Re: [tlug] Help with Mint

["Stephen J. Turnbull" <stephen@example.com>]

Christian Horn writes:
 > > On Fri, Jun 26, 2015 at 5:20 PM, Thomas Blasejewicz <nyuwa@example.com> wrote:

[Other commenters' contributions elided]

 > > > I am NOT a Windows fan (should be clear by now). BUT, Windows has this
 > > > little trick, where you can return the machine to a point in time,
 > > > you know it was working properly.
 > > >
 > > > Does Linux has this kind of trick?
 > > > If so, I would love to learn it.

 > LVM snapshots (with a filesystem ontop) can be used to take a snap-
 > shot which can later either be removed (if the intended
 > change/upgrade worked well) or can be used to roll the system back
 > to the state where the snapshot was taken.

I believe that btrfs and ZFS both implement snapshotting, but they're
not easy choices to recommend to Thomas.  Btrfs is still very "beta"
in many ways, although it's starting to get traction in production
according to some things I've see on the 'net.  I don't know if the
problems reported (replication etc) would affect Thomas.  ZFS requires
building your own kernel because of licensing issues I believe.

Maybe there are other standard Linux FSes he could use that provide
snapshotting natively?

LVM seems like overkill and adds administrative burden just to get
snapshotting.

 > This is a bit complicated though because /boot has still to live on
 > a partition (not LVM volume), and has to be taken care of.

I don't think Thomas will be messing with /boot, and he hasn't
mentioned ever having a system that can't boot to the point where init
starts, so this probably isn't a problem for him.

Steve