Anyone has problems with creating Snapshot after yesterday's update?

[Buck Fankers]

Yesterday, before latest snapshot update I created successfully 'non-personal' snapshot.
Today I can't create personal snapshot.
Error msg is that I'm out of space which is not the case, problem has to be somewhere else.
I only have few programs installed and only some personal files.

I'm not trying to troubleshoot here, I'm running out of time, going on a few weeks trip, I was going to carry with me MX Linux on a USB. I'm only asking to see if someone else have similar problems after latest update.

This is my lsblk:

mx@mx:~
$ lsblk

NAME MAJ:MIN RM SIZE RO TYPE MOUNTPOINT
fd0 2:0 1 4K 0 disk
sda 8:0 0 232.9G 0 disk
├─sda1 8:1 0 39.1G 0 part /media/Mint_17.3
├─sda2 8:2 0 29.5G 0 part /
├─sda3 8:3 0 4G 0 part [SWAP]
├─sda4 8:4 0 1K 0 part
├─sda5 8:5 0 29.5G 0 part /media/tri
├─sda6 8:6 0 24.6G 0 part /media/stiri
├─sda7 8:7 0 24.4G 0 part /media/pet
└─sda8 8:8 0 81.8G 0 part /media/BACKUP

$ df -h

Filesystem Size Used Avail Use% Mounted on
udev 1.5G 0 1.5G 0% /dev
tmpfs 298M 1.2M 296M 1% /run
/dev/sda2 29G 15G 14G 52% /
tmpfs 5.0M 4.0K 5.0M 1% /run/lock
tmpfs 1.4G 55M 1.4G 4% /run/shm
/dev/sda1 39G 25G 13G 67% /media/Mint_17.3
/dev/sda5 29G 4.9G 23G 18% /media/tri
/dev/sda6 25G 44M 23G 1% /media/stiri
/dev/sda7 24G 44M 23G 1% /media/pet
/dev/sda8 82G 7.2G 75G 9% /media/BACKUP
cgroup 12K 0 12K 0% /sys/fs/cgroup
tmpfs 298M 8.0K 298M 1% /run/user/1000

(sda5 was then empty, when I tried to make an snapshot and save it on sda5)

On first partition (sda1) I have mint (root & home),
second is MX Linux (root and home), about half, 15GB is used for system and 3 almost empty accounts.

I tried to put snapshot on sda8 (70GB free, fat32) - not enough space, at about 30%
I tried to put snapshot on sda5 (empty, ext4) - not enough space, at about 30%
I tried to put snapshot on external USB HDD (fat32, 500GB free) - no error this time, snapshot completed successfully, got confirmation window that all was OK, but when i closed the window, 'snapshot' folder in the root of the HDD was empty. Snapshot was not created, only folder was created. Or snapshot was created, but it was not saved.

I'm just curious if anyone else is experiencing problems creating personal snapshot AFTER yesterday's update.

inxi F (probably not relevant in this case, but here is is anyway)

$ inxi -F

System: Host: mx Kernel: 4.15.0-1-amd64 x86_64 bits: 64 Desktop: Xfce 4.12.3
Distro: MX-17.1_x64 Horizon March 6, 2018
Machine: Type: Desktop System: Dell product: OptiPlex 755 v: N/A serial: <root required>
Mobo: Dell model: 0GM819 serial: <root required> BIOS: Dell v: A12 date: 12/09/2008
CPU: Topology: Dual Core model: Intel Core2 Duo E8400 bits: 64 type: MCP L2 cache: 6144 KiB
Speed: 2916 MHz min/max: 2000/3000 MHz Core speeds (MHz): 1: 2916 2: 2886
Graphics: Card-1: NVIDIA G72 [GeForce 7300 GS] driver: nouveau v: kernel
Display: x11 server: X.Org 1.19.2 driver: nouveau unloaded: fbdev,modesetting,nv,vesa
resolution: 1680x1050~60Hz
OpenGL: renderer: Gallium 0.4 on NV46 v: 2.1 Mesa 13.0.6
Audio: Card-1: Intel 82801I HD Audio driver: snd_hda_intel
Sound Server: ALSA v: k4.15.0-1-amd64
Network: Card-1: Intel 82566DM-2 Gigabit Network Connection driver: e1000e
IF: eth1 state: up speed: 1000 Mbps duplex: full mac: 00:23:ae:6f:2f:17
Card-2: Intel 82540EM Gigabit Ethernet driver: e1000
IF: eth0 state: down mac: 00:07:e9:16:21:bc
Drives: HDD Total Size: 240.48 GiB used: 50.76 GiB (21.1%)
ID-1: /dev/sda vendor: Seagate model: ST3250310AS size: 232.83 GiB
ID-2: /dev/sdb type: USB vendor: SanDisk model: U3 Cruzer Micro size: 7.65 GiB
Partition: ID-1: / size: 28.86 GiB used: 14.21 GiB (49.2%) fs: ext4 dev: /dev/sda2
ID-2: swap-1 size: 3.94 GiB used: 14.3 MiB (0.4%) fs: swap dev: /dev/sda3
Sensors: System Temperatures: cpu: 38.0 C mobo: N/A gpu: nouveau temp: 68 C
Fan Speeds (RPM): N/A
Info: Processes: 200 Uptime: 47m Memory: 2.90 GiB used: 1.28 GiB (44.2%) Shell: bash inxi: 3.0.10

[Adrian]

It's not the last update it just added the icon to another location. There's something else going on for you, I just tried and was able to create a personalized snapshot.

I don't think writing snapshot on FAT32 is supposed to work, FAT32 has a 4GB file limit, also, I think the file system needs to be able to do linux file attributes (I will have to test and disable writing images on FAT32 and probably NTFS).

[Buck Fankers]

Adrian, thanks for trying it out.
Fat32 - I though since it is an ISO file it does not matter.
I will try again and troubleshot once I get back.

[Adrian]

Adrian, thanks for trying it out.
Fat32 - I though since it is an ISO file it does not matter.
I will try again and troubleshot once I get back.

I not only saves the ISO there but it builds the snapshotting environment there so things would need to be mounted on a FAT32 partition which won't work, I'm surprised you got that far. I should add a check for that but for some reasons it never crossed my mind people would try to save on FAT32 (it's my fault of imagination because it's obviously a use case for that).

I didn't want to confuse people who two questions: where do you "want to create the snapshoting enviromnent?" and "where do you want to save the snapshot?" so I used the last one as a proxy for the first question and create the environment automatically where the file is saved but then I didn't consider that people will try to do it on NTFS or FAT32. Maybe I will create the environment automatically in root if somebody selects a non-Linux partition to save to.

[Buck Fankers]

I'm surprised you got that far. I should add a check for that but for some reasons it never crossed my mind people would try to save on FAT32 (it's my fault of imagination because it's obviously a use case for that).

Don't blame yourself for silliness from long time windows user now Linux wannabe ;-)

I need to correct my initial post. Snapshot on sda5 (empty Linux partition) apparently WAS created!
I got error at about 30% and msg that snapshot was not completed because of not enough empty space, so i didn't check.
Well I just found out there was an ISO size about 1/3 of the MX partition (about 5GB) on sda5, I 'burned' it on the USB memory stick and it is working!!! Actually I'm posting this directly from it.

I tried several times, on several different partitions, maybe I got confused and once snapshot did completed. I'm not sure any more, I could swear, I got error every single time!
Anyway I'm happy I have it working and ready to take it with me on a travel.

Thanks for working on it!

[Adrian]

Thank you for your report, I enabled saving to non-Linux partitions. The "trick" is that is going to put the work directory in /home (I decided to use /home instead of root, I think it's more likely to have enough space in /home if root and home partitions are different, if /home is on root it won't make a difference). It's actually nice that now I can make a .iso directly from a VirtualBox and save it to a shared folder outside of VirtualBox, it was not working before because Vbox shared folders are using a vboxfs file format that doesn't support everything we need for the work directory.

The new .deb is here if you want to try it: https://github.com/MX-Linux/mx-snapshot ... _amd64.deb
it will also come soon as a regular update.

[Buck Fankers]

The new .deb is here if you want to try it: https://github.com/MX-Linux/mx-snapshot ... _amd64.deb
it will also come soon as a regular update.

Sorry for late reply.
I tried it (creating snapshot on fat32) and it works great!
Thank you

[Mauser]

No, no problem here.