This is totally doable, and a reasonable use of zfs snapshots - we do some similar things.
You can easily determine if the snapshot has changed by checking the output of zfs list for the snapshot. --M -----Original Message----- From: zfs-discuss-boun...@opensolaris.org [mailto:zfs-discuss-boun...@opensolaris.org] On Behalf Of Harry Putnam Sent: Monday, March 22, 2010 1:34 PM To: zfs-discuss@opensolaris.org Subject: [zfs-discuss] snapshots as versioning tool This may be a bit dimwitted since I don't really understand how snapshots work. I mean the part concerning COW (copy on right) and how it takes so little room. But here I'm not asking about that. It appears to me that the default snapshot setup shares some aspects of a vcs (version control system) tool. I wonder if any of you use it that way. Here is one thing I've considered but not done yet. When I do video projects or any projects for that matter. I sometimes want backups every 10 minutes or so, so as not to loose some piece of script that isn't finished or the like. Or with something like a flash project, you might want to make sure you will be able to recover a version from a while back. So doing the project on zfs filesystem (maybe as nfs or cifs mount) would offer a way to do that. I wondered if it would be possible to run a snapshot system independent of the default one. I mean so a default setup of auto snapshotting would continue unaffected. I'm thinking of scripting something like 10 minute snapshots during the time I'm working on a project, then just turn it off when not working on it. When project is done... zap all those snapshots. Am I missing something basic that make this a poor use of zfs? Oh, something I meant to ask... is there some standard way to tell before calling for a snapshot, if the directory structure has changed at all, other than aging I mean. Is there something better than running `diff -r [...]' between existing structure and last snapshot. _______________________________________________ zfs-discuss mailing list zfs-discuss@opensolaris.org http://mail.opensolaris.org/mailman/listinfo/zfs-discuss _______________________________________________ zfs-discuss mailing list zfs-discuss@opensolaris.org http://mail.opensolaris.org/mailman/listinfo/zfs-discuss
