Samba and Snapper: Previous Versions with Windows Explorer

Snapper is a neat application for managing snapshots atop a Btrfs filesystem.

The upcoming release of Samba 4.2 will offer integration with Snapper, providing the ability to expose snapshots to remote Windows clients using the previous versions feature built into Windows Explorer, as demonstrated in the following video:

The feature can be enabled on a per-share basis in smb.conf, e.g.:

...
[share]
        vfs objects = snapper
        path = /mnt/btrfs_fs

The share path must correspond to a Btrfs subvolume, and have an associated Snapper configuration. Additionally, Snapper must be configured to grant users snapshot access - see the vfs_snapper man page for more details.

Many thanks to:

• Arvin Schnell and other Snapper developers.
• My colleagues at SUSE Linux, and fellow Samba Team members, for supporting my implementation efforts.
• Kdenlive developers, for writing a great video editing suite.