] 4 points 11 months ago (1 children)

    You can definitely do this with a few commands.

    [–] [email protected] 4 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (1 children)

    https://github.com/raldone01/config_fish/blob/main/tdcff_functions/btrfs_folder_to_subvol.fish

    Because I often forget to do it I wrote a little helper script.

    This file can be run or sourced and only depends on btrfs-progs and fish.

    [–] [email protected] 3 points 11 months ago

    Awww man, thanks ☺️.

    Good thing I love fiish, it's my default shell 😉.

    [–] [email protected] 2 points 11 months ago

    Yes, you can just set it to mount a, let's say @home, subvolume to /home and that's that, done.

    [–] [email protected] 7 points 11 months ago (1 children)

    If you want to you can just create a new subvolume, mount it temporarily and move all your files from root to there. Then you need to figure out how to make the new subvolume your root directory upon boot and you are done.

    [–] [email protected] 1 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago)

    I know how to do that, you set the subvolume as the default one, thus, when mounting, if no options are passed, it always mounts that subvolume as root.

    But, you have to disable that. Sure, I set it during install, cuz installers are stupid (if you tell it to install in /@, it will most probably moan), but disable it after first run (set the real root as the default subvol, i.e. mount point) and just add subvol mount options in fstab.

    It's just extra steps I have to do now 😒, that's why the rant.

    [–] [email protected] 6 points 11 months ago

    Thank you for sharing your knowledge.

    [–] [email protected] 2 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (1 children)

    Timeshift

    Oh okey so if I have Snapper already, nothing I need to worry about?

    [–] [email protected] 2 points 11 months ago (1 children)

    Snapper also uses btrfs subvolumes to create snapshots, so if you did create them during your installation process, nothing to worry about.

    I don't remember if there is a way to create them after the installation, neither if it's a tough process tho. I used to simply reinstall when I messed up with the subvolumes.

    [–] [email protected] 2 points 11 months ago (1 children)

    sudo btrfs subvolumes create /path/to/subvolume

    If you don't configure anything, root will already be a subvolume.

    If you wanna make a used directory a subvolume, you have to move the contents first, and move them back after creation.

    The only thing that takes time here is the move

    [–] [email protected] 1 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (2 children)

    Yeah, but Timeshift uses the Ubuntu style subvolume naming, @ for root, @home for /home, so you have to create them that way, otherwise, it won't work. It can work if you tell it to ignore home, but checks for @ as root on start up.

    [–] [email protected] 2 points 11 months ago (1 children)

    Wasn't aware of that, using snapper for my snapshotting needs.

    [–] [email protected] 1 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (1 children)

    I haven't tried it. Does it have like daily, weekly, monthly snapshots setup?

    [–] [email protected] 2 points 11 months ago

    You can have hourly, daily, weekly, monthly and yearly. I also use snap-pac to make snapshots before and after pacman transactions.

    Check out https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Snapper

    [–] [email protected] 2 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (1 children)

    Check out Btrfs Assistant. It does what Timeshift does with a similar UI but works with any subvolume layout.

    [–] [email protected] 1 points 11 months ago

    Hm, will check it out, thanks for the suggestion 😉.

    [–] [email protected] 2 points 11 months ago (1 children)

    Immutable distros rejoice 😎

    [–] [email protected] 1 points 11 months ago

    Take way too much space... I dual boot on the same drive 🤷.