This was an emergency, so I did it by hand.
But usually it’s quite easy (for me) because I wrote a program for it. This saves ALL snapshots of a system to an external disk. The btrfs commands are generated automatically, and the btrfs option is also used to transfer the snapshot differentially.
Ok, fresh install. Opened Dolphin via Timeshift (ROOT) and F4 terminal, F3 dual pane and navigated to the snapshot sent out to the old Western Digital (W2) disk.
Seeing nice progress around 60~80MiB/s (though no eta… but knightrider style progress shuttle).
I’m stoked about sending snapshots out, my son @James2talk (now 12) just installed on his slimline laptop, so he’ll need to get a drive for external backups…
Now I see the folder of a fresh snapshot next to this @ snapshot.
However, Timeshift only sees the folder.
What’s the next step - to mount/restore this snapshot?
I see it listed:
[SteelLegend snapshots]# btrfs subvolume list /
ID 256 gen 169 top level 5 path @
ID 257 gen 169 top level 5 path @home
ID 258 gen 165 top level 5 path @cache
ID 259 gen 169 top level 5 path @log
ID 260 gen 72 top level 5 path @swap
ID 262 gen 95 top level 5 path timeshift-btrfs/snapshots/2024-01-21_00-23-05/@
ID 264 gen 160 top level 5 path timeshift-btrfs/snapshots/@
So I assume we won’t use Timeshift to restore it…
Now I’m in the Timeshift folder, and I made the @ read only.
So I’m guessing btrfs restore @/ but I can’t figure the <destination> 'cos it’s not simply / is it?
Apart from being read-only, is there any other actual difference with the snapshots?
Once again, slightly confused - I see the snapshot on the mounted backup BTRFS volume:
btrfs send --compressed-data /mnt/W2/SnapshotsBTRFS/2/@ | pv -pTteabfW -i 0.2 | btrfs receive /run/media/manjaro/9e691e81-7bf8-42e2-a190-bf964d6f4549/snapshotsys
At subvol /mnt/W2/SnapshotsBTRFS/2/@
At subvol @
So my understanding is that now, the snapshot is on the new installed SSD at /snapshotsys/@
Rebooting from the SSD now:
btrfs subvolume list /
ID 256 gen 285 top level 5 path @
ID 257 gen 285 top level 5 path @home
ID 258 gen 271 top level 5 path @cache
ID 259 gen 285 top level 5 path @log
ID 260 gen 72 top level 5 path @swap
ID 262 gen 95 top level 5 path timeshift-btrfs/snapshots/2024-01-21_00-23-05/@
ID 264 gen 160 top level 5 path timeshift-btrfs/snapshots/@
ID 265 gen 254 top level 256 path snapshotsys/@
> btrfs subvolume get-default /
ID 256 gen 284 top level 5 path @
ID 256 gen 230 top level 5 path @
ID 257 gen 230 top level 5 path @home
ID 258 gen 209 top level 5 path @cache
ID 259 gen 230 top level 5 path @log
ID 260 gen 53 top level 5 path @swap
ID 261 gen 35 top level 5 path timeshift-btrfs/snapshots/2024-01-21_14-00-05/@
ID 262 gen 158 top level 5 path timeshift-btrfs/snapshots/2024-01-21_15-00-02/@
ID 263 gen 160 top level 5 path timeshift-btrfs/snapshots/2024-01-21_15-00-02/@home
ID 264 gen 222 top level 256 path mnt/sys-back/@
ID 265 gen 207 top level 5 path timeshift-btrfs/snapshots/2024-01-21_15-20-33/@
ID 266 gen 209 top level 5 path timeshift-btrfs/snapshots/2024-01-21_15-20-33/@home
Don’t forget to adjust UUID in your old fstab and /etc/default/grub after re-installation and recovery, then you need to rebuild initramfs (mkinitcpio -P) and update the bootloader of your choice (For example: update-grub for Grub)