btrfs timeshift questions on latest KDE neon

[jfabernathy]

I took the coward's way out and just complete uninstalled timeshift and deleted all it's snapshots.

Then I did what I usually do when playing with an archlinux distro like Endeavour OS, I installed snapper and btrfs-assistant. I also installed grub-btrfs. Snapper on *buntu distros does automatic pre/post apt snapshots so if an apt install screws up something you can just restore using btrfs-assistant. I also like the easy way btrfs-assistant configures snapper. There is a script you can use to make the pre/post APT descriptions more complete and I always do that.
https://gist.github.com/imthenachoma...2a3b2d83263118

The only down side is on an *buntu Linux I can't boot the read-only snapshot like I can on EOS. They use dracut instead of mkinitcpio and enable an overlayfs so you can test out the bootable snapshot without modifying anything.

The workaround is to have a bootable USB with btrfs-assistant and snapper installed so you can recover from a bad crash.

[jfabernathy]

To test :
sudo notify-send -t 10000 -u low -i gtk-dialog-info 'TimeShift BTRFS Snapshot saved successfully (0s)' -h string:desktop-entry:timeshift-gtk

I had to install libnotify-bin and after that the command did stall.

[jfabernathy]

Thanks, John. What happens when you use the Timeshift GUI to create a backup is you first click on the create button in Timeshift's toolbar. It pops up a status window with a progress line and with a close button at the bottom. However, with BTRFS on all other distros, that window closes on its own in under a second. Comparing that to timshift run from the command line you see the snapshot is actually created in 1 second and you wait the minute for the close of the window or the finish of the cli command.

It makes since that it's an interaction between timeshift and the KDE DE.

[jlittle]

I'm not sure it's worth it, but you could try the solution given by https://stackoverflow.com/questions/...y-send-as-root.

If I run

sudo -u john DBUS_SESSION_BUS_ADDRESS=$DBUS_SESSION_BUS_ADDRESS notify-send -t 10000 -u low -i gtk-dialog-info 'TimeShift BTRFS Snapshot saved successfully (0s)' -h string:desktop-entry:timeshift-gtk

the notify works. For the solution to work, you'd have to use the script in the solution (not the command above), and put it ahead of /usr/bin/notify-send in the path that sudo uses, maybe /usr/local/bin. If you do so I would change "notify-send" in the script to "/usr/bin/notify-send" to stop the script trying to run itself.

That this works, and the gtk references, suggests that timeshift sometimes trips up with plasma; perhaps some Gnome/plasma difference in interpretation of the desktop standard.

[jlittle]

Did you try running the notify-send? If I run it as root it stalls as your report:

sudo notify-send -t 10000 -u low -i gtk-dialog-info 'TimeShift BTRFS Snapshot saved successfully (0s)' -h string:desktop-entry:timeshift-gtk
[sudo] password for john:
Error calling StartServiceByName for org.freedesktop.Notifications: Timeout was reached​

(Note the added quotes.) Without sudo it runs fine. I do not have timeshift.

[jfabernathy]

My next test was to install kodi media player from flatpak and then take a snapshot. it was only 1 second. So seems to be related to mythfrontend. However, I install that app on all my system under all Linux distros.

[jfabernathy]

So after I install mythtv-frontend from the ppa:mythbuntu/34 my timeshift snapshot took 60 seconds. I restored to the snapshot before this and I'm back to 1 sec for a snapshot. So what's going on??

[jfabernathy]

So I did a fresh install of Neon 6.2 with 2 partitions, efi, and root (btrfs). No changes to the fstab so no compression or noatime. I install timeshift from the ppa and the initial snapshot was 1 second.

I then install libreoffice from flatpak. Took snapshot and it only took 1 second. So good so far.

[jfabernathy]

I add the ppa for timeshift to the Neon install, but 24.06.3 still have the 60 sec delay.

[jfabernathy]

Might be worth a test with the ppa version. I still have the neo build. I keep a stack of nvme ssd's around and swap them depending on what I'm testing. My Nucbox G3 has a snap off lid for access to the nvme and ram. I also don't have any issues with timeshift on my LMDE 6 system, so I need to check what version of timeshift it's using.

From a btrfs snapshot perspective I really prefer Endeavor OS (Archlinux) with snapper, snap-pac, grub-btrfs, and btrfs-assistant. Btrfs Assistant is a gui just like timeshift, except it also can configure snapper the right way. It's restore method is better than the snapper rollback method. I also like the read-only snapshots. which are bootable and uses an OverlayFS so you can test the booted snapshot, but no changes are saved.

[claydoh]

I have been using Timeshift on neon for a number of years now and have never noticed this.

Linux Mint 22 which is also build on Ubuntu 24.04 LTS and use the same version of timeshift.

No, Mint, who now own/develop Timeshift, has 24.06.3 in Mint 22, while Ubuntu 24.04 comes with 24.01.1, so there is some possibility of this being relevant.

(You can get 24.06.3 in Ubuntu via their PPA. You can ignore the "daily build" moniker, since that part is now inaccurate. I haven't bothered, myself.)

[jfabernathy]

I went back to a new build on the same hardware with Linux Mint 22 which is also build on Ubuntu 24.04 LTS and use the same version of timeshift. I did the same software installation with the same sort of snapshots. I also changed over to compress=zstd soon after install the same as on neon.

However I never see the delay. It definitely a delay in the notification system.

[claydoh]

I have not noticed any delay, though I have not looked at it, or noticed anything.
Manual snapshots are nearly instant, and my scheduled ones (daily/boot/weekly) I have never ever noticed taking place.
Deletions are instant as well.
I am not using any fancy-schmancy mount options, just whatever the kernel uses as default for btrfs(rw,relatime,ssd,discard=async,space_cache=v2)

[jfabernathy]

so I kept installing packages one at a time taking timeshift snapshots after each install. After a few I got back to having a 1 minute long snapshot. So I did a snapshot from the command line using timeshift and it looks like this:

sudo timeshift --create --comments "snapshot with CLI"
Using system disk as snapshot device for creating snapshots in BTRFS mode
Mounted '/dev/nvme0n1p2' at '/run/timeshift/3181/backup'
btrfs: Quotas are not enabled
Creating new backup...(BTRFS)
Saving to device: /dev/nvme0n1p2, mounted at path: /run/timeshift/3181/backup
Created directory: /run/timeshift/3181/backup/timeshift-btrfs/snapshots/2024-12-03_16-20-58
Created subvolume snapshot: /run/timeshift/3181/backup/timeshift-btrfs/snapshots/2024-12-03_16-20-58/@
Created subvolume snapshot: /run/timeshift/3181/backup/timeshift-btrfs/snapshots/2024-12-03_16-20-58/@home
Created control file: /run/timeshift/3181/backup/timeshift-btrfs/snapshots/2024-12-03_16-20-58/info.json
BTRFS Snapshot saved successfully (0s)
Tagged snapshot '2024-12-03_16-20-58': ondemand
------------------------------------------------------------------------------

It was instant but after the

BTRFS Snapshot saced successfully (0s)

message I had to wait 60 seconds before the message

Tagged snapshot '2024-12-3_16-20-58': ondemand

appeared. So maybe the problem the Fedora forum mentioned is the problem here. It looks harmless, but annoying.

[jfabernathy]

So this is interesting. On my second install where I did the modify of fstab and btrfs fi defragment the sizes went down. BTW I didn't do any app installs before I did the adding of compression.

Before
/dev/nvme0n1p2 477G 6.5G 469G 2% /
Data, single: total=9.01GiB, used=6.08GiB

After
/dev/nvme0n1p2 477G 4.2G 471G 1% /
Data, single: total=9.00GiB, used=3.71GiB

Next when I installed timeshift, it worked as I would expect. It created a snapshot in under a second.