# SU+J and snapshots - what are my options?



## Orum (Apr 10, 2012)

I recently installed 9.0 via bsdinstall and made the grave error of leaving the UFS options at their defaults of SU+J.  While it should work in theory, I found out the hard way that, as others have mentioned, live dumps will *not* work with SU+J on 9.0-RELEASE.

Since I'd like to back up the drive, what are my options?  I've read on this forum that just something as simple as going to 9-STABLE fixes the issue.  Can anyone confirm this, as I'd rather be on -RELEASE, unless this issue is definitely fixed on -STABLE.

If not, can I safely drop journaling from the partitions?  If so, does this have to be done in single user or offline, or can it be done while the FS is live?  Normally it wouldn't be an issue, but currently neither serial nor the GPU is working on the machine, and I'm waiting on a PCI riser card to install an old PCI card in the 1U case. :\  It's a bit of a job if I have to do it while the drive is offline, but I suppose I can configure another installation with sshd on an external drive, plug it in via eSATA, and do any configuration on the primary disk after booting to the external.

Edit: Just found another post by a dev that seems to confirm that snapshots are working on 9-STABLE, so I think I'll just go to that.


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## wblock@ (Apr 10, 2012)

There have been some recent commits, but they mentioned other things that still needed to be fixed.  Whether they are major or minor, I don't know.


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## Orum (Apr 11, 2012)

Just to update this, snapshots are *not* fixed on 9-STABLE, they are merely disabled with the message:

```
mksnap_ffs: Cannot create snapshot //.snap/dump_snapshot: /: Snapshots are not yet supported when running with journaled soft updates: Operation not supported
dump: Cannot create //.snap/dump_snapshot: No such file or directory
```

Which I suppose is better than just hanging indefinitely :OO.  So, I'm back to square one--what's the procedure to disable journaling on SU+J filesystems?  Preferably while live, if possible.


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## jb_fvwm2 (Apr 11, 2012)

Delete the .sujournal and/or disable it with tunefs? Not willing to attempt it here to test... one can use, say, rsync rather than live dumps with a little practice. (I put a long CLI in a post here just yesterday that would serve one well in that regard...)


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## wblock@ (Apr 11, 2012)

It can only be changed on an unmounted or read-only filesystem.  Typically it's easiest to boot in single-user mode.  Use tunefs(8) to turn off SU+J (-j disable) and turn on just soft updates (-n enable).  Then delete the leftover journal files.


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## Orum (Apr 13, 2012)

Alright, thanks.  I'll give it a try when I have a window of time to bring the box down.


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## jstarcher (May 28, 2012)

Any updates to this? Is this functionality still broken in STABLE?

If I use rsync to back up the entire system, which files should I skip (such as items in /dev)?


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## wblock@ (May 28, 2012)

Sorry, don't know if it's fully fixed yet.

For net/rsync backups, certainly exclude /dev, probably /tmp, maybe some things in /var.  sysutils/rsnapshot is interesting.


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## phoenix (May 29, 2012)

This is our excludes file for rsync, used to backup FreeBSD machines.  Really, the only important lines are /dev /tmp /usr/obj:

```
/dev/**
/tmp/**
/usr/ports/**
/usr/obj/**
/usr/doc/bn_BD.ISO10646-1/**
/usr/doc/da_DK.ISO8859-1/**
/usr/doc/de_DE.ISO8859-1/**
/usr/doc/el_GR.ISO8859-7/**
/usr/doc/es_ES.ISO8859-1/**
/usr/doc/fr_FR.ISO8859-1/**
/usr/doc/it_IT.ISO8859-15/**
/usr/doc/ja_JP.eucJP/**
/usr/doc/nl_NL.ISO8859-1/**
/usr/doc/no_NO.ISO8859-1/**
/usr/doc/pl_PL.ISO8859-2/**
/usr/doc/pt_BR.ISO8859-1/**
/usr/doc/release/**
/usr/doc/ru_RU.KOI8-R/**
/usr/doc/share/**
/usr/doc/sr_YU.ISO8859-2/**
/usr/doc/tr_TR.ISO8859-9/**
/usr/doc/zh_CN.GB2312/**
/usr/doc/zh_TW.Big5/**
/usr/share/doc/bn_BD.ISO10646-1/**
/usr/share/doc/da_DK.ISO8859-1/**
/usr/share/doc/de_DE.ISO8859-1/**
/usr/share/doc/el_GR.ISO8859-7/**
/usr/share/doc/es_ES.ISO8859-1/**
/usr/share/doc/fr_FR.ISO8859-1/**
/usr/share/doc/it_IT.ISO8859-15/**
/usr/share/doc/ja_JP.eucJP/**
/usr/share/doc/nl_NL.ISO8859-1/**
/usr/share/doc/no_NO.ISO8859-1/**
/usr/share/doc/pl_PL.ISO8859-2/**
/usr/share/doc/pt_BR.ISO8859-1/**
/usr/share/doc/release/**
/usr/share/doc/ru_RU.KOI8-R/**
/usr/share/doc/share/**
/usr/share/doc/sr_YU.ISO8859-2/**
/usr/share/doc/tr_TR.ISO8859-9/**
/usr/share/doc/zh_CN.GB2312/**
/usr/share/doc/zh_TW.Big5/**
```


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## jstarcher (Dec 23, 2013)

Sorry to revive an old thead, but are there still no better options for live SU+J snapshots? My server is remote and I don't have console access so disabling SU+J is very difficult. Will there be support in FreeBSD 10?


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