this post was submitted on 05 Oct 2024
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[SOLVED] Can I delete BTRFS snapshots from middle? (self.linux4noobs)
submitted 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) by gpstarman to c/linux4noobs@lemmy.world
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Let's say i made 10 snapshots on top of the base.

Now can i delete snap no. 5? Will the snaps after 5 will be affected?

Solved

Yes, one can delete consecutive snapshots. The data won't be deleted unless all snaps ( reference points ) get deleted.

Note: If you delete the original file and delete all the snapshots made when the file is still there, the file will get deleted permanently.

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[–] doughless@lemmy.world 2 points 1 month ago (1 children)

If your snapshots are taken from your main subvolume, then they shouldn't be incremental backups, so it should be safe to delete ones from the middle. It does look like incremental backups are possible, though I've never used that feature: https://fedoramagazine.org/btrfs-snapshots-backup-incremental/

[–] gpstarman 2 points 1 month ago (1 children)

If your snapshots are taken from your main subvolume, then they shouldn't be incremental backups

So other snaps from other subvols are incremental backups?

[–] doughless@lemmy.world 1 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

Two snapshots taken from the same subvolume would not be incremental. For them to be incremental, a snapshot would need to be copied from another snapshot. From that article I linked, it looks like you have you use the send command to actually make an incremental snapshot.