Full ZFS Snapshot on Ubuntu 19.10

Question

I have my default ZFS installation from a clean install of Ubuntu 19.10 and I want a full snapshot of the entire system.

NAME                                               USED  AVAIL     REFER  MOUNTPOINT
bpool                                              130M  1.62G      176K  /boot
bpool/BOOT                                         129M  1.62G      176K  none
bpool/BOOT/ubuntu_7j8cap                           129M  1.62G      129M  /boot
rpool                                              534G   380G       96K  /
rpool/ROOT                                        81.3G   380G       96K  none
rpool/ROOT/ubuntu_7j8cap                          81.3G   380G     6.16G  /
rpool/ROOT/ubuntu_7j8cap/srv                        96K   380G       96K  /srv
rpool/ROOT/ubuntu_7j8cap/usr                       260K   380G       96K  /usr
rpool/ROOT/ubuntu_7j8cap/usr/local                 164K   380G      164K  /usr/local
rpool/ROOT/ubuntu_7j8cap/var                      75.2G   380G       96K  /var
rpool/ROOT/ubuntu_7j8cap/var/games                  96K   380G       96K  /var/games
rpool/ROOT/ubuntu_7j8cap/var/lib                  74.7G   380G     74.6G  /var/lib
rpool/ROOT/ubuntu_7j8cap/var/lib/AccountServices    96K   380G       96K  /var/lib/AccountServices
rpool/ROOT/ubuntu_7j8cap/var/lib/NetworkManager    180K   380G      180K  /var/lib/NetworkManager
rpool/ROOT/ubuntu_7j8cap/var/lib/apt              73.2M   380G     73.2M  /var/lib/apt
rpool/ROOT/ubuntu_7j8cap/var/lib/dpkg             47.3M   380G     47.3M  /var/lib/dpkg
rpool/ROOT/ubuntu_7j8cap/var/log                   214M   380G      214M  /var/log
rpool/ROOT/ubuntu_7j8cap/var/mail                   96K   380G       96K  /var/mail
rpool/ROOT/ubuntu_7j8cap/var/snap                  219M   380G      219M  /var/snap
rpool/ROOT/ubuntu_7j8cap/var/spool                 132K   380G      132K  /var/spool
rpool/ROOT/ubuntu_7j8cap/var/www                    96K   380G       96K  /var/www
rpool/USERDATA                                     453G   380G       96K  /
rpool/USERDATA/neal_70puag                         453G   380G      212G  /home/neal
rpool/USERDATA/root_70puag                         380K   380G      380K  /root

I make my snapshot zfs snap rpool@today and mount it mount -t zfs rpool@today /media/zfs and ls my new mount /media/zfs but it's empty.

I can snapshot and mount rpool/USERDATA/neal_70puag filled with only my home directory files, but how do I get a full snapshot of the entire system all at once? I'm not seeing this in any documentation.

Answer 1

With zfs snap rpool@today you only snapshotted the rpool dataset. In general, what you might want is zfs snapshot -r rpool@today for a recursive snapshot. That will create a today snapshot in rpool and all its children datasets. They would all still be snapshots of all the individual datasets, though.

In terms of the Ubuntu dataset layout, tooling is still being developed to make that easier from a user perspective. Remember that the zfs support on the 19.10 installer is experimental, and so is this dataset layout.

Thanks for trying it out!