RFC: Btrfs snapshots feature for F13

[Casey Dahlin]

On 11/17/2009 03:56 PM, Chris Ball wrote:
> Hi,
> 
>    > I'm not sure how much of this can/should be automated.
> 
> Sorry, not quite following -- what is the caution around automatically
> creating a new snapshot before each yum transaction?  Why shouldn't it
> be automated?
> 

I somewhat read the initial suggestion as trying to implement transactional behavior via snapshot. Just creating one shouldn't hurt.

>    > This also keeps us out of the dangerous territory that comes with
>    > using non-ubiquitous FS features (your boot is on ext3, your root
>    > is on btrfs, your etc is on xfs and your usr is on jfs. What do
>    > you snapshot and how?)
> 
> This feature would snapshot the btrfs / only, but that doesn't matter,
> because snapshots don't do anything until the user chooses to initiate
> a rollback.  The user who chooses a btrfs / and a jfs /usr knows what
> happens when they rollback only the btrfs filesystem.  (And we can
> print a warning to make sure of that if we decide it's necessary.)
> 

We've now created a useless and slightly dangerous object though. Regardless of the competence of the user who's problem that is, better to avoid it if we can.

> Thanks,
> 
> - Chris.

--CJD