Arch Linux

Efwis

Member

Registered: 2025-05-04

Posts: 2

[SOLVED] Snapper setup after using archinstall

I've done a manual install before, but that was before I got interested in using snapper. I have since reinstalled Arch because I broke the OS trying to setup Snapper with btrfs-assistant.

I'm using efistub when booting, so I'm not worried about having bootable snapshots like I can have in Grub.

The problem I"m running into is with the fact I used archinstall instead of the manual way and I am running into an issue trying to get this set up. Particularly running into issues regarding the Note at the beginning that says:

Note: If you are using the suggested Btrfs partition layout from archinstall then the @.snapshots subvolume will already be mounted to /.snapshots, and the snapper create-config command will fail [1]. To use the @.snapshots subvolume for Snapper backups, do the following:
Unmount the @.snapshots subvolume and delete the existing mountpoint.
Create the Snapper config.
Delete the subvolume created by Snapper.
Re-create the /.snapshots mount point and re-mount the @.snapshots subvolume.

I have googled for solutions to achieve this, but I can't find any information. And ChatGPT gives inaccurate commands.

Does anyone have a step-by-step instructions I can follow

everytime I try to umount I get an error:

 edward@Dragon: ~ ❯ umount @.snapshots
umount: @.snapshots: no mount point specified.

It doesn't matter if I use /.snapshots, /@.snapshots or just @.snapshots I get the same error as above. nor does it matter if I'm using root or if I'm using sudo.

Last edited by Efwis (2025-05-04 03:51:36)

Efwis

Member

Registered: 2025-05-04

Posts: 2

Re: [SOLVED] Snapper setup after using archinstall

I got it working, after following the comment on the git link that the note links to, I was able to get it working as desired.

step-by-step procedure.

Install Snapper and any GUI frontend you might want, I used btrfs-assistant.

yay -S snapper btrfs-assistant

then do the following exactly as shown:

sudo umount /.snapshots
sudo rm -r /.snapshots
sudo snapper -c root create-config /
sudo mount -a

You don't have a subvolume that is created by Snapper to delete. IF you do delete /.snapshots snapper won't work until you recreate /.snapshots again, but you don't have to re-run the snapper -c root create-config / command again as it won't work it will return with subvolume already covered.