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Danielsan

Member

Registered: 2020-07-14

Posts: 178  

[IDEAS] Rollback system in Devuan

Hi Folks,

I am doing my test for my perfect setup, one thing I would like to do, due the nature of Devuan, is implementing a rollback system since I would like to use Devuan as rolling distro...

I have a bunch of ideas, and I would like to know your comments since Devuan community has a very high level tech skills, here my ideas:

LVM snapshots:

• Pros: easy to use.

• Cons: snapshots tend to be larger during the time.

BTRFS snapshots + snapper

• Pros: filesystem designed for this scope.

• Cons: even if BTRFS is around for a very long some issues aren't solved completely.

BTRFS snapshots

• Pros: filesystem designed for this scope.

• Cons: even if BTRFS is around for a very long some issues aren't solved completely.

Rsync, Rsnapshot & Timeshift

• Pros: easy to use.

• Cons: if you are unable to boot you can't restore your system.

Timeshift/Rsnapshot  + server installation

• Pros: easy to do.

• Cons: You have to designate at least 4GB of disk space.

Timeshift/Rsnapshot + persistent ISO

• Pros: funny to do.

• Cons: will take time to make it working properly.

I would like to explain the latter option, that is something I took inspiration from POP!_Os that it had probably taken inspiration from MacOS, but you may reserved a FAT32 partition where put an ISO image to run in case you need to revert the main system to a previous state; 2GB should be fine and you don't need to do a normal installation but you need to modify grub to make your computer able to run from a that ISO.

What do you think might be the best option in your opinion?

Thanks in advance,

Daniel

Last edited by Danielsan (2020-07-22 15:31:02)

HevyDevy

Member

Registered: 2019-09-06

Posts: 358  

Re: [IDEAS] Rollback system in Devuan

RefractaSnapshot

Danielsan

Member

Registered: 2020-07-14

Posts: 178  

Re: [IDEAS] Rollback system in Devuan

Epic fail...

I must dig into it... But I found the Refract Installer quite convoluted I hope this will be more user friendly.

Last edited by Danielsan (2020-07-22 15:35:51)

HevyDevy

Member

Registered: 2019-09-06

Posts: 358  

Re: [IDEAS] Rollback system in Devuan

Epic fail...

I must dig into it... But I found the Refract Installer quite convoluted I hope this will be more user friendly.

Depends on the user, im happy with using it for recovery snapshots. What i do is take a snapshot once every few days on my main machine and transfer the iso to an encrypted portable drive. It is a very manual process but gives me something to do.

Magnus

Member

From: Stockholm, Sweden

Registered: 2020-03-14

Posts: 54  

Website

Re: [IDEAS] Rollback system in Devuan

I use

cp -a

to make a clone of the whole system.

larsH

Member

Registered: 2020-05-05

Posts: 184  

Re: [IDEAS] Rollback system in Devuan

Hi

Use btrfs. As long you do what the debian wiki suggest you should be very safe https://wiki.debian.org/Btrfs . Snapshots takes very little space (and time). I hav been using btrfs for a long time. I have used compression but today I am using it without. It makes it a lot faster and avoids trouble.

Have a nice day
Lars H

Danielsan

Member

Registered: 2020-07-14

Posts: 178  

Re: [IDEAS] Rollback system in Devuan

Hi

Use btrfs. As long you do what the debian wiki suggest you should be very safe https://wiki.debian.org/Btrfs . Snapshots takes very little space (and time). I hav been using btrfs for a long time. I have used compression but today I am using it without. It makes it a lot faster and avoids trouble.

Have a nice day
Lars H

Thanks for feedback... However the more I read about BTRFS the more I feel I had better to stay away from it... I don't think is a wise choice on rolling distro. Tumbleweed is rolling but it is stuck to a specific kernel that receives backport patches from the newer...

Head_on_a_Stick

Member

From: London

Registered: 2019-03-24

Posts: 3,125  

Website

Re: [IDEAS] Rollback system in Devuan

I would like to use Devuan as rolling distro

If you want to use a rolling release distribution then install a rolling release distribution. Devuan is not a rolling release distribution — chimera & ceres are development branches, the only release is the stable branch.

But if you want to use the development branches then I would recommend btrfs (or zfs if you don't mind the dirty licence and fiddly installation) combined with full system backups to a different filesystem (I use xfs for that) just in case btrfs breaks.

FWIW I've been using btrfs on the family laptop for several years with no problems at all. It has a completely drained battery and has suffered literally hundreds of hard resets with absolutely no filesystem corruption whatsoever.

Last edited by Head_on_a_Stick (2020-07-22 20:14:01)

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Brianna Ghey — Rest In Power

Danielsan

Member

Registered: 2020-07-14

Posts: 178  

Re: [IDEAS] Rollback system in Devuan

I would like to use Devuan as rolling distro

If you want to use a rolling release distribution then install a rolling release distribution. Devuan is not a rolling release distribution — chimera & ceres are development branches, the only release is the stable branch.

But if you want to use the development branches then I would recommend btrfs (or zfs if you don't mind the dirty licence and fiddly installation) combined with full system backups to a different filesystem (I use xfs for that) just in case btrfs breaks.

FWIW I've been using btrfs on the family laptop for several years with no problems at all. It has a completely drained battery and has suffered literally hundreds of hard resets with absolutely no filesystem corruption whatsoever.

Thanks for all these information, but I have been using Debian testing as a rolling distro so far, and I feel comfortable with it, you probably said me the same on the Debian forum... :-p