Trying to understand why and how I always get outdated snapshots randomly booted

Issues & Assistance
1

I’ve been using CachyOS for almost a year now, and there’s a very specific occurrence that happens to me every month or so.

I noticed this the first time in January, when I started playing World of Warcraft hardcore. I added the shortcut to Steam so I could use some of Steam’s features, then on a reboot after updating my system, the shortcut to the game on Steam was gone. I also noticed that my browser history was outdated, as I had installed proxmox on a local server at that period and there was no mention to proxmox on my browser history.

I didn’t understand what was going on, so I rebooted. After some reboots, the system booted on the proper version and I just ignored the issue, without understanding why this was happening in the first place.

A few months later, I get the same issue, now noticing that CoolerControl was asking for a password (it never asked me before), and my mouse sensitivity and headset volume were different. I did the same thing, rebooted, after one or two tries, everything went back to normal.

So, I thought this was an issue with BTRFS and the snapshots it creates. There are 2 different snapshot utilities installed on my system (Timeshift and BTRFS Assistant), and the only tool I can see saved snapshots is Timeshift. The other one doesn’t report any snapper snapshots. There were a couple of snapshots created, so I deleted them and left a single snapshot there.

And then this issue will happen occasionally and I still can’t understand why this happens. Something is triggering snapshots and has a previous, outdated state of my SSD saved, and I can’t figure out where or what is doing this. I just noticed this recently (and decided to make a post) after the recent update to kernel 7.0.x that broke /boot mounts, and I just had the same issue today after updating my kernel again, which made me boot into the LTS kernel, notice that an old snapshot was loaded (the mainline kernel was still on 6.1x instead of 7.0.9 that was just installed), and after a reboot the system fixed itself.

So, what are the automatic snapshot utilities enabled by default on CachyOS, or where can I start looking to find out why this is happening?

2

@ This is ai generated - By default, CachyOS uses Snapper, managed by Btrfs Assistant, and automated by a package called snap-pac. Every time you run pacman or paru to install or update something, snap-pac automatically takes a pre- and post-snapshot.

Timeshift is NOT enabled or installed by default on CachyOS.

your system is suffering from a massive conflict:

  1. Conflicting Layouts: Timeshift expects an Ubuntu-style subvolume layout (using @ and @home), while Snapper expects a standard .snapshots directory.

  2. Hijacked Hooks: If you can only see snapshots in Timeshift, it means you likely have a package called timeshift-autosnap installed. It has hijacked the pacman update hooks, creating Timeshift snapshots and aggressively pushing them to your bootloader menu, overriding CachyOS’s native Snapper integration.

To stop randomly booting into the past, you need to consolidate your snapshot tools and clean up your bootloader.

Step 1: Pick One Tool CachyOS is built from the ground up around Snapper. Timeshift is great for Linux Mint, but it causes headaches on Arch-based systems. I highly recommend removing Timeshift and its hooks:

Bash

sudo pacman -Rns timeshift timeshift-autosnap

(If you installed a Timeshift grub/systemd-boot hook, remove that too).

Step 2: Verify Your Default Subvolume Make sure your system hasn’t accidentally set an old Timeshift snapshot as the permanent default root.

Bash

sudo btrfs subvolume get-default /

This should return either ID 5 (FS_TREE) or the ID of your main @ root subvolume. If it explicitly names a timeshift-btrfs snapshot, your default got hijacked and needs to be pointed back to your main root.

Step 3: Reconfigure Btrfs Assistant Open Btrfs Assistant from your application menu.

  1. Go to the Snapper Settings tab.

  2. Select your root config.

  3. Check the Snapper cleanup enabled box and set a limit for timeline snapshots (usually 5 to 10 is plenty).

    the CachyOS Wiki

  4. Click Apply.

Step 4: Clean Your Bootloader Finally, you need to wipe out the old Timeshift entries and regenerate your bootloader so it accurately reflects your current kernel and Snapper entries.

the CachyOS Wiki

Run the command for the bootloader you chose during installation:

  • If using systemd-boot (CachyOS Default): sudo sdboot-manage gen

  • If using GRUB: sudo grub-mkconfig -o /boot/grub/grub.cfg

  • If using Limine: sudo limine-mkinitcpio

Once you purge Timeshift and let CachyOS’s native Snapper handle the updates, your bootloader will stop randomly throwing you back to January!

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The default snapshot/rollback doesn’t even touch /home which is where your personal settings would live…