2026-06-19 –, E112 (capacity 156)
In 2018 we introduced boom, a tool that made snapshot booting as simple as it should have been all along. Eight years later, the question isn't "can I boot this snapshot?" but "which snapshots exist, why did I create them, what changed, and do I still need them?"
Enter snapm: a complete snapshot manager that handles everything from creation to scheduled garbage collection, with plugins for LVM2 CoW, LVM2 thin, and Stratis. Tell it what you want to snapshot, and it figures out the fiddly bits - no arcane incantations required.
This talk covers the journey from boom's beginnings to snapm's current capabilities: intelligent size policies, multi-volume snapshot sets that actually work with systemd, scheduling with flexible retention policies (count, age, timeline), and the latest addition: the Difference Engine, which answers "what actually changed?" with everything from JSON reports to fancy tree visualisations.
Live demos included. Disasters may be simulated. Rollbacks will be swift.
Bryn M. Reeves studied computer science at University College London in the late 1990s: in spite of that he has had a productive career in the enterprise software industry. He is a near 30-year veteran of Linux systems administration and development.
His work includes contributions to lvm2, dmstats(8), the kernel, sos, and he is the founder and maintainer of the boom and snapm snapshot management stack.
He types on a Model M keyboard and uses vim(1), tmux(1), and sed(1) as his IDE of choice.