How To: GRUB-BTRFS Snapshot Booting on Arch Linux Systems

This quick tutorial shows every step for installing and configuring grub-btrfs on a vanilla Arch-based system, in this case EndeavourOS Atlantis Neo, just like Manjaro Q'onoS has! Fast and painless disaster recovery via the boot menu is nice to have on a rolling-release system. This is no substitute for a proper off-site backup solution!

[@seanpaul7069]

Sir you need to make more arch videos. Very well explained and love the quick to the point summary. Stay well.

[@stephenstechtalks5377]

I will try! :)

[@jimrakel418]

Thanks for your video. Very informative and to the point. I just saw your Mabox video and now I can download Mabox and setup Timeshift afterwards. I will be checking out your over videos also!

[@stephenstechtalks5377]

Excellent, thanks for watching!

[@gawainsmith8786]

very well explained and easy to follow. Nice one.

[@stephenstechtalks5377]

Thanks for watching!

[@unidadregionaltiktok6725]

Thanks, greetings from Peru

[@stephenstechtalks5377]

Glad you liked it!

[@abobader]

Great video Stephen, well done!

[@stephenstechtalks5377]

Thanks, glad you like it!

[@niro1960]

what do you mean with"proper offline backups" in your last sentence. offline backup with partitions and boot records included?

[@stephenstechtalks5377]

Snapshots can't protect against disk failure, but if you have a complete backup you can restore with a new disk (including partitions etc if you wish). :)

[@KennyTutors]

if someone has an error in this installation of grub-btrfs and the computer does not enter anymore because of some bug, try to use the timeshift going back, then do this installation again "sudo pacman grub-btrfs" ... install and as soon as you finish this installation correct it this error that I mentioned before restarting the pc, I did the grub before exiting giving "sudo grub-install" then yes you can restart without absolutely not an error, believe me I lost many hours because of this bug I had...

[@stephenstechtalks5377]

Thanks for sharing!

[@ericanker9049]

Thank you so much for showing this! I had to restore just now my self, but when it said " [Live] Before restoring.... " , it wasn't clear to me what was going on. Is it working, and is it going to tell me to reboot at some point? Am I supposed to reboot now? Didn't want to make a mistake. I think it could be a bit "clearer" about what was going on. (Please exuse my bad englis, I am not a native speaker).

[@stephenstechtalks5377]

Yes, after restoring it is recommended to reboot as soon as possible. Glad to hear that this helped!

[@davidwayne9982]

I never saw an advantage of btrfs because of this--- as I NEVER understood how to use it.. like so much other stuff.. THANKS>

[@stephenstechtalks5377]

Glad to hear you found this useful!

[@LorenzoBettini]

Concerning the problem that timeshift always saves snapshots in different directories, I found a workaround. Apparently, my comment with links to the workaround are always deleted right after posting them...

[@stephenstechtalks5377]

YT auto-deletes those apparently - did you try obfuscating them?

[@LorenzoBettini]

@@stephenstechtalks5377 do you mean I should obfuscate the links? How should I do that?

[@stephenstechtalks5377]

hxxp, (dot) etc should confuse the bot ;)

[@LorenzoBettini]

@@stephenstechtalks5377 Concerning the problem that timeshift saves snapshots in a different path every time I run timeshift, I found the workaround in issue 922 of the GitHub repo of Timeshift, and just in case I blogged about it (I'm afraid I find no way to provide the link, but the site is my name and surname and it's from Italy)

[@Bitcoinzero]

Yes i have the same problem, 12:00 without mount, because Timeshit aways change the path, by include the randon numeric folder in the midway

[@wlz3780]

Hello, i have a problem with snaphots. i follow your instruction from this video. now i have problem with newer kernel. and want to to go back. i have 4 snapshots. but i can't boot in to old snapshots. Whenever I try to boot into a snapshot it just says "WARNING" The root file system is not configured to be mounted read write! It may be fsck'd again later" and it stuck on emergency mode and can't do anything. but when i created new snapshot with timeshift on current kernel(6.0.2). i can be able to boot to the latest snapshot. i want to go back to my old snapshots with kernel 5..

[@stephenstechtalks5377]

Hi, snapshot booting/TS is merely a convenience and no substitute for data backups. That said, in your case *once you have backed up your important data,* I would suggest booting from an Arch Linux ISO, chroot into your installed system, and try installing and then booting the linux-lts kernel package, which should give you 5.15. If you can normally boot from 6.0 (which I believe you already stated) then install kernel-lts and use it until 6.0 stabilizes for your platform. I found this tutorial to be useful: itsfoss.com/switch-kernels-arch-linux/ Good luck!

[@LorenzoBettini]

Thanks for the great video! I'm not sure I understand why you have to restore a snapshot that you've just booted.

[@stephenstechtalks5377]

Booting it makes sure the snapshot works, "restoring it" is just flipping a BTRFS bit of sorts so it's the default on next boot and going forward. Keep in mind that TS is not a real backup system. :)

[@LorenzoBettini]

@@stephenstechtalks5377 Thanks for the answer! Yes, I know it's not a backup system :) So restoring the snapshot is crucial anyway, especially after booting the snapshot, isn't it?

[@stephenstechtalks5377]

Exactly, otherwise on the next boot you are back on the “broken” default snapshot. :)

[@LorenzoBettini]

@@stephenstechtalks5377 Ah OK! Thanks again! :)

[@stephenstechtalks5377]

Thanks for watching!

[@CesarPeron]

What is the purpose of the "/var/cache" and "/var/log" volumes? 🙂

[@stephenstechtalks5377]

Directories such as /var are generally subject to much churn, so when you take a snapshot of the root volume you want to make sure you don't include them. Other candidates for subvolumes would be /tmp, /usr/local, /opt, /var/lib/libvirt/images, etc. Creating separate subvolumes allows Timeshift snapshots to apply to only the volumes you want. The subvolumes you see me create in this video are the defaults you would get with the Calamares Installer. :)

[@CesarPeron]

@@stephenstechtalks5377 Thank u very much for your answers Stephen 👏

[@CesarPeron]

Recently, when I start the service, I've this message: Unit /usr/lib/systemd/system/grub-btrfs.path is added as a dependency to a non-existent unit \x2esnapshots.mount. Service status: --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- sudo systemctl status grub-btrfs.path ○ grub-btrfs.path - Monitors for new snapshots Loaded: loaded (/usr/lib/systemd/system/grub-btrfs.path; enabled; preset: disabled) Active: inactive (dead) Triggers: ● grub-btrfs.service ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

[@stephenstechtalks5377]

I've seen this before - in those instances it turned out to be harmless.