Serpent OS Demonstrates Working Offline Rollbacks With Its Package Manager
([Operating Systems] 5 Hours Ago
Offline Rollbacks)
- Reference: 0001516809
- News link: https://www.phoronix.com/news/Serpent-OS-Offline-Rollbacks
- Source link:
Hot off the recent [1]Serpent OS Alpha release and [2]talking up new features for 2025 , this original Linux distribution led by open-source developer Ikey Doherty is now demonstrating its offline rollback support with integration around its package management system.
The offline rollback support can be done for easily rolling back the system state should any package management operations go awry. Using Serpent's Moss package management tool will automatically generate boot entries for taking back the system to a former state -- without any user intervention required. The concept itself isn't new with [3]Fedora exploring Btrfs-based system rollbacks now a decade and a half ago. OpenSUSE has also [4]supported Btrfs rollbacks .
The Serpent OS rollbacks are atop XFS ( Update: Ikey has clarified their implementation is file-system independent) and the implementation with Moss relies on Dracut initramfs integration. Currently the last five transactions are kpet for rolling back support.
The [5]Serpent OS blog post for the offline rollbacks explains:
"We actually saw this as a golden standard for the feature, as it’s a real-world scenario where you’d want to roll back to a known good state. The video shows the system booting and recovering in multiple ways, from complete system nuke (via glibc) and simpler scenarios like removal of the GNOME desktop environment.
The intent is to ensure a user can quickly revert to the last transaction that worked in the instance an update goes awry, without needing to boot into a rescue environment or live CD.
...
TLDR: Boot time rollback, no network required, no live CD required, no rescue environment required. Just a working system."
Further enhancements in this area are still being planned and worked on by Serpent OS.
[1] https://www.phoronix.com/news/Serpent-OS-Alpha-Christmas
[2] https://www.phoronix.com/news/Serpent-OS-Post-Alpha-Plans
[3] https://www.phoronix.com/review/fedora_13_btrfs
[4] https://www.phoronix.com/news/SUSE-Linux-Btrfs-Rollbacks
[5] https://serpentos.com/blog/2025/01/04/offline-rollbacks-enabled/
The offline rollback support can be done for easily rolling back the system state should any package management operations go awry. Using Serpent's Moss package management tool will automatically generate boot entries for taking back the system to a former state -- without any user intervention required. The concept itself isn't new with [3]Fedora exploring Btrfs-based system rollbacks now a decade and a half ago. OpenSUSE has also [4]supported Btrfs rollbacks .
The Serpent OS rollbacks are atop XFS ( Update: Ikey has clarified their implementation is file-system independent) and the implementation with Moss relies on Dracut initramfs integration. Currently the last five transactions are kpet for rolling back support.
The [5]Serpent OS blog post for the offline rollbacks explains:
"We actually saw this as a golden standard for the feature, as it’s a real-world scenario where you’d want to roll back to a known good state. The video shows the system booting and recovering in multiple ways, from complete system nuke (via glibc) and simpler scenarios like removal of the GNOME desktop environment.
The intent is to ensure a user can quickly revert to the last transaction that worked in the instance an update goes awry, without needing to boot into a rescue environment or live CD.
...
TLDR: Boot time rollback, no network required, no live CD required, no rescue environment required. Just a working system."
Further enhancements in this area are still being planned and worked on by Serpent OS.
[1] https://www.phoronix.com/news/Serpent-OS-Alpha-Christmas
[2] https://www.phoronix.com/news/Serpent-OS-Post-Alpha-Plans
[3] https://www.phoronix.com/review/fedora_13_btrfs
[4] https://www.phoronix.com/news/SUSE-Linux-Btrfs-Rollbacks
[5] https://serpentos.com/blog/2025/01/04/offline-rollbacks-enabled/
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