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    #1

    Timeshift for those of us not using BTRFS

    I've been using Timeshift for several months now and restoring snapshots has saved me from many minor and not so minor mistakes glitches. I have been playing with this Acer a bit and I installed the recommended Nvidia driver for the GPU but it has been quirky. While installing a different Nvidia driver this morning my system borked. Booted to a black screen with an unblinking, hyphen cursor. Keyboard was totally unresponsive. Now what do I do? I booted to a live USB, installed Timeshift to the live system, and used it to restore one of my snapshots. I was back in business in about ten minutes. My graphics are still quirky though, mostly mouse artifacts and typing being obscured if the mouse pointer is where the typing is taking place. Also some line "rippling" when scrolling.

    (This rippling happened from the get-go, the mouse artifacts first happened after awaking from suspension but today occurred after a reboot).

    I still have issues to figure out but Timeshift got me back in after a sticky situation.
    If you think Education is expensive, try ignorance.

    The difference between genius and stupidity is genius has limits.
    Tags: backup, btrfs
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    #2
    At the login screen try this:
    Ctl+Alt+F2
    Enter name and password
    Enter
    sudo systemctl restart sddm
    Enter password again
    At the fresh login screen enter the password again.

    Are the mouse artifacts on the desktop gone?
    "A nation that is afraid to let its people judge the truth and falsehood in an open market is a nation that is afraid of its people.”
    – John F. Kennedy, February 26, 1962.
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      #3
      Originally posted by GreyGeek View Post
      At the login screen try this:
      Ctl+Alt+F2
      Enter name and password
      Enter
      sudo systemctl restart sddm
      Enter password again
      At the fresh login screen enter the password again.

      Are the mouse artifacts on the desktop gone?
      Yes, they are gone.
      If you think Education is expensive, try ignorance.

      The difference between genius and stupidity is genius has limits.
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        #4
        Originally posted by SpecialEd View Post
        Yes, they are gone.
        I think the problem is a kernel regression. Either that or an incompatibility of my nvidia chip with certain drivers, or both.

        I am running Neon User Edition. When I installed Kubuntu 18.04 to play with it I used the NVidia 390 driver to drive my GT 650M 2ndary video chip. I did not have mouse artifacts that I have running Neon using nvidia with 378 and 384. I am currently running 384 and getting the mouse artifacts, which I eliminate by using "sudo systemctl restart sddm" at the login screen each time I boot up.
        The nvidia-390 is not yet in the Neon repository so I am waiting until Neon upgrades to 18.04. Then I will install the 390 driver and hopefully lose the artifacts.
        "A nation that is afraid to let its people judge the truth and falsehood in an open market is a nation that is afraid of its people.”
        – John F. Kennedy, February 26, 1962.
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          #5
          Thanks. It's a minor inconvenience but doable... for now.
          If you think Education is expensive, try ignorance.

          The difference between genius and stupidity is genius has limits.
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            #6
            Originally posted by SpecialEd View Post
            Thanks. It's a minor inconvenience but doable... for now.
            That's the way I look at it.
            "A nation that is afraid to let its people judge the truth and falsehood in an open market is a nation that is afraid of its people.”
            – John F. Kennedy, February 26, 1962.
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              #7
              Looked up Timeshift and found a brief video showing it in action.
              https://www.linux.org/threads/timesh...r-linux.15241/
              I was surprised to see that it also can do backups of Btrfs systems, but that video only demonstrated rsync.
              "A nation that is afraid to let its people judge the truth and falsehood in an open market is a nation that is afraid of its people.”
              – John F. Kennedy, February 26, 1962.
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                #8
                I spent the month of March in a hospital, then in a Nursing Home for rehab for April. The Nursing Home had great wifi, and printed instructions with the credentials, etc., pinned to the bulletin boards in each room. It was a snap to log on and I was getting 30Mbs down on a regular basis. But, after about three days it said I needed to log on again. When I tried I got an error "you are already logged on," with no way to logout, no matter what I tried. After a day or so of going even more stir crazy, I remembered Timeshift and voila, I was back in. So every three days or so, I had to take ten minutes to restore to the previous days snapshot and I was back in business. Made a big difference to my stay.
                If you think Education is expensive, try ignorance.

                The difference between genius and stupidity is genius has limits.
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                  #9
                  They were using Windows, yes?
                  "A nation that is afraid to let its people judge the truth and falsehood in an open market is a nation that is afraid of its people.”
                  – John F. Kennedy, February 26, 1962.
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                    #10
                    I decided to install the ppa for Timeshift and play with it to see how it works with Btrfs.

                    During the setup it has the option to click the Btrfs radio button. Then, one selects the partition where Btrfs is installed as the root file system, which on my system is /dev/sda1. Then, since snapshotting @ without @home is a waste of time, I selected both @ and @home as sources to snapshot.

                    Normally, when I "sudo -i" to root and do "vdir /mnt" I get nothing displayed. IF I then do "mount /dev/sda1 /mnt" I get
                    /mnt/@
                    /mnt/@home
                    /mnt/snapshots/@_20180522
                    /mnt/snapshots/@home_20180522
                    ... etc....

                    With Timeshift installed and and snapshots of both @ and @home taken the file structure looks like this, first without logging into root:
                    /mnt/timeshift
                    /mnt/timeshift/snapshots
                    /mnt/timeshift/btrfs (which is empty)
                    /mnt/timeshift/snapshots/... with several subdirectories representing monthly, weekly, daily, hourly, unscheduled and others.

                    As root you see (without mounting /dev/sda1 to /mnt):
                    /mnt/timeshift/@
                    //mnt/timeshift/@home
                    /mnt/timeshift/snapshots/@
                    /mnt/timeshift/snapshots/@home
                    /mnt/timeshift/snapshots/snapshots/(my six snapshots were here)
                    /mnt/timeshift/btrfs (which is empty)
                    /mnt/timeshift/snapshots/... with several additional subdirectories representing monthly, weekly, daily, hourly, unscheduled and others. The first snapshot I took was in unscheduled as 2018-05-24-HH-MM-SS but I forgot the actual time so I'm using HHMMSS to represent that.

                    So, Timeshift accessed the "ROOT_FS" and linked @ and @home to .../timeshift/@ and .../timeshift/@home without (apparently) mounting /dev/sda1. This is what I was afraid of. This makes @ and @home, and all snapshots, accessible to root without mounting /dev/sda1.

                    To test this hypothesis I used the btrfs delete command on /mnt/timeshift/snapshots/@
                    My next use of btrfs failed, as did ALL other attempts to use any command in /bin or /sbin. Root had been destroyed. I couldn't see if /mnt/timeshift/@ was still there because vdir wasn't available.

                    Putting snapshots beneath the ROOT_FS and not on par with it is the problem snapper and its buddies have.

                    I booted my persistent LiveUSB Neon User Edition and mounted /dev/sda1 to /mnt and used btrfs snapshot command to create @ from @_20180522, and @home from @home_20180522, and rebooted.
                    I was back.
                    Last edited by GreyGeek; May 25, 2018, 08:53 AM.
                    "A nation that is afraid to let its people judge the truth and falsehood in an open market is a nation that is afraid of its people.”
                    – John F. Kennedy, February 26, 1962.
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                      #11
                      I was using my laptop with Linux. What sort of routers, etc., the Home used, I have no idea.
                      If you think Education is expensive, try ignorance.

                      The difference between genius and stupidity is genius has limits.
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                        #12
                        Originally posted by SpecialEd View Post
                        I was using my laptop with Linux. What sort of routers, etc., the Home used, I have no idea.
                        "the Home" is /home and is created when @home is bound to /home in fstab. Home uses NetManager and thus its connections to the router, either with Eth0 or Wifi.
                        "A nation that is afraid to let its people judge the truth and falsehood in an open market is a nation that is afraid of its people.”
                        – John F. Kennedy, February 26, 1962.
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                          #13
                          Originally posted by GreyGeek View Post
                          "the Home" is /home and is created when @home is bound to /home in fstab. Home uses NetManager and thus its connections to the router, either with Eth0 or Wifi.
                          I was referring to the Nursing Home when I used the phrase "Home." You asked, "They were using Windows right?" I assumed you meant the Nursing Home.
                          If you think Education is expensive, try ignorance.

                          The difference between genius and stupidity is genius has limits.
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                            #14
                            Ah, you're right. I need to take some aspirin and champagne!
                            "A nation that is afraid to let its people judge the truth and falsehood in an open market is a nation that is afraid of its people.”
                            – John F. Kennedy, February 26, 1962.
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                              #15
                              Originally posted by GreyGeek View Post
                              Ah, you're right. I need to take some aspirin and champagne!
                              Breakfast of Champions!
                              If you think Education is expensive, try ignorance.

                              The difference between genius and stupidity is genius has limits.
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