snapshots for non-lvm systems

[wizard10000]

Learned yesterday that device-mapper will take a snapshot of and merge a snapshot to any block device - I thought this was strictly an LVM thing when what really happens is LVM leverages device-mapper to perform this function.

https://www.kernel.org/doc/Documenta...r/snapshot.txt

Gonna play with this some in ext4 as it may dramatically alter my backup strategy

[oshunluvr]

Come to the BTRFS side Luke. Feel the power...

[GreyGeek]

Power indeed, and no clorimedians are required!


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[wizard10000]

Meh - would prefer not to have another layer between me and data. Doing it in ext4 would get me all excited

[GreyGeek]

“Another layer”?
Do you think that Btrfs rides on top of EXT4 and depends on it? It doesn’t.
You can choose it as your root (bootable) OS just the way you choose EXT4. And, I can tell you that backing up, expanding, contracting and recovery are MUCH easier with Btrfs than with EXT4.

For me, the ease of backing up and restoring my installation blows every other FS out of the ball park.
Or, say that you inadvertently deleted a file or even a directory. No problem, browse to your snapshot and navigate to that file or directory. Drag and drop it to where it used to be. Done.


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[oshunluvr]

Meh - would prefer not to have another layer between me and data. Doing it in ext4 would get me all excited

Umm, yeah you've got that backwards. BTRFS would replace partitioning, EXT4, LVM, and device-mapper while providing snapshot and backup capability built-in. It would reduce the layers, not increase them and is exponentially easier to use than EXT4 alone, much less with all the added complexity of LVM, mdadm RAID, device-mapper management, and/or old-school cumbersome and sloooowwww backups and restore.

But each to his own. You keep your 4-5 layers and I'll stick to my one.