From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 From: Phillip Susi Subject: Snapshots Date: Tue, 18 Dec 2007 14:57:36 -0500 Message-ID: <47682630.5060803@cfl.rr.com> Reply-To: device-mapper development Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Return-path: List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , Sender: dm-devel-bounces@redhat.com Errors-To: dm-devel-bounces@redhat.com To: device-mapper development List-Id: dm-devel.ids I have been playing around with the snapshot target with dmsetup, and I can set up a snapshot that diverts writes to a backing file, so that modifications to the snapshot device are discarded when I remove the snapshot device and go back to using the origin device. What I can't figure out is how to keep the origin device mounted and have the snapshot device appear to contain the origin's data at the time it was created, even though the origin continues to be modified. I thought one of the main ideas of the snapshot was to be able to backup a consistent filesystem image even though the filesystem continues to be written to, but it seems that having the origin device mounted gets an exclusive lock on it so that the snapshot device can not be targeted at it, so how do you do this?