Installation with btrfs subvolume and snapper

[croweland]

Hi,
I’ve just made a new installation of Manjaro Gnome with different subvolume, this is my fstab:

UUID=A62C-7128                            /boot/efi      vfat    umask=0077 0 2
UUID=32ce7456-d8ff-44d3-b018-c6b468e19c53 /              btrfs   subvol=/@,defaults,discard=async,ssd 0 0
UUID=32ce7456-d8ff-44d3-b018-c6b468e19c53 /home          btrfs   subvol=/@home,defaults,discard=async,ssd 0 0
UUID=32ce7456-d8ff-44d3-b018-c6b468e19c53 /root          btrfs   subvol=/@root,defaults,discard=async,ssd 0 0
UUID=32ce7456-d8ff-44d3-b018-c6b468e19c53 /srv           btrfs   subvol=/@srv,defaults,discard=async,ssd 0 0
UUID=32ce7456-d8ff-44d3-b018-c6b468e19c53 /var/cache     btrfs   subvol=/@cache,defaults,discard=async,ssd 0 0
UUID=32ce7456-d8ff-44d3-b018-c6b468e19c53 /var/log       btrfs   subvol=/@log,defaults,discard=async,ssd 0 0
UUID=32ce7456-d8ff-44d3-b018-c6b468e19c53 /var/tmp       btrfs   subvol=/@tmp,defaults,discard=async,ssd 0 0
UUID=32ce7456-d8ff-44d3-b018-c6b468e19c53 /var/lib/AccountsService btrfs   subvol=/@var@lib@AccountsService,defaults,discard=async,ssd 0 0
UUID=32ce7456-d8ff-44d3-b018-c6b468e19c53 /var/lib/gdm3  btrfs   subvol=/@var@lib@gdm3,defaults,discard=async,ssd 0 0
UUID=32ce7456-d8ff-44d3-b018-c6b468e19c53 /.snapshots    btrfs   subvol=/@snapshots,defaults,discard=async,ssd 0 0
tmpfs                                     /tmp           tmpfs   defaults,noatime,mode=1777 0 0

after I’ve installed following packages:

$ sudo pacman -S snapper
$ sudo pacman -S btrfs-assistant 
$ sudo pacman -S grub-btrfs 
$ sudo pacman -S snap-pac 

$ sudo umount /.snapshots
$ sudo rm -rf /.snapshots

Create a new root config …

$ sudo snapper -c root create-config /
$ sudo btrfs subvolume delete .snapshots
$ sudo mkdir /.snapshots
$ sudo mount -a
$ sudo chmod a+rx /.snapshots   
$ sudo chown :users /.snapshots

$ sudo systemctl enable --now snapper-timeline.timer
$ sudo systemctl enable --now snapper-cleanup.timer

sudo btrfs subvolume list /                                                                                         1 ✘  4s  
ID 256 gen 1019 top level 5 path @
ID 257 gen 1019 top level 5 path @home
ID 258 gen 569 top level 5 path @root
ID 259 gen 265 top level 5 path @srv
ID 260 gen 1003 top level 5 path @cache
ID 261 gen 1019 top level 5 path @log
ID 262 gen 1019 top level 5 path @tmp
ID 263 gen 785 top level 5 path @var@lib@AccountsService
ID 264 gen 10 top level 5 path @var@lib@gdm3
ID 265 gen 580 top level 5 path @snapshots
ID 266 gen 170 top level 256 path .snapshots
ID 304 gen 580 top level 265 path @snapshots/1/snapshot

I’ve made this installation on two my notebooks and works good, have you any other suggestion?

[andreas85]

@croweland

UUID=32ce7456-d8ff-44d3-b018-c6b468e19c53 /home          btrfs   subvol=/@home,defaults,discard=async,ssd 0 0
UUID=32ce7456-d8ff-44d3-b018-c6b468e19c53 /root          btrfs   subvol=/@root,defaults,discard=async,ssd 0 0
UUID=32ce7456-d8ff-44d3-b018-c6b468e19c53 /srv           btrfs   subvol=/@srv,defaults,discard=async,ssd 0 0

I suggest to make snapper-configs also for /home /root and eventually /srv

It is always nice to be able to rescue some files after they where overwritten by accident. With your separate subvolumes this is independent from system-rollback

You find good Information about Btrfs in the wiki

Btrfs

and in

[how to] Manual rollback with btrfs

Difficulty: ★★☆☆☆

Why roll back?

If Manjaro doesn’t want to boot into the graphical user interface. If an update managed to break an application you need …

Now btrfs pays off! With a good layout and snapper. Please read all of the instructions through to the end before you begin. Only a few steps are necessary for a rollback:

Boot a rescue Manjaro

Either from CD or from a live USB stick or somewhere else. Under no circumstances use the btrfs volume that you want to repair. If the nece…

[how to] rescue data from a damaged btrfs volume

Difficulty: ★★☆☆☆ You used btrfs. Now it’s paying off. There is an easy way out (I’ve already done this myself):

In most cases, when a btrfs volume breaks, it is possible to recover the data

This is because btrfs works with copy on write. This means that new changes are always appended at the end, so to speak. The previously existing data is not actually overwritten. (In reality this is a bit more complicated, but for us here this simplified view is sufficient). If the file system ge…

Unable to boot after running out of disk space during an update

Hello, I have a Dell XPS 13 9360 with Manjaro stable and the 5.15 kernel and Plasma. I am using btrfs. I decided to perform an update today, which also included some AUR packages. The AUR packages include ceph-llibs, deadbeef and some others. ceph in particular required a lot of time and resources to build and has failed a few times before. During the update, it seems that I ran out of disk space based on the messages in pamac, and the desktop environment seemed broken (the KDE tray stopped a…

Make extern backups of Snapshots

You may have a look at

GitHub - andreaskielkopf/BackSnap at compressed

This is Work in progress (but stable already)

[croweland]

Thank you Andreas

[Zesko]

@croweland

have you any other suggestion?

My suggestion:

ID 258 gen 932689 top level 5 path @cache           # --> /var/cache
ID 259 gen 932795 top level 5 path @log             # --> /var/log
ID 5387 gen 932646 top level 5 path @home           # --> /home 
ID 7336 gen 932341 top level 5 path @docker         # --> /var/lib/docker
ID 7501 gen 932789 top level 5 path @zesko-data     # --> /home/zesko/data - including important/private things. (They links to some directories. Documents, Pictures ...)
ID 14721 gen 932796 top level 5 path @zesko         # --> /home/zesko - including many configs.
ID 18070 gen 932791 top level 5 path @zesko-cache   # --> /home/zesko/.cache
ID 18170 gen 931551 top level 5 path @zesko-cloud   # --> Synced data from my cloud
ID 19140 gen 932663 top level 5 path @tmp           # --> /var/tmp
ID 20517 gen 932841 top level 5 path @              # --> /
# My snapshot-subvolumes:
ID 18172 gen 932780 top level 5 path snapshots/@root   
ID 18173 gen 932784 top level 5 path snapshots/@home
ID 18174 gen 932783 top level 5 path snapshots/@zesko
ID 18175 gen 932784 top level 5 path snapshots/@docker
ID 18177 gen 932783 top level 5 path snapshots/@zesko-cloud
ID 18179 gen 932784 top level 5 path snapshots/@zesko-data
ID 18180 gen 932783 top level 5 path snapshots/@zesko-cache

• Use a profile “DUP” of data in the Btrfs single partition for the reason self-healing is enabled. (Attention: Write speed is reduced by half, PCIE4 Nvme is much fast enough, but not for HDD)

• Move unnecessary data, such as Downloads, Steam/any games, multi media and VM images to an Ext4 partition. (No btrfs balance, scrub, and snapshot are required if you don’t care about unnecessary data as they exist everywhere on the internet ).
  Create symlinks of their directories in the Btrfs partition.
  You can use swapfile on Ext4 or not.

• Do not forget to make auto incremental backup to another disk.