Trying to figure out whether I should just reinstall and use grub instead of the default of systemd boot. I never had an issue with EOS but I want to make a more permanent install and it would be convenient to have restore capability for peace of mind.
Any advice? I am thinking of doing a reinstall with grub.
Thank you!
You haven’t really describes an issue. Are you saying that restore isn’t working with Snapper and/or Timeshift? I’ve never used Snapper. As for Timeshift, I’ve never had issues on systemd (btrfs or ext4). It’s saved me on more than one occasion. Though I’ve since moved on to Pika Backup.
The issue is that I can’t find a definitive guide to use snapshots without grub bootloader…
Timeshift doesn’t strictly require grub, but grub-btrfs would allow you to select snapshots from the grub menu to boot into (read-only). Which is a useful feature, indeed. But if you boot into a live-iso you could access the snapshots and restore them as well.
Other than that, I don’t think that you’ll have to reinstall just for the switch from systemd boot to grub.
Last but not least, you may want to look into snapper, snap-pac as well as btrfs-assistant as an alternative to timeshift.
I don’t think systemd-boot will boot from a snapshot, so you have to use grub to do that.
With timeshift, it’s essentially pretty much straight forward to use. Just run the timeshift application to configure the automatic snapshots, create manual snapshots. And restore them if you need to.
Would work even from a live-iso. Simply boot into the live environment, install timeshift on the live system and the application should be able to find older snapshots on your machine / internal drive.
I haven’t used grub in years. I haven’t had issues in the past using Timeshift to restore.
And while the A.I. voice can be annoying, this is a THOROUGH walk-through of getting Timeshift up and running properly (with ext4): How To Use Timeshift
EDIT:
The only issue I ran across with Timeshift was with scheduling snapshots and cron. It needs to be running.
Check if cronie.service is running:
systemctl status cronie.service
If not:
sudo systemctl enable --now cronie.service
Thanks! I am using BTRFS but I appreciate the guide and I think booting into the live iso is simple enough.