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Backups with Timeshift

Installation

WARNING: Timeshift's btrfs mode is limited to an "Ubuntu-style" subvolume layout, i.e. only @ and @home subvolumes can be present.

Install Timeshift from the AUR:

yay -S timeshift

Configuration

Cron

Timeshift relies on cronjobs to periodically create snapshots. Start the cron daemon via:

sudo systemctl enable --now cronie

Additionally, create an empty crontab file:

ATTENTION: If the EDITOR environment variable is not set crontab automatically calls vi to edit files. Either export it or supply it temporarily when calling crontab, e.g. EDITOR=nano crontab -e to use nano instead of vi.

sudo crontab -e

Timeshift first time launch wizard

ATTENTION: The GUI wizard is buggy around btrfs and lvm setups. It will say no btrfs partitions were detected but lets you continue regardless if you select the device with the root btrfs partition.

Open Timeshift via the desktop launcher and complete the configuration wizard.

Automatic snapshots on system changes

In addition to Timeshift's periodic spanshots, timeshift-autosnap provides a pacman hook to create a manual snapshot every time packages are installed, upgraded or removed. It works with either rsync or btrfs mode of Timeshift.

Install timeshift-autosnap from the AUR:

TIP: When using GRUB as your bootloader consider also installing grub-btrfs to include btrfs snapshots in GRUB boot options.

yay -S timeshift-autosnap

By default timeshift-autosnap only keeps 3 snapshots and deletes older ones. To change this, edit /etc/timeshift-autosnap.conf and either set deleteSnapshots to false or increase the number of maxSnapshots, for example:

skipAutosnap=false
deleteSnapshots=true
maxSnapshots=7
updateGrub=true
snapshotDescription={timeshift-autosnap} {created before upgrade}

Prevent excessive snapshotting when using yay

By default, when installing or updating multiple packages from the AUR, yay first builds a package and immediately calls pacman to install it, before building and installing the next one on its list. This also means that the timeshift-autosnap hook is triggered for each individual AUR package built by yay, including dependencies also installed from the AUR.

This can have undesireable side-effects:

  • yay will reach the maxSnapshots limit very quickly when installing multiple packages from the AUR, causing timeshift-autosnap to delete snapshots you may have wanted to keep
  • if deleteSnapshots is set to false the available space on the btrfs partition may quickly be exhausted with an absurd amount of snapshots taken

To prevent this it is recommended to configure yay to:

  1. not remove make dependencies after successfully built packages are installed
  2. build all AUR packages first, install them all later
  3. install AUR packages together with regular repo packages

By calling yay with the --save parameter, any options passed to it will be saved in a configuration file, e.g.:

yay --noremovemake --batchinstall --combinedupgrade --save

Next time you use yay to install, upgrade or remove packages it will read the generated config file at ~/.config/yay/config.json and apply the options automatically without having to specify them during use.

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