I wiped my old EXT4 Manjaro installation and did a fresh install of Manjaro 25 Gnome Edition with the 6.14 kernel and BTRFS file system.
I used all of the installation defaults for a BTRFS setup which appears to have given me several subvolumes (@, @home, @cache and @log. I did a fair amount of reading before the installation on BTRFS and I’m still trying to wrap my old noodle around it. I was surprised that the “Manjaro Hello” did not provide a dedicated section (apart from the Wiki, which I read) on the new BTRFS file system and how to setup and make backups with Snapper. I also couldn’t find any new / current 2025 Tutorials on this in the forum Tutorial section.
In any event, I have downloaded and installed BTRFS-ASSISTANT and the SNAPPER-GUI.
On my 4k monitor, “BTRFS-Assistant” does not accept my 150% scaling setting and thus the text is microscopically small making it difficult for these old eyes to see. There is no way I can find to increase the font size within this app. The Snapper-GUI is better.
Finally to my question: I don’t understand how to create the correct Snapper snapshots: i.e. the proper settings and what sub-volumes I’m supposed to take snapshots of. When I used “Timeshift” on EXT4 is was easy. I know it could use “Timeshift” but I’m constantly reading that “Snapper” is the better method.
The subvolumes are layed out that way because it makes it easy to exclude things you don’t need or want snapshots of.
You’d likely want @home and @ - but exclude @cache and @log as they are not really need to be restored in case of need / to have a functional system.
Thanks for the suggestion, I’ve already read through the Arch “Snapper” wiki Arch Snapper. I’m still not clear what information I’m supposed to put into the “Snapper GUI” to create new and separate snapshot configurations for @root and @home under Manjaro. I don’t want to enter the wrong information and ruin a days worth of tedious setup I’ve already done. I assume each sub-volume needs a separate snapshot configuration.
I only started using btrfs recently, so this is based on limited experience. The dialog you show is for creating a snapshot for an existing config, so you’ll need to create a config first. Since you can’t use btrfs-assistant I guess you should look at creating the config from the command line as described in the wiki you mention; you’ll use a command like
You’ll replace the word config with a config name (.e.g. root or home), for instance
snapper -c root create-config /
will create a config file called root for the root partition, which would then be available in the Configuration combobox.
Once you create the config, I’d suggest looking at the created file in /etc/snapper/configs (it will have the name you used (e.g. root or home)) to get an idea of what can be configured.
And then look at what the wiki says about making automatic snapshots.
sudo cat /etc/snapper/configs/root
# subvolume to snapshot
SUBVOLUME="/"
# filesystem type
FSTYPE="btrfs"
# btrfs qgroup for space aware cleanup algorithms
QGROUP=""
# fraction of the filesystems space the snapshots may use
SPACE_LIMIT="0.5"
# users and groups allowed to work with config
ALLOW_USERS="andreas andrea fabian"
ALLOW_GROUPS=""
# sync users and groups from ALLOW_USERS and ALLOW_GROUPS to .snapshots
# directory
SYNC_ACL="no"
# start comparing pre- and post-snapshot in background after creating
# post-snapshot
BACKGROUND_COMPARISON="yes"
# run daily number cleanup
NUMBER_CLEANUP="yes"
# limit for number cleanup
NUMBER_MIN_AGE="1800"
NUMBER_LIMIT="40"
NUMBER_LIMIT_IMPORTANT="10"
# create hourly snapshots
TIMELINE_CREATE="yes"
# cleanup hourly snapshots after some time
TIMELINE_CLEANUP="yes"
# limits for timeline cleanup
TIMELINE_MIN_AGE="1800"
TIMELINE_LIMIT_HOURLY="10"
TIMELINE_LIMIT_DAILY="10"
TIMELINE_LIMIT_WEEKLY="8"
TIMELINE_LIMIT_MONTHLY="3"
TIMELINE_LIMIT_YEARLY="0"
# cleanup empty pre-post-pairs
EMPTY_PRE_POST_CLEANUP="yes"
# limits for empty pre-post-pair cleanup
EMPTY_PRE_POST_MIN_AGE="1800"
Don´t ever disable cleanup, or you will get out of space !
You don’t need the Snapper GUI if you have installed Btrfs Assistant (and optional btrfsmaintance). Everything that is required for the creation of the snapshots is regulated there (also manually created snapshots).
Edit: Correction of the totally inadequate translation with the Firefx disaster.
I have noticed that, too.
It’s good enough to get the gist of it - for a decent translation I use one or two more clicks and go to translate.google.com (not a sponsor, not sponsored by it )
After reading everyone’s helpful recommendations, I decided to tough my way through using BTRFS Assistant - my eyes about 10" from the screen! I think I successfully created 2 snapshot configs called “Root” and “Home” about an hour apart ( I went very very slowly because of the microscopic text size on my monitor).
If this is going to be the new default filesystem for Manjaro, I hope the developers fix “BTRF Assistant”: it needs to honor each users display size settings and fonts sizes; it also needs buttons for minimize, maximize and close (there are none at present and you need to right click on the menu bar to select close). More Manjaro specific documentation is also needed to explain how to use BTRFS. Right now I’m wondering whether I can still use Clonezilla to make an image backup of my entire nvme drive containing Manjaro 25 XFCE, as well as what current utilities in Manjaro can still be used and which ones should be avoided. I imagine a utility like “Disks” is a NO NO for a BTRFS formatted drive.
Again, thank you all for the helpful recommendations. I’m sure to have more questions in the near future.
The files in your home changes far to often and should never part of a btrfs snapshot.
Use a dedicated backup application for your home.
Does this mean that I should not have created a snapshot config for my @home folder, but, rather used something like Pika Backup or luckybackup instead? If the answer to my question is YES, how do I delete the @home snapshot config? Thanks.
I’m not clear about this. Are you saying that “BTRFS Assistant” is designed for some other type of DE and that GNOME will not be able to display the window buttons under any circumstances? This seems very odd.
I think that is up to you - snapshots of home might consume a lot of space if files change frequently, but I’m not aware of a technical reason not to have them. I have lots of disk space and have snapshots enabled for home. I’ve not noticed any problems.
Snapshots do not, however, replace backups. Since they are on the same device (so a device failure loses everything) you’ll want a backup strategy whether or not you use snapshots.
Gnome is using something called client side decorations (CSD).
Qt applications does not always work well in Gnome’s GTK environment unless you do some extra configuration.
That is not a flaw of Qt or the developer of btrfs assistant. That is just how Gnome is.
GTK4 based apps does not always display well in the Plasma environment, but at least the Plasma environment is not as strict as Gnome so it is a bit easier.
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