[CentOS] Restore Point for Centos 7

On Dec 5, 2014, at 7:38 AM, Samson <okosam at gmail.com> wrote:

> Just want to inquire if it is possible to create restore points for Centos
> 7 like we have in virtual machines and window.

Choose btrfs instead of xfs when you install your OS, then after installation, install the yum-plugin-fs-snapshot package.

Having done so, part of every yum operation that can change your system will create a btrfs snapshot, which you can roll back to later, if you need to.

This plugin also supports LVM, but btrfs is simpler to use, since it’s a filesystem and volume manager in one.

According to the original proposal,[*] there’s supposed to be a way to create a manual snapshot, but I don’t see tool in the RPM file list to do that.  Still, if you have yum automatically updating your system regularly, you will have a nearby snapshot to choose from all the time.

This plugin is most similar to a VM system’s snapshotting feature, rather than to Windows’ restore point feature.  It is setting a copy-on-write flag for all volume types it can work with, so that *any* change to that filesystem gets backed up, not just changes to the core OS files.  This means that if you’re making changes to large files, you could fill your filesystem fast this way.

I don’t know if it’s smart enough to leave /home alone if it’s on a separate filesystem, since yum updates shouldn’t affect /home.

[*] https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Features/SystemRollbackWithBtrfs