Skip to main content

Snapshots and Rollbacks

Being able to roll back the clock​

Qemu uses a special type of disk drive called .qcow2 > Qemu Copy On Write (ver2)

When you install a distro, Quickemu will create disk.qcow2 as the main drive to which you can install.

Some distro installations can take a long time, especially if you have a slow internet connection. This is also true for many updates.

Qemu's copy on write gives us a clever feature whereby we can store a record of our virtual hard drive at set given point.

[sc] create [sd] delete [sa] apply [sl] list > SNAPSHOTS

If things go wrong, the update fails, the new software that we install is non-stable and we only want to test it, or anything similar, we can go to a previously recorded point and start all over, as if nothing had happened. Simply use > [sa] Snapshot Apply

Quickgui doesn't offer this feature. Quickemu does. But it is very laborious and involves a lot of careful, and often repetitive, typing.

qqX makes the whole process very easy and simple.

You can even snapshot Shared and Second drives too, which is a qqX unique ...

Plus qqX will check the selected drive for errors too. Before it even starts.

snap-create

The menus are quite easy. Copy and paste the instructions to a translator, if you are worried.

You will always be asked to confirm before proceeding.

Managing your snapshots​

One of the really useful features of qqX snapshot functions is series deletion. Simply type 'sd' and select the name or the range of names that you want removing:

snap-delete-sequence

Much easier than with plain quickemu, where each and every snapshot must be individually specified by its exact name and you have to wait, sometimes a minute or two, before issuing the next command as well.