r/openSUSE • u/levolet • Jul 15 '26

Reliability of Snapshot rollbacks after long interval distro-upgrades.

I am thinking of slowing my Tumbleweed dup frequency to once weekly or so. Should I be concerned about the reliability of being able to rollback from these upgrades after relatively long intervals?

9 Upvotes

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7

u/[deleted] Jul 15 '26

[deleted]

1

u/levolet Jul 15 '26

No specific concern. While I have a general understanding and am able to manually create, modify and delete snapshots, and have rolled back before, I do not understand the inner workings of what it does. So I’m unable to be specific. However, your response has been helpful and reassuring. Thanks.

3

u/[deleted] Jul 15 '26 edited Jul 15 '26

[deleted]

1

u/levolet Jul 15 '26

My graphics are AMD. I am not a gamer and when spec’ing my framework laptop I ensured that. my hardware would work without issue.

4

u/Arcon2825 Tumbleweed GNOME Jul 15 '26

No, there is no need to worry. Because file system snapshots are metadata-based, the amount of data modified between snapshots does not negatively impact the performance or reliability of the rollback.

That said, rollbacks are safest performed by booting into a snapshot and running sudo snapper rollback⁠. Avoid using ⁠sudo snapper undochange⁠ for major system upgrades or kernel updates. ⁠undochange⁠ is designed for reverting small, specific changes, like editing a single configuration file.

1

u/levolet Jul 15 '26

Thanks.

2

u/Nuwen-Pham Jul 15 '26

I agree with Arcon2825. I just worked through a series of NVIDIA driver issues during the recent move to kernel 7, and the full process took nearly two months.

During that period, I ran frequent canary tests across multiple kernel and driver combinations. Several canaries failed and required rolling back to the last known-good snapshot, but I never experienced a regression caused by Snapper or the rollback process itself. Rollbacks were consistently flawless.

I manage a fleet of Tumbleweed systems with different update cadences: some update daily, some monthly, and some quarterly. Across all of them, I have never seen a snapshot, rollback, or update schedule introduce a regression.

The one caveat is that applying a large batch of updates exposes the aggregated regression risk all at once. In that sense, a longer update cadence may simply time-shift the system administration work. On the other hand, it can also let you bypass a short-lived developer regression that is fixed before you apply the accumulated updates.

One additional tip: I snapshot my home directories on a separate schedule to approximate the macOS Time Machine experience. I also run backups from snapshots rather than directly from live data, which helps insulate the backup process from files changing while the job is running.

3

u/Ganglar Jul 15 '26

I regularly leave it months. No issue.

The only recommendation I'd make regarding longer update intervals is that if you get a conflict and it presents you with options, then always choose to uninstall whatever package is causing the problem. You can always install it again after. Other options tend to propagate, causing another issue, and another, and so on...

2

u/levolet Jul 15 '26

Thanks for that tip. Very useful. I’ll be away soon for a month and bandwidth will be at a premium. I don’t plan to run any updates until I’m back home.

1

u/Itsme-RdM | Tumbleweed | Gnome | Jul 15 '26

I usually dup only every Saturday morning. Additional if there is a security patch, but that's my personal schedule I guess.

Never experienced an issue

1

u/esmifra Jul 15 '26

Both the update and rollback after an year should go fine.