layersnap

overlayfs- and rsync-based simple snapshots

UI

layersnap [s|snapshot|m|merge|r|restore] <target-directory>

without additional parameters

• show status of target-directory and mounts it if neccessary

s (or snapshot) <target-directory>

• create snapshot of target-directory

r (or restore) <target-directory>

• shows a list of snapshot-layers
• asks interactively for snapshot to restore
• restores given snapshot and deletes all layersnap-stuff related to target-directory

m (or merge) <target-directory>

• merges range of layers to restore performance
• asks interactively for starting-layer and target-layer
• merges layers and remounts
• not supported in legacy-mode

compatibility

layersnap has two operational modes.

legacy-mode

compatible with

• Linux kernel 3.18 and newer
• Ubuntu 12.04 and newer (at least)
• max two layers

Older overlayfs implemantations accepted only one lower-dir. But two overlayfs' can be stacked either and so does layersnap. Thus, snapshots are limited to two.

multi-mode

compatible with

• Linux kernel 4.0 and newer
• Ubuntu 14.04 and newer (at least)

Newer overlayfs-implementations accept multiple lower-dirs and so layersnap theoretically provides an unlimited amount of snapshots.