GenesiGenesiWiki
Configuration

Btrfs Snapshots

Using filesystem snapshots to roll back after a bad update.

If you installed Genesi on btrfs (see Filesystem), you can take snapshots of the system and roll back if an update goes wrong — a real safety net on a rolling release.

Snapshots only apply to btrfs. On ext4 there's no equivalent; back up important data before large upgrades instead.

The idea

A snapshot is a near-instant, space-efficient copy of a subvolume at a point in time. Take one before a big pacman -Syu, and if something breaks you can boot into (or restore) the previous state.

Tooling

Genesi is Arch/CachyOS-based, so the standard Arch tooling applies:

  • snapper — manage snapshots and automatic timelines.
  • grub-btrfs — list snapshots in the GRUB menu so you can boot one directly.

The Arch Wiki: Snapper and CachyOS's Btrfs documentation cover setup in depth. If a tool isn't already present:

sudo pacman -S snapper snap-pac grub-btrfs

On this page