Snapshots

A snapshot is a copy of the user, system and configuration data stored by snapd for one or more snaps on your system.

Snapshots are generated manually with the snap save command and automatically when a snap is removed (requires snapd 2.39+). A snapshot can be used to backup the state of your snaps, revert snaps to a previous state and to restore a fresh snapd installation to a previously saved state.

Snapshots require snap version 2.37+.

Generating a snapshot

The snap save command creates a snapshot for all installed snaps, or if declared individually, specific snaps:

$ sudo snap save
Set  Snap                     Age    Version               Rev   Size   Notes
30   core                     1.00s  16-2.37~pre1          6229   250B  -
30   core18                   886ms  18                    543    123B  -
30   go                       483ms  1.10.7                3092   387B  -
30   vlc                      529ms  3.0.6                 770   882kB  -

Each snapshot has a unique ID, or revision, shown in the Set column above. This value is unique to each save operation, regardless of the number of snaps it includes. Age is the period of time since the snapshot was created, while Version and Rev refer to the specific snap at the time of the snapshot. Size is the amount of storage used by a snapshot.
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You can see the state of your system’s snapshots with the snap saved command. Adding --id=<set/unique ID> allows you to query a specific snapshot:

$ snap saved --id=29
Set  Snap                     Age    Version               Rev   Size   Notes
29   vlc                      2h41m  3.0.6                 770   882kB  -

Verifying a snapshot

To verify the integrity of a snapshot, use the check-snapshot command:

$ snap check-snapshot 30
Snapshot #30 verified successfully.

Restoring a snapshot

The restore command replaces the current user, system and configuration data with the corresponding data from the specified snapshot:

$ snap restore 30
Restored snapshot #30.

By default, this command restores all the data for all the snaps in a snapshot. You can restore data for specific snaps by simply listing them after the command, and for specific users with the --users=<usernames> argument.

Excluding a snap’s system and configuration data from snap restore is not currently possible.

Deleting a snapshot

The forget command deletes a snapshot. This operation removes a snapshot from local storage and can not be undone:

$ snap forget 30
Snapshot #30 forgotten.
$ snap saved --id=30
No snapshots found for that ID.

By default, this command deletes all the data for all the snaps in a snapshot. You can delete the data for specific snaps by listing them after the command.

Automatic snapshots

Apart from on Ubuntu Core devices, where the feature is disabled by default, a snapshot is generated automatically when a snap is removed. These snapshots are retained for 31 days before being deleted automatically.

To see which snapshots are generated automatically, look for auto in the Notes column output from snap saved:

$ snap saved
Set  Snap                     Age    Version               Rev   Size   Notes
30   go                       25d5h  1.10.7                3092   387B  -
30   vlc                      25d0h  3.0.6                 770   882kB  -
31   vlc                      529ms  3.0.6                 770   882kB  auto

As with manual snapshots, automatically generated snapshots can be manually deleted with snap forget <set-id>.

Automatic snapshot retention time is configured with the snapshots.automatic.retention system option. The value needs to be greater than 24 hours:

$ snap set system snapshots.automatic.retention=30h

To disable automatic snapshots, set the retention time to no:

$ snap set system snapshots.automatic.retention=no

Disabling automatic snapshots will not affect pre-existing automatically generated snapshots, only those generated by the removal of subsequent snaps.

Automatic snapshots require snap version 2.39+.

Snapshot anatomy

Snapshots are stored as a zip file for each snap, and each zip file contains the following:

• meta.json: describes the contents of the snapshot, alongside its configuration and checksums for the archives.
• archive.tgz: contains system data.
• user/<username>.tgz: contains any user data (for each system user).

On Ubuntu-based systems, snapshots are stored in the /var/lib/snapd/snapshots directory.

Last updated 2 years ago.