On 2016-11-02 07:18, Ahmed Badr wrote:
On Wed, Nov 2, 2016 at 8:31 AM, Alex Powell
<alexj.powellalt@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Taking a step back as well- there is also the possibility that you
might not need snapshots
I do need it for my root partition at least in the initial phase of
setting things up and trying out different software. Once the system
is stable, I might might not need it that much.
So, it's worth mentioning that there are about 4 practical uses for
snapshots:
1. File versioning/history. Essentially, usage like Windows File
History (which uses snapshots and COW on NTFS) or Apples Time Machine.
This is generally useful to a traditional home user, but in many cases,
if you actually _need_ file versioning, your better off using a VCS like
Git or Mercurial.
2. Atomic installs and updates. This is essentially what
apt-btrfs-snapshot and the snapper integration in Zypper do, and there
are other cases of software that do this. This is generally the most
useful to traditional end-users.
3. On-system point-in-time copies of specific things. This is one of
the things that LVM snapshots are traditionally used for, and isn't
often useful to end users, but can be for some middle-ware. In essence,
this is the same as 2, just for things other than software.
4. Getting a stable view of a live filesystem. This is important for
backup software and similar tools. In essence, by taking a snapshot of
the filesystem to be backed up, you can guarantee that nothing will
change as your archiving it. I don't know of any backup software that
does this, but the custom backup scripts I use for my personal systems
do, and we're looking at setting up our custom backup system where I
work to do so also.
2, 3, and 4 are generally always useful. For 2, you just need
apt-btrfs-snapshot. For 3 just manually creating snapshots is perfectly
fine, and for 4 manual creation or automatic through your regular backup
software works. If you don't need them for the first use, I'd suggest
just uninstalling snapper, as that's about all it's used for on Ubuntu.
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