On Wed, Jul 23, 2025 at 04:57:57 +0000, P, Rajasekar via Users wrote: > Hello libvirt community, > > I am seeking clarification on the behavior of `virsh snapshot-delete` when > used with external snapshots (created with the `--disk-only` option). > > **Environment:** > - libvirt version: 10.5.0
Note that this was released almost a year ago. > - Kernel version: 5.14.0-503.22.1.el9_5.x86_64 > - Disk image format: qcow2 > - Host OS: RHEL 9.5 > > **Steps to reproduce:** > 1. Create an external snapshot: > virsh snapshot-create-as --domain <vm> --name snap1 --disk-only > --atomic > 2. Delete the snapshot: > virsh snapshot-delete <vm> --snapshotname snap1 > > **Observed behavior:** > - Changes from the overlay (snapshot) file are merged into the base image. > - The snapshot metadata is removed from libvirt. > - The snapshot file remains on disk (appears orphaned). You mean that the original overlay images remained on disk? e.g. /path/to/originalimage.snap1 ? > **Questions:** > - Is the observed automatic merge of the overlay file into the base image > during `snapshot-delete` the intended behavior for external snapshots in > recent libvirt versions? Or we need separate `blockcommit` step. Yes it is intended, because deleting a snapshot is effectively meaning "I don't want to return to this point any more" so the extra overlay makes no sense. > - Should the snapshot file be deleted automatically, or is manual cleanup > required? If you mean the overlay, then yes it should have been deleted. > - Is there any official documentation that clarifies this behavior for > external snapshots, as most documentation seems to focus on internal > snapshots? The semantics of external and internal snapshots are supposed to be indentical. I don't think we document to a deep extent the actual behaviour WRT to the disk files.
