Timeshift has deleted one of my Linux systems

[mogplus8]

Hi All,

I had a small problem with my system and didn't know how to fix it. Nothing I tried worked. So I decided to use Timeshift to recover an earlier version of my system. That worked fine. But while I was in Timeshift I had a look at the settings dialog as I thought a more frequent backup would be good. Did that, no problem. While I was still there I read the description of how rsync works on the type tab. Interesting. So I clicked on btrfs to read about how that worked too. Also interesting. I clicked back on rsync again, as that is what I am using (my partition is ext4). Closed the dialog and was very surprised to see that all my snapshots had disappeared!

I tried a bunch of different things but nothing worked (mostly turn it off and turn it on again). Eventually it occurred to me that clicking on btrfs in the settings dialog might have changed the location. So I went into location and found that, yes indeed, the location had changed. It was sdb6, it was now sdb1. So I changed it back to sdb6, and voila! There were all my snapshots.

Why had it changed? sdb1, as it turned out, was a btrfs partition, and it's the only one. I'd installed Manjaro on a while back, just for fun, to see if it was noticeably different (it wasn't) and to try installing a system on a btrfs partition. But it seems that Timeshift had found the btrfs partition when I selected btrfs in the type dialog, and had changed the location of the snapshots to sdb1 without telling me. It didn't change the partition when I selected rsync again, but there are lots of ext4 partitions, so maybe it couldn't figure out which one to change it to. It would probably mean that, if I'd tried to do a snapshot with rsync to a btrfs partition it would have failed, and that would have been a whole other can of worms.

At this point I thought I better just double check sdb1 with nemo, since I'd noticed, when I rebooted, that Manjaro had not appeared in my boot manager.

There are now two folders in sdb1, one called "@" and one called "@home". My Manjaro install has disappeared. Completely.

Luckily there was nothing important in it, I just used it to experiment with an Arch based distro. Just mucking around. So I haven't lost any data or anything. But if it had been my Mint partition, that I use all day every day, filled to overflowing with data files, you'd have to scrape me off the ceiling. Yes I have weekly backups, but losing even a few days worth of data would have been a real PITA.

Timeshift should, at the very least, ask me if I want to change location if I change the type. If I say yes then it should, at the very least, warn me that the new partition it is now going to use is not empty, and do I want to delete everything on it before using it for snapshots. It did neither of those things.

So I guess this post is really just a warning. DO NOT change the snapshot type in Timeshift. It could have dire consequences.

I'd create a bug report if I knew how to do it.

:-\ Ian

NEWSFLASH. It seems like two of my partitions have been clobbered by Timeshift. I had Ubuntu installed on another partition, sdb2, and it has disappeared too. Instead there are now four files on the partition, @, @cache, @home and @log. It is also a btrfs partition now too, and I'm pretty sure it wasn't before, but I can't swear to it.

[mikeflan]

We will assume you are using LM 21, unless you say differently.

Thanks for reporting this. It is certainly a serious issue.
I have checked that btrfs radio item before, but I don't have a btrfs partition.

[rene]

A bug report would supposedly be most useful at https://github.com/linuxmint/timeshift/issues

Although, note, I wouldn't myself be sure that anything has in fact disappeared or that you're now just looking at a different subvolume -- or some such. Don't use btrfs myself...