Should I include /.snapshots directory (snapper snapshots) in backups?

a year ago by Cricket [he/him] to c/opensuse

I am setting up a back up of my OpenSUSE Leap server and am unsure whether to include the /.snapshots directory, which contain the snapper system snapshots. Any thoughts or links? I tried a web search about this, but didn't find anything that seemed to provide an answer.

cmhe 4 points a year ago

I wouldn't. They contain duplicated data... I would rather create differential backups on every snapper event and push those to a remote, for instance with Borg.

http://snapper.io/manpages/snapper.html#plugins

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Cricket 1 point a year ago

Thanks! So that means that I should keep a back up of the snapshots in some way or another then. I'm using restic for backups. I'll try to think of how I would do this. Thanks again.

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cmhe 4 points a year ago

Well... You can either handle the backups completely separate from snapper and those snapshots, or you just create a differential using only the just created snapshot afterwards.

I wouldn't try to backup all snapshots everytime, since that is just needless duplication. Snapshots are more of a convenices it something is accidentally deleted or you want to revert without restoring from the backups.

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Cricket 1 point a year ago

Thanks again. On further consideration I may be OK since restic only backs up changed data and also deduplicates it.

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