Data locations

A vast majority of snaps use strict confinement to isolate both their execution environments and their data from your system (see Snap Confinement for further details).

This confinement is an important security feature, but it can affect how and where you access a snap’s files, including:

  • configuration files
  • user documents
  • internal databases

Access to files like these is fundamental to the operation of most applications and snap confinement has been designed to always permit access to snap-specific locations for these files when required. These locations are described below:

System data

Within the snap environment, environment variables are used to reference different accessible locations. The following variables and default referenced locations are used to store system data:

  • SNAP_COMMON: /var/snap/<snap name>/common
    This directory is owned and writable by root and is used to store data that is common across multiple revisions of the snap (e.g.: revision 6, revision 7, etc.).

  • SNAP_ DATA: /var/snap/<snap name>/<revision number>
    This location it is also used to store data, mostly information utilised by background application and services, for logging, and other tasks that require persistence between snap launches.

A snapshot of SNAP_DATA and SNAP_COMMON is created and restored when performing a snap update (refresh) or revert operation. The contents of SNAP_DATA is specific to the snap revision, while the contents of SNAP_COMMON is applicable to all revisions and will overwrite the contents of SNAP_COMMON when restored. See What a snapshot stores for more details.

User data

Snaps can also contain user data. As with the system data environment variables, SNAP_COMMON and SNAP_DATA, the following user-specific environment variables point to directories for user data:

  • SNAP_USER_COMMON: /home/<username>/snap/<snap name>/common
    This location maps user data across each revision of a snap. It is not backed up or restored on snap operations.

  • SNAP_USER_DATA: /home/<username>/snap/<snap name>/<revision>
    This contains any user data that the snap writes to its own home. This is in contrast to what the Linux user would consider their home. It is important to note this distinction, because it can be useful, and even important when users decide to perform maintenance operations with their snaps (like removal). By default, every snap will use a symlink current, pointing to the latest available revision.

Both SNAP_USER_COMMON and SNAP_USER_DATA only become available after a snap has been run once.

Ubuntu Core

On Ubuntu Core, the SNAP_SAVE_DATA environment variable within a snap’s environment points to a snap-specific location on the ubuntu-save volume. This is used to store data that can be accessed during recovery or after re-installation of Ubuntu Core.

For example, in the reference Ubuntu Core 22 image, from within the hello-world snap, SNAP_SAVE_DATA has the following value:

SNAP_SAVE_DATA=/var/lib/snapd/save/snap/hello-world

The above environment variable references a mount point at the following location:

$ mount | grep "snapd/save"
/dev/mapper/ubuntu-save on /var/lib/snapd/save type ext4 (rw,relatime)

Other locations

There are several other directories you should be aware of:

  • /var/lib/snapd/cache This is the working cache and is used to minimise download size and speed-up refreshes.
  • /var/lib/snapd/snaps Contains all the versions of snaps installed on your system.
  • /var/lib/snapd/snapshots/ Contains both the manually generated and automatically generated snapshots.

Snap installation locations

When a user installs a snap from the Snap Store, the following happens:

  1. The snapd services downloads the snap as a single file – a compressed SquashFS archive with a .snap suffix.
  2. The snap file is uncompressed and mounted as a read-only filesystem under /snap. See The snap format for further details on what is included in a snap.

By design, the read-only filesystem cannot provide a persistent experience between application launches, which is why snaps also have writable parts for system data and for user data.

Snap deletion data remnants

When deleting and removing a snap from a system, the following will happen:

  • The snap will be unmounted and no longer shown under /snap.
  • The data under /var/snap/<snap name>/ and /home/<username>/snap/ will be deleted. However, a copy is be retained as a snapshot for 30-days (except on Ubuntu Core systems), allowing data to be restored or manually retrieved.

Snapshot management can be used to restore data, or unzip the archives, and only copy the data you consider necessary. With the right permissions, you can also create your own backup routine, which copies the important data like application databases, configurations or similar content to a backup path.

To remove a snap without generating a snapshot, use the additional ‘–purge’ argument:

$ sudo snap remove vlc --purge
vlc removed

Last updated 5 months ago.

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