Fedora Linux 38 Upgrade: There and Back Again with BTRFS

No Timeshift, and no Snapper! Here's a tutorial on how to quickly take snapshots and perform rollbacks on any existing default Fedora installation. Includes a safe upgrade to 38 and then downgrade to 37. Also demonstrates broken system recovery using a live ISO.
Get Fedora Linux here:
fedoraproject....
Automate snapshots and perform real backups using this tool:
github.com/dig...

[@Innocentdarkness72]

Good weekend !!

[@stephenstechtalks5377]

Hopefully! :)

[@hernandoramos]

Thank you for your explanation. I'm just returning to Linux after years, precisely using Fedora and I'm learning about btrfs after a failed recovery with timeshift.

[@stephenstechtalks5377]

Great to hear, sorry about the failed recovery!

[@walter_lesaulnier]

I get lots of Windows users to switch to Linux. They are used to Macrium Reflect and Aomei backup. If I tried to teach them all this to do a backup, they'd laugh and think I was kidding. I usually help them setup Deja Dup for incremental backups and Rescuezilla for full images.

[@stephenstechtalks5377]

Excellent, thanks for sharing!

[@alternatuber6698]

For Tuxedo OS too please a tutuorial for BTRFS and grub menu snaphots and auto snapshots after updates.

[@stephenstechtalks5377]

Thanks for the suggestion!

[@jotwist138]

Thank you for sharing

[@stephenstechtalks5377]

Thanks for watching!

[@dr.guacanayabo]

Interesting. Thank you! I haven't try btrfs yet. Guess you can also revert back to 38?

[@stephenstechtalks5377]

Yes, and you can safely repeat until you think 38 is ready!

[@sandeepnaik6437]

You r The Best.

[@stephenstechtalks5377]

Awww thank you! :D

[@ffa.lbento]

Hi, Stephen Why not use 'btrfs subvolume set-default' instead of 'mv' the snapshots? Thanks, Best regards.

[@stephenstechtalks5377]

Good question - Fedora seems to be sensitive to the subvolume names when it comes to the grub booting. Have you tested?

[@ffa.lbento]

Hi Stephen, I have not tested it. My knowledge of btrfs, snapshots, snapper, timeshift, etc..., comes mainly from watching your videos and some light reading about the topic. The btrfs concept still eludes me. I will try to follow your guide but trying to do the 'set-default' property of btrfs. Thank you for your guides. Best regards.

[@ffa.lbento]

Hi Stephen, It is weird, trying follow your guide but setting the 'set-default' to an volumeid equal to the pre-update snapshot, 'dnf update --refresh' keeps saying the system is updated, although if I do the btrfs 'get-default' it says the id is 259 and the subvol is /. snapshot/root/pre-update. Even mounting, in fstab, / as subvol=/. snapshot/root/pre-update I get the same result from dnf update. As I previously said, btrfs still eludes me. Best regards.

[@stephenstechtalks5377]

Probably (I'm guessing) Fedora weirdness, thanks for testing!

[@jamesabernathy9744]

I interested in the mount -t btrfs -o subvolid=5 /dev/vda3 /mnt. Why not mount /dev/vda3 /mnt and then you see the root and home and root-38, etc.

[@stephenstechtalks5377]

So remove the -t btrfs -o subvolid=5 part?

[@jamesabernathy9744]

@@stephenstechtalks5377 for me yes remove it. I see the same directory structure with mount /dev/vda3 /mnt

[@stephenstechtalks5377]

Always looking to simplify - test it and see if things work! :)

[@owlmostdead9492]

Makes you think why Fedora even went with btrfs if they are not using snapshots which is pretty much the only reason most of us are interested in. openSUSE does a way better job in that regard

[@stephenstechtalks5377]

Indeed!

[@StaffyDoo]

Well, with the release of Silverblue and now Universal Blue, the latest inception of their take on immutable OS, Btrfs is becoming kind of irrelevant. I say “kind” because right now the usé I can see for snapshots is before making any change in /etc or /home - everything else is quite well covered by OSTree.

[@stephenstechtalks5377]

Silverblue is pretty awesome! :)

[@StaffyDoo]

@@stephenstechtalks5377 Your previous video showing how to manually install Silverblue was pretty awesome! 👏🚀

[@migueldellicarpini4437]

Hello, thanks for posting this video. Just wanted to ask why you used "mv" instead of "cp -r" to restore your root subvolume? Is there a particular reason? Or it's just faster this way? I'm curious. Thanks.

[@stephenstechtalks5377]

I typically prefer mv instead of cp when I need all the permissions/acls to be preserved. It's really just faster as well. Thanks for stopping by! :)

[@migueldellicarpini4437]

@@stephenstechtalks5377 oh that's a good point, I knew there was something I was missing, thanks!

[@stephenstechtalks5377]

Sure thing!

[@nickholden585]

It'd be helpful if you ran an ls everytime you made a mv command just to see what's going on for noobers like me

[@stephenstechtalks5377]

Good idea, thanks!

[@nickholden585]

@@stephenstechtalks5377 All good, this is the only video on youtube that has made btrfs rollback implementation easy to understand. No need for timeshift or snapper, just standard mount and mv commands . I can even set up a cron to run a snapshot or just manually perform snapshot command before an install. Very informative stuff.

[@jackelofnar]

Really disappointed in Fedora 38 it's a major backwards step especially with performance.

[@stephenstechtalks5377]

Eventually things will get sorted. :) Some will even suggest to wait until 39 before upgrading to 38...

[@TheChadXperience909]

Prefer dark theme. White background hurts my eyes.

[@stephenstechtalks5377]

Duly noted, same here. Did it because some were complaining. ;) Will stick with dark themes!

[@iAmTheWagon]

@@stephenstechtalks5377 ​​⁠​⁠ Can’t make everyone happy. You do you. Besides, I can’t take anyone seriously who says they PREFER to burn their eyes. 😆

[@stephenstechtalks5377]

Hey, waddaya gonna do? :)

[@daleholden]

Prefer Dark Theme my retinas are burnt to death

[@stephenstechtalks5377]

Yep, next time!