With the release of snapper 0.1.0 also non-root users are able to manage snapshots. On the technical side this is achieved by splitting snapper into a client and server that communicate via D-Bus. As a user you should not notice any difference.

So how can you make use of it? Suppose the subvolume /home/tux is already configured for snapper and you want to allow the user tux to manage the snapshots for her home directory. This is done in two easy steps:

1. Edit /etc/snapper/configs/home-tux and add ALLOW_USERS=”tux”. Currently the server snapperd does not reload the configuration so if it’s running either kill it or wait for it to terminate by itself.
2. Give the user permissions to read and access the .snapshots directory, ‘chmod a+rx /home/tux/.snapshots’.

For details consult the snapper man-page.

Now tux can play with snapper:

  tux> alias snapper="snapper -c home-tux"

  tux> snapper create --description test

  tux> snapper list
  Type   | # | Pre # | Date                             | User | Cleanup  | Description | Userdata
  -------+---+-------+----------------------------------+------+----------+-------------+---------
  single | 0 |       |                                  | root |          | current     |         
  single | 1 |       | Tue 16 Oct 2012 12:15:01 PM CEST | root | timeline | timeline    |         
  single | 2 |       | Tue 16 Oct 2012 12:21:38 PM CEST | tux  |          | test        |

Snapper packages are available for various distributions in the filesystems:snapper project.

So long and see you at the openSUSE Conference 2012 in Prague.