Btrfs gui

[vinnywright]

Thanks, Vinny. Now everything works fine. Oshunluvr's tool is really handy and saves me a lot of typing. Your little video was very clear and easy to follow. I feel less like a dummy now!

Great
and now I do not feel like a dummy making a video that was way off base from the actual issue ,,,,, I like making those videos .

and yes +1 on Oshunluvr's Dolphin btrfs service menu , I use it often and it works just as advertised .

VINNY

[oldgeek]

Thanks, Vinny. Now everything works fine. Oshunluvr's tool is really handy and saves me a lot of typing. Your little video was very clear and easy to follow. I feel less like a dummy now!

[vinnywright]

Excuse me Vinny, while I appreciate your help, I don't really understand what to do. I mounted my btrfs to /mnt, as you said. I have @, @home. snapshots, and two snapshots visible on this mount. I want to take a snapshot of @ and send it to snapshots--the same with @home. Apparently the pathname for the snapshot is wrong. That's my problem. And when I click on 'detailed subvolume information', I get nothing at all. I don't really understand the code you included. I am not a programmer, and so my ignorance keeps me from a full appreciation of your suggestion.

Consider me a dummy, like in those old books, 'Linux for dummies' in this case.

OK first things first ,,,, if you do not get anything from 'detailed subvolume information' then you do not have "notify send" installed which is one of the depends listed in the service manager script ,,,,so

sudo apt install ruby-notify

should fix that .

now they say a picture is worth a thousand words so ,,,,,,,,

VINNY

[vinnywright]

is your snapshot folder right their with the subvolumes and snapshots ?

VINNY

[oldgeek]

Excuse me Vinny, while I appreciate your help, I don't really understand what to do. I mounted my btrfs to /mnt, as you said. I have @, @home. snapshots, and two snapshots visible on this mount. I want to take a snapshot of @ and send it to snapshots--the same with @home. Apparently the pathname for the snapshot is wrong. That's my problem. And when I click on 'detailed subvolume information', I get nothing at all. I don't really understand the code you included. I am not a programmer, and so my ignorance keeps me from a full appreciation of your suggestion.

Consider me a dummy, like in those old books, 'Linux for dummies' in this case.

[vinnywright]

It still doesn't send the snapshots to the snapshots folder. I mounted /dev/sda1 to /mnt. Then I changed the pathname in the scripts folder to /mnt/snapshots/ and saved it. I took a snapshot of @. It didn't go into the snapshots folder. I seem to have missed a step somewhere. Any ideas?

? this is a hole lot easier that all this editing the script HS .
IF I'm understanding what your trying to do .

So lets see , you have /dev/sda1 (that is btrfs) mounted to /mnt ,,,,,,correct ?

and now in /mnt you have something like this

vinny@vinny-Bonobo-Extreme:/mnt/test$ ls -la
total 20
drwxr-xr-x 1 root root  160 Jul 23 20:29 .
drwxr-xr-x 4 root root 4096 Aug 22  2017 ..
drwxr-xr-x 1 root root  234 Oct 23  2018 @
drwxr-xr-x 1 root root  234 Apr  5 14:31 @.bac
drwxr-xr-x 1 root root   30 Oct 23  2018 @home
drwxr-xr-x 1 root root   30 Oct 23  2018 @home.bac
drwxr-xr-x 1 root root   30 Oct 23  2018 @home-old
drwxr-xr-x 1 root root   30 Oct 23  2018 @home_snap
drwxr-xr-x 1 root root  234 Nov 10  2018 @-old
drwxr-xr-x 1 root root  234 Oct 23  2018 @_snap
drwxr-xr-x 1 root root   22 Jul 23 20:32 snapshots
drwxr-xr-x 1 root root   60 Oct 23  2018 ubiquity-apt-clone
drwxr-xr-x 1 root root    6 Oct 23  2018 var

the important part is "snapshots"

if so getting a snapshot to go into the snapshot folder

vinny@vinny-Bonobo-Extreme:/mnt/test/snapshots$ ls -la
total 16
drwxr-xr-x 1 root root  22 Jul 23 20:32 .
drwxr-xr-x 1 root root 160 Jul 23 20:29 ..
drwxr-xr-x 1 root root  30 Oct 23  2018 @home_test1

was as easy as NAMING the snapshot with the path , so , I just named it (in the name dialog that pops up when you take the snapshot) "/mnt/test/snapshots/@home_test1"

in my case the subvolume I snapshot-ed was on /dev/sdc (I use the hole disk so no partition#) mounted on /mnt/test from a system on /dev/sda6 .

IF you click the dolphin sevice menu "manage btrfs subvolumes>detailed subvolume information" the top thing in the popup will be the location of the subvolume you are working with as seen by the system.

[oshunluvr]

Yeah, I went though the snapshot file again. I made some changes awhile back and dropped the path. I'll post a fix in a bit. Sorry, my mistake

[oldgeek]

It still doesn't send the snapshots to the snapshots folder. I mounted /dev/sda1 to /mnt. Then I changed the pathname in the scripts folder to /mnt/snapshots/ and saved it. I took a snapshot of @. It didn't go into the snapshots folder. I seem to have missed a step somewhere. Any ideas?

[oshunluvr]

Oshunlover, I tried what you wrote but it didn't work. The only thing I changed was the pathname (I let the snapshot name alone as it looked good to me). I changed the pathname to "/snapshots/", saved it, then checked again to see if it was correct. Then I made two snapshots (@ and @home) but they didn't go into the snapshot folder. I mounted first, in /mnt. What went wrong?

You mounted what first?

If /snapshots? is actually /mnt/snapshots/ then you need to enter /mnt/snapshots/

Snapshots must coexist on the same file system as the source. You cannot "snapshot" from one partition or drive to another. If your snapshots folder is on another drive or partition you can't use it for snapshots. You MUST snapshot on the source file system, then "Send" the snapshot to another btrfs file system. This would then make it a backup, not a snapshot.

[oldgeek]

Oshunlover, I tried what you wrote but it didn't work. The only thing I changed was the pathname (I let the snapshot name alone as it looked good to me). I changed the pathname to "/snapshots/", saved it, then checked again to see if it was correct. Then I made two snapshots (@ and @home) but they didn't go into the snapshot folder. I mounted first, in /mnt. What went wrong?

[Bings]

double damn, apparently I missed the chance. seems I could have got $40 off them if I paid attention

[Bings]

Wildly blatant self-promotion: I wrote a set of BTRFS Subvolume tools as a Dolphin Service Menu and it's available in the KDE store;

https://store.kde.org/p/1214134/

It requires manual installation of sorts, but works pretty well. I even get paid when enough people download it. I got an whole $1.45 last month!

oh damn, I didn't know they paid. Seems I might be due some money for some snippets I put up. Double thank you for the menu and the info!

[oshunluvr]

The file "subvol_snapshot" can be edited to your liking. This paragraph:

#set the default snapshot name and ask for a new one
pathname="${$1%/*}/"
#default target is subvolume name plus date/time
filename=$(basename "$1")_`date +%y%m%d-%H%M%S`"$nameadd"

name the snapshot and sets the path. If your snapshot path is "/snapshots/" then change

pathname="${$1%/*}/"

to

pathname="/snapshots/"

This line:

filename=$(basename "$1")_`date +%y%m%d-%H%M%S`"$nameadd"

[/CODE]

sets the filename of the snapshot. You can edit that too if desired.

[oldgeek]

Ah, now it works fine. Thanks for the instructions. One question: I keep my snapshots in a separate folder called, logically enough, snapshots. Is there any way to use your manager to send the snapshots directly into the folder, apart from typing out the command?

[oshunluvr]

I right clicked on the desktop file after mounting sda1 to /mnt, pressed create a snapshot, and got an error message about it not being a subvolume

First off, you can't take a snapshot of any folder or file, only a subvolume. Your folder isn't a subvolume, it resides in the subvolume named "@home" (unless you renamed it, which I doubt). That error is by design and is telling you you have selected a regular folder, not a subvolume.

It looks like a couple typos have gone unnoticed in the desktop file. I'll fixed it on-line but you can download the attached file and replace your desktop file now. Rename it by remove the trailing ".txt" once you delete the previous desktop file.

To use the menu, from the beginning;

You need these two folders:

~./local/share/kservices5/ServiceMenus/
~./local/share/kservices5/ServiceMenus/subvol_manager-scripts/

The folder ~./local/share/kservices5/ServiceMenus/ should contain these two files:

subvol_manager.desktop
subvol_manager-READ_ME

and the folder ~./local/share/kservices5/ServiceMenus/subvol_manager-scripts/should contain these files:

subvol_delete
subvol_info
subvol_modify
subvol_send
subvol_snapshot


Once you have all the above in place (with the new desktop file), you then need to mount your root BTRFS file system somewhere so you can see your subvolumes. I mount mine permanently using fstab. This is easy enough to do, first make a folder to mount to. I use /subvol :

sudo mkdir /subvol

Then edit fstab with Kate. You should have a line that looks similar to this;

UUID=60834933-1e99-4d5c-922c-9abbc373e172 / btrfs defaults,subvol=@ 0 1

Copy this line and paste it below the one above, then edit it to remove the subvolume reference (the part in boldface above) at the end so it looks like this:

UUID=60834933-1e99-4d5c-922c-9abbc373e172 / btrfs defaults 0 1

Then save it and exit Kate. Now mount the subvol folder;

sudo mount /subvol

and navigate to it using Dolphin. Then by right clicking on @ and selecting "Make a subvolume snapshot" you should be presented with the snapshot dialog. I just tested it here and everything worked.